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Google News search engine optimization (SEO) can be a game-changer for news websites. Although your site may create outstanding content, your audience is limited if your content doesn’t appear in Google News.
How does Google News work?
Google’s news aggregator fetches news from over 50,000 sources all over the world. If you can get included in Google News, it can help drive a lot of website traffic. To get included in Google News, content creators must optimize their site and content through Google News SEO. It’s a niche discipline that helps publishers become approved news sources.
In this article, we’ll explore ways to get into Google News.
Google explains its vertical search, “Google News,” as follows:
“Google News is a computer-generated news service that aggregates headlines from over 50,000 news sources globally. It groups similar stories and displays them according to each user’s interests. Our articles and multimedia content are selected and ranked by computers that evaluate, among other factors, how often and on what websites a story appears online. We also rank based on certain characteristics of news content such as freshness, location, relevance, and diversity.”
Google News allows the audience to learn about and engage with your content via a diverse set of features. The Google News experience includes important branding and monetization prospects such as advertising and streamlined subscription sales, through Subscribe with Google.
To offer users the best experience, you can select between direct control and traffic using Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) or custom styling of feed-backed content. Using the Publisher Center tool, you can share your content with Google News by listing RSS feeds, website URLs, or videos.
These two Google search engines are mainly different in terms of the kind of content indexed and shown on each one. Regular Google search indexes and includes results for blog posts, website pages, landing pages, etc.
With the appropriate method, it doesn’t matter what type of content you want to rank, provided it follows general SEO best practices. But if you’re going to rank on Google News, you’ll have to share timely news pieces.
Google News sends more than 10 billion clicks to publishers, so getting featured there is sure to bring you a large traffic volume. Once you get featured on Google News, you’ll perhaps improve your domain authority and the number of backlinks generated from your articles.
Many different kinds of sites will benefit from getting featured on Google News. Keep in mind that if you wish to be accepted by Google News, you must publish newsworthy articles.
The leading websites you’ll see on Google News are large-scale publications such as The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and BBC. However, that shouldn’t stop other smaller publications ranking for particular keywords provided they follow all the requirements set by Google.
Google News determines ranking algorithmically, depending on many factors. Google prefers news content and sources that often stay updated on trends. It has a higher preference for credible news sources that are appreciated by users and written by credible authors.
Some key Google News ranking factors are:
Some other ranking factors that Google considers when selecting news stories are:
There are two ways to get your news website indexed in Google News.
Producer Tool: This will be used to get the license for your content.
Publisher Center: Submit your website for inclusion.
Google News checks all websites that register. As per the guidelines, every website will then be accepted or rejected within two months. But before Google scans your website, you must register in the Publisher Center. You can then apply for your site’s inclusion in Google News search results and wait for the evaluation from Google.
Guidelines and legal issues are among the basic concepts of effective SEO. The same holds true with Google News. Some initial work is essential for your content to have a chance of showing up.
You must optimize your site and your content so that Google News considers them relevant and receptive. Consider the following points:
You need to adhere to accepted journalistic standards. This means you should:
While a fair amount of content is critical, your site is worthless to Google News without quality content. The same goes for users seeking serious news sources. Here’s how you can improve the quality of your content:
When you have checked and, if needed, incorporate the above points, you can submit your site to Google News. Even if your site is initially rejected, you can try to register again after 60 days once you make some changes and improve your content quality.
When your site is ready to be submitted to Google News, you should claim authorship for it by registering it as your property in the Google Search Console. Your site will then appear in the Publisher Center under ‘My Websites.’ From here, you can access, fill, and upload the Google News application form.
The registration form is straightforward. Along with the essential metadata, Google News needs a brief and concise description of your site. Use this as an opportunity to communicate the content and topics of your website in a precise and easy-to-understand manner.
In the registration form, you have to write a short description of your site and provide metadata.
After submitting the form, you’ll receive an email from Google asking for a response. Use this as an opportunity to address the Google News guidelines. You can show Google that you have related to them, considered their guidelines, and performed the essential optimizations. When responding, ensure you follow these instructions:
After you’ve sent your response, you’ll get an active ticket from Google News. Stay patient for about a month or two. Make sure that your site continues to publish useful content regularly. That’s how you are going to get a chance to be featured in Google News.
Here are a few tips to help you optimize your news content for visibility and traffic in Google News.
Carry out thorough keyword research to identify most of the news search terms that readers are likely to use. Therefore, if you have a newsworthy article or you’re launching a remarkable new product, then you can come up with your news search term and get featured on Google News. Use PPCexpo Keyword Planner For best research.
Even after getting revamped, Google News continues to depend heavily on page titles to decide ranking. The headline of your news, magazine, video story, or a press release is its page title. Your headline should be between 2 and 22 words for appropriate indexing by Google News. You should avoid adding puns or playing on words, as this can confuse readers.
Subheads are a great place to include extra keywords that aren’t in your headline. They also help users decide whether or not to continue reading longer news content. Moreover, bold, italic, underlined, and bulleted text help:
Even though rich textual content is critical, you can’t ignore images and videos. Google News shows photos related to the content included in its index. It also sometimes pairs related photos with content from different sources.
Follow these tips to improve the probability of your photos being included in Google News:
Google News has various rules for video content to give the best user experience and keep up decency and consistency while figuring out what content is incorporated. Before presenting your YouTube channel to Google’s team, you should read these rules:
Add links in your story or release to direct your users to related supplemental content. This includes:
By putting up related, context-appropriate links, you’ll bring measurable traffic to this relevant content and enhance the user experience.
Your news website should be updated with several fresh articles daily. While your website can feature syndicated content from news services such as The Associated Press, Reuters, or United Press International, don’t depend too much on wire services. The majority of content should be exclusive to your website.
Google seeks news sources with exclusive opinions, so it’s useful to have a specialized focus that sets your site apart from the rest. Multiple news websites report on general news, so niche websites that offer detailed reporting on particular topics or industries have more chances of being indexed and getting placement in Top Stories.
After your website is approved into Google News, create a Google News sitemap for quicker, more efficient indexing of your news articles. Sitemaps include info about the content on your site.
A Google News sitemap allows you to control which content you submit to Google. Even if your site already has a sitemap, Google recommends generating a separate one just for news content. This allows Google’s crawler to identify news items on your website quickly.
Follow the standard order of heading, picture, date, and body text. This makes it easier for the web crawler to identify and approve your website. Try to publish on the latest events as much and as quickly as possible.
Google News appreciates quick publishing on recent topics with more attention — particularly on breaking news. However, you shouldn’t compromise your content’s quality in being swift — balance is important here with proper markup.
If you have a niche site, avoid thematic jumps. For instance, if you have a news portal for soccer, you should avoid reporting on winter sports. That’s the only way Google News will identify you as a relevant news site for a particular area.
Otherwise, your website will be identified as a generic news site. You’ll have to compete with the biggies of the news world, which you may not wish to, especially if you’re a smaller or newer website.
If you have a site where you share newsworthy updates and content, it’s an excellent decision to submit your website to Google News. This will bring you a lot of new traffic and establish your site and company as an authority in your niche.
Getting featured in Google News means you’ll have to follow the steps discussed above. This will ensure that Google acknowledges your website and puts your content right in front of the right users. Although you may be competing with some of the most popular global news outlets, it’s not impossible. By making sure that you’ve formatted your content correctly and written high-quality articles with good SEO practices, you will improve your likelihood of getting more clicks than your competitors.
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