I had articles I was genuinely happy with.
They were researched properly, covered the topic from different angles, and were structured much better than some of my older posts.
But Discover wasn't really noticing them.
At first, I assumed the problem was the content.
It wasn't that simple.
When I started checking the technical side of the site, I found several small issues that could affect how Google handled the pages and their images.
That changed the way I think about Discover.
Good content matters, but technical foundations and presentation matter too.
The First Thing I Found: Large Image Previews
One of the first things I checked was whether the site allowed large image previews.
The max-image-preview:large directive was missing on some pages.
Google recommends allowing large image previews for Discover, and this was something I had overlooked.
Once I fixed it, I started watching the affected pages more closely.
I saw Discover impressions begin appearing over the following days.
I wouldn't claim that one tag guarantees Discover traffic, but in my case it was an important technical correction.
I wrote about the fix in more detail in [The Meta Tag I Almost Missed That Was Blocking My Discover Images].
I Also Reworked My Article Images
The next issue was image quality.
Some of my thumbnails looked fine inside the CMS but weren't particularly impressive when displayed at larger sizes.
I started using high-quality, relevant images that were at least around 1200px wide where appropriate, while still keeping file sizes under control.
The goal wasn't simply “make the image bigger.”
I wanted the image to look good when presented as a large content preview.
Mobile Performance Needed Attention
Then I checked mobile performance.
A few older templates were noticeably slower than the newer ones.
I ran the pages through Google PageSpeed Insights and reviewed the Core Web Vitals data in Search Console.
The fixes weren't glamorous.
I compressed oversized images, removed a few unnecessary scripts, and cleaned up parts of older templates.
But the pages became faster and more pleasant to use.
The Sitemap Was Another Small Problem
After restructuring some content into topic clusters, I realized my XML sitemap hadn't been updated properly.
That wasn't something I wanted sitting around after making structural changes.
I corrected the sitemap and submitted the updated version through Search Console so Google could discover the changed URLs more efficiently.
What I Learned
The biggest lesson was that semantic SEO and technical SEO aren't really separate jobs.
Semantic improvements help Google understand what your content is about.
Technical improvements make sure the content can be properly crawled, rendered, and presented.
And Discover adds another layer because the visual presentation of content matters more than I initially appreciated.
My experience wasn't that one technical change magically “unlocked” Discover.
It was more like removing several small obstacles that had been sitting in the way.
