How to Optimize Your Site for Google Carousel Results
Google is constantly working for making the search experience more enjoyable, fast, and accurate for its users. Unlike any other search engine, Google is way ahead in experimenting with new things in order to bring the best Internet experience. Along with hundreds of experiments and features, Google’s carousel is one of them.
If you are new to Google carousel term then don’t worry as in this blog, we will cover it in an in-depth manner. Also, we will check out how to optimize your site for this and gain more organic traffic to your content. And, you can also go for professional SEO services that can help you in optimizing your site for the same.
Just like any special Google search results like rich snippets and or people also ask, Google carousel results are also highly beneficial. It not only helps you gain more organic traffic but also helps you establish your brand as an authority in your industry.
We can call this a goldmine source of driving loads of traffic to your site when you optimize the content in the right way. So, if you were not optimizing your site for this feature, it’s the right time to prepare an implementation strategy for it. Before digging into the ways to optimize the website, let’s first understand what are carousel results.
Google Carousel Results
Launched in 2003, you can call it an extended version of their visual content-rich knowledge graph. In this type of search results, the users get to see highly-interactive and content-rich display results which are generally photos and videos.
For a better perspective — if someone is searching for a good Mexican dining restaurant, Google’s carousel feature will display a series of images, reviews, videos, and ratings. Google wants to help their users with the best available information in all the possible formats. When anyone searches for a good Mexican dining restaurant, then Google will also show relevant images of popular Mexican dishes, ambiance, people’s restaurant reviews and much more.
From this feature, businesses get an opportunity to gain more customers by creating quality content and getting featured in this type of search results. If Google is showing some website’s images, reviews, or videos, then it’s a direct benefit to the site owner. Without any kind of paid marketing, the sites can generate hundreds of thousands of organic traffic depending on the keyword volume.
And, another significant advantage of ranking in the Google Carousel results is that you don’t need to face the cut-throat competition for the top positions. This is because you will be already generating higher organic traffic to your site without running paid ads.
Coming to the type of results Google showcases in their carousel type, then there are majorly four types of results. Below are the types of results you can expect from Google to display in this format:
This format is quite popular as it’s more convenient to the end-users and it’s visible on both desktop and smartphones. In the video carousel, the video results are both from YouTube and other platforms. According to many SEO experts, videos with optimum length, decent likes and engagement are shown in the carousel results. However, all these factors totally depend on the niche of the video and the purpose of the video.
Especially in the mobile version of Google browsing, images are the most common search results as they are more convenient to convey the purpose. Even in the smaller size of images, the search intent is fulfilled. The best way to optimize for images carousel is to pick the images carefully based on the user’s intent. Despite filling the blog with decorative images, try to use problem solving or purposeful images. This will increase your odds in arriving in the search results.
It is made for mobile versions for making the search results more accurate and to the point. In this type of result, Google generally displays interesting short information such as stats, facts or historical data related to the searched query. So, if you run a travel-specific website or some interesting facts website, optimizing the content properly will bring more benefits to you.
Apart from the standalone elements, Google also aggregates some lists and displays them in this format. This type of result is generally of movies, recipe lists, and more. If you search for movies of an actor, you will be presented with a long carousel of movie lists that the actor has done so far. Or, on the other hand, if you search for the cast of a movie, you will get to see all the actors’ pictures in a carousel that you can scroll and click to view more information.
Now, after understanding what it is why they are important for driving traffic, it’s critical to know how to optimize the website so that you can also get featured in this.
Below are some tips that you can follow to boost your site’s chances of getting into one of the carousels. Getting into Google carousel is comparatively easier than other special search results. Get started with the carousel tips to thrive online and gain more traffic than your competitors.
Optimization for video carousels
If you are a video creator, you need to understand the fact that for ranking in these video results, you need to create videos that can fulfill the user’s search query. If a user is searching for how to clean a table, and you have the exact video, then the chances of your video for the carousel improves drastically.
In simple terms, how well you can fulfill the user’s search intent will be a deciding factor if a video will rank or out. So, it becomes important to make to-the-point videos that can give answers to user’s queries without wasting their time. Google and other search engines pay a lot of attention towards fulfilling the users’ search intent rather than matching a plain search query.
Along with creating the video, also focus on optimizing the video’s text to boost your site’s chances. Make the title close to most searched queries so that your site or video can appear in the search results. You can also get some good SEO services and get your site optimized for this Google feature.
One more thing that plays a significant role in video optimization is the thumbnail of your clip. Many people just ignore this part but you need to understand the fact that a thumbnail is your golden chance to gain more clicks.
But make sure that you are not creating thumbnails that are clickbait and users won’t get what they are searching for. Just keep the image relevant and take care of all the text based areas of video. Once you optimize all these things, your odds for coming into the carousel increases significantly.
Optimization for image carousels
Image optimization plays a pivotal role when it comes to optimizing your site for this feature. This is because all the images are showing from Google’s database and it becomes important to optimize the images well. We can call Google the biggest database of images and it’s quite easier for Google algorithms to pick the best images for its users. This is because the RankBrain algorithm is helping the search engine in finding the best content, images, and videos.
For this, you need to make sure that the images have all the information available to the necessary fields. This includes the image’s title, Alt tags, caption (if required); along with this image’s quality also needs to be good.
