Getting Your Site Listed In Google News - SEO Secrets From Semalt
As Google continues being to the most famous search engine, website owners naturally use them as the ultimate guide. Web site owners try their best to dominate Google and bring in more traffic from the search engine to their sites.
Getting featured on Google News is a once in a blue moon opportunity to earn more attention to your website's contents. This is thanks to the increased visibilities that comes with getting featured on Google's top stories.
Late in 2019, Google changes its policies for being considered for listing in Google News. It no longer required sites to submit their URL but informed the general public that sites were now automatically considered for the Top stories position or the News tab search of Google's platform. The primary requirement changed to having high-quality content and compliance with Google News Content policies.
These were two excellent tips, but they didn't exactly tell webmasters what they should do. This is why Semalt still has practical tips and advice for its clients who plan on being on Google News eligibility from the past, and these strategies are still effective even today.
Let's get familiar with the basics of Google News.
What Is Google News?
Google News is an automated vertical search engine programmed to collect and aggregate news stories and headlines from thousands of websites worldwide. All the headlines and news collected are then analyzed by Google with some factors in consideration in selecting the order in which this news and headings will be displayed on the Google News platform.
Some of the factors Google considers include:
- User preference
- Content freshness
- User interest
- Content relevance
- Authority of the host site
While users have access to the Google News platform directly by visiting https://news.google.com/, Google also prominently features its News articles on its main search engine pages. Here is an example of what the Google News home screen looks like.
The result displayed on Google News is influenced by the search's location and the user's personal preference.
Why Is It Important For A Website To Get Into Google News?
From a holistic point of view, getting into Google News is great. It increases the overall reach of your website, its visibility, and, ultimately, the traffic moving to a site. In reality, there is a more complex answer as to why everyone wants to be on Google News.
In a survey conducted by Edelman's trust in 2016, we see that over 60% of people trust Google News over other network outlets. When combined with the other benefits mentioned above, this level of trust opens up any business to a whole new world of possibilities. And these benefits go beyond the traditional search metrics of impressions, revenue, or traffic.
As a business with an online presence, trust can be defining deferential between your brand and its competition. Trust holds significant relevance in influencing users' behavior at both pre-click and post-click stages of a visitor's journey.
For many businesses, making it on Google News is another way to gain more recognition as an authority in their industry. Getting on Google's new or Top stories is similar to having Google link your site as an authority.
Getting Into Google News
As with everything relating to Google, following its guidelines and best practices can get your content ranked highly in Google's News section. Here are some of the guidelines that increase the likelihood of your content succeeding in getting into Google News.
General Guidelines
Content Types
As you might imagine, for any content to make it to Google News, it must be timely, relevant, and of interest to Google audience. Contents such as Job adverts, Tips, Advice, etc., aren't usually featured in Google News.
Uniqueness And Readability
Under no circumstance will you find google featuring duplicated or inaccurate content. If a site qualifies to be on Google News but has a mixture of self-generated and collected content, it will need to be clearly stated on the website. If you don't, none of its content will get in or stay on Google News.
Also, to be considered for Google News, the content must be well written and devoid of unnecessary distractions such as excessive ads or irrelevant videos.
Expertise And Trust
Typically, it is content that holds a great reputation and trust in an industry that gets considered for Google News. The contents must offer clear opinions based on the business's personal experience and expertise in its field. Contents should also be supported by trust indicators such as a local address, supporting authorship, and contact numbers.
Technical Guidelines
For inclusion in Google News, Google uses an algorithm-based method to discover and crawl articles. There are a number of technical conditions that must be met for an article or website to be considered. Here are some of these factors:
- The URLs and anchor links should be a description of the content. They should be unique and permanent.
- Content should be provided in HTML formats only. Other content forms, such as PDFs and JavaScript, cannot be crawled or displayed.
- The domain on which the content is hosted should be accessible by search engine bots.
Quality Guidelines
Google has quality written all over it. For your content to make it to SERP or Google News, it must be of good quality. As experts, we always look at contents objectively and compare them with other top-ranking sites that have contents on the same topic. We ensure that our content exceeds what is considered basic requirements. We endeavor to beat the expectations of search engine bots and our competition in terms of depth, variation, opinion, expertise, trust, and statistics of our content.
But trying to get all your content on Google News is not a good strategy, and you are doomed to fail, especially because Google News is designed for News content only. Contents featured in most cases will be industry-specific and company neutral. Google wouldn't want to be seen marketing or functioning as a PR platform for any brand.
Google News Tips And Advice
There are several tactics we employ to help you get your content to display and rank in Google News. Here are some practical concepts we employ:
Do The Basics Properly
There are border areas that can positively impact the eligibility of your content goes down to how well you do the basic stuff. News content should be clearly labeled.
- Have a unique subfolder with a news tag.
- Each content that plans on making it to Google News should have a descriptive URL that describes the content topic.
News content needs to be quickly accessible, load quickly, and be a rich source of information. The content should also be topical, have value, be factual, and independent of too many sale tones. If you intend to get featured on Google News, you must publish news frequently and consistently. This can be done on a weekly or daily basis.
Contents you intent on getting featured should be easy to read and shared; it should also engage with users.
Having A Unique Sitemap
By creating unique sitemaps for Google News and submitting them to Google, we are able to take control of the news content items the meet and exceed Google's guidelines criteria and highlight the articles most likely to deliver good results.With your Sitemap submitted to Google, we can speed up and improve the chances of Google finding the contents displayed within the search results.
Accelerated Mobile Pages
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) are versions of webpages that have been stripped of almost all types of non-text content, which can cause slow loading of the page. As Google strives to become more mobile-friendly, AMPs are an added advantage for website owners who want to be featured on Google News.
People prefer easy to read contents that can be easily digested on the move. And since mobile devices and tablets are more convenient to use on the go, the news featured on Google News must be mobile-friendly.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that there are many benefits that come with being listed in Google News. This alone can be the entry point of any website to the top of any highly competitive search results. We can't stress enough the importance of appearing on Google News or how contents that plan on being featured must be content news only.
The content should be accurate, original, timely, and of interest to the Google News audience. Make sure you follow all the guidelines we've laid out and the best practices. If done right, you stand a better chance of getting featured.
You can always consult with Semalt if you run into any difficulties while attempting this. On the other hand, Semalt can help manage your site and use its knowledge in shaping your website to being perfect for Google News.