Week 29 of 2020 has been more dynamic due to important updates regarding Google Discover and how a website can be optimized to be processed by Google’s new search feature.
- Google Discover: You cannot (yet) optimize your content to rank in it
- Images on non-AMP sites are displayed in Google Discover
- Moz launches API for Google Sheets
Google Discover: You cannot (yet) optimize your content to rank in it
Google announced on July 13 via an official channel that website content cannot be structured or optimized for Google Discover the same way content is done for SERP.
Google Discover lacks predictability when compared to search, so we cannot create content to precisely target its interest.
Some recommendations are however available:
- Create great titles but non-clickbait;
- Create unique insightful content;
- Ensure complete transparency of authors, dates, contact information;
- Demonstrate E-A-T rating compliance, which includes expertise, authority, and trustworthiness;
- Include relevant high-quality images wider than 1200 pixels wide;
- Tell a story and avoid manipulating the reader’s interests.
Images from non-AMP sites are now displayed in Google Discover
An older glitch in the algorithm of Google Discover has been solved in July regarding the size of images for websites not using AMP.
So if you want to have images displayed in large format in Discover, make sure they are at least 1200 pixels wide and also enable large image previews with max-image-preview:large setting.
Source: featured spotted by Search Engine Journal lead developer, Vahan Petrosyan.
Moz launched API for Google Sheets
On July 15th, Moz announced that it launched a new feature that allows users to gather SEO metrics without having to use code directly in a Google Sheet.
Basically, if you want you can use their free plan and collect data for 200 URLs simultaneously, at a rate of 10 URLs / 10 seconds.
Read more details on Moz Blog.