Always try to use original images as much as possible. This will improve your site’s credibility and boost your chances of getting rank on these results. Adding relevant images to your content will help you a lot in improving the overall SEO foundation of your domain. Avoid using free stock images in your blog as they don’t add any value to the readers because hundreds of several other people are using that same image. To stand out from the crowds, invest your efforts in creating appealing and value-adding images.
If you are also planning a visual marketing campaign, optimizing the images purposefully will help you gain more conversions organically. Try to keep the images theme consistent across all your blogs, articles, and social media posts. This is basuse, it will help you with better branding of your company. In this hyper-connected audio-visual world of social media, it’s important to create your brand presence. If you are using someone else’s images then don’t forget to give the due credits.
Interesting facts and findings optimization:
For knowledge graphs and short content-rich snippets, it all depends on how good quality content is available on the website and how well the site is organized. Structured data plays a huge role in getting your site and in this type of results.
If you have not implemented the schema markup on your site, then you should get it done on your site. This helps the search bots to read and understand the content in a much better way. If you are using CMS like WordPress, then you will find a lot of good schema markup plugins that will help you optimize your site in an efficient way.
If you want Google to pick content from your site, then you need to make sure your site is well-optimized and content is updated, original, and backed with necessary facts. Follow these above simple tips to boost your chances of getting featured in one of the Google Carousel Results.
Regarding your fact-based websites, you also need to take care of the fact that Google only serves its users the most accurate information. While adding facts, figures, or graphs, make sure you quote and link the source. This will help both the bots and users to know that the content is highly backed with strong research.
Future benefits from Google Carousels
Many SEO experts have said that Google has no plans to discontinue this feature in any upcoming time. This is because it is making the search experience more information-rich, quick and accurate. Be it desktop search or a mobile search, Google’s team is working round the clock to optimize their this feature for better efficiency.
As per the experts, the search traffic has not dropped a bit from the carousel even after multiple heavy updates of Google. So, it would be a safe bet to say that optimizing sites for carousels will definitely be worth your efforts and time.
As more people are coming online and searching various different-context questions, carousels will play an instrumental role in getting the best results for all the users.
According to the latest analysis, 33% of the carousel results come from the travel and hospitality industry, 27% comes from restaurants, 5% comes from the Entertainment industry, and the remaining 14% is the aggregate of several other industries. On this note, let’s have a look at what are the fundamental benefits of optimizing your site for this feature and take a lead from your competitors.
Robust advantages of Google Carousels
There are multiple benefits of winning a space in Google Carousels results as it can act as a fixed source of traffic for your site. And, if you are ranking for a keyword whose search volume is very high, then you will generate a lot of revenue from this feature.
The first significant visibility for small and medium businesses is that the company owner will get a higher exposure to visibility. More new customers will come across the brand if its coming in the carousels results. Especially, if you are running a local business, then it’s a goldmine for your company to generate both traffic and sales.
Earlier small and medium-sized businesses didn’t get a chance to dominate the big players. It is because the big websites have a very high DA and it’s very difficult for smaller companies to take a leap. But with Google’s Carousels, small companies can arrive in these search results and drive more traffic to their sites.
When Google fetches results from your site, it’s very much clear that the content is of high quality and it’s optimized for both the bots and users. If a user arrives on your website clicking a carousel, the user will spend more time on your page reading more relevant information. It will help you reduce the overall bounce rate of your site and improve the overall rankings.
Try to organize your content as much as possible using schema markup so that Google can segment your page content in a better way. This way, Google will showcase different page sections on different search queries. Apart from the schema markup, also organize the content using subheadings, bullet points, and other important elements.
If you want to attract more targeted users to your site, then Google’s carousels are the best things to optimize for. As only highly-interested people will search for a query, it will improve your chances of improving the overall conversion rate.
Optimize your Google My Business Profile
No matter if you are a local business or a multinational company, optimizing for Google My Business is the best way to improve your odds for this feature. As Google My Business has your all information, customer reviews, location details, pictures, and other important details, it’s much washer for Google to rank.
For optimizing your business, focus on the fact that your NAP (name, address, phone) details are consistent across all the touchpoints. This will help customers to reach you much faster. Another thing to manage is to check for duplicate listings. If you have more than one listing for one business, it will confuse both users and Google which one to rank higher.
If you have a duplicate one, take that listing down as soon as possible and make the maximum use of the Google My Business for your company. Try to reply to all the queries of your customers if they are posting in the review section. The more active you will be with your customers, the more traffic you will generate for your business.
If you are not sure how to optimize your site or prepare your upcoming content strategy, it’s a smart move to go for professional SEO services and get your site optimized. Instead of hiring an in-house team, it’s better to go for professional services that can amplify your site’s SEO performance in a short time.
Search engine optimization practices are changing drastically in the upcoming time and it becomes vital to optimize your site well. Get started with professional SEO services and boost your organic traffic by ranking into Google’s Carousel Results and thrive online. Once you rank on certain keywords, you can give a significant edge to your competitors. These Google carousels can drive you substantial traffic without engaging into paid ads.
I love the way Google innovate their platforms to enhancing the user experiences, this so helpful to me. Thank you for sharing this >3
i have my own website and i try to optimize it on Google. but it quite difficult to me because of i do not have enought knowledge and resource to do it. Your infomation you sharing very helpful to me, thank you with so much love
Great Work!!!
Thank you for sharing information.
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