How to Rank on Google News
If you’re a publisher, Google News is a must. Delivering a ton of traffic and exposing your website to potentially millions of new readers, ranking in Google News is the easiest way to reach the top of search results for news as it happens.
In this weeks video we performed a site review for Pakistan news site Pakistan Today, who were having problems gaining inclusion into Google News. We took a look at their site and found some on-site issues that may be hindering their approval by the Google News team.
Want to get your site set up for Google News? Here’s how.
Requirements for Google News
- Articles must have unique, permanent URLs with at least 3 unique digits
- An articles Page Title should match up with the article’s h1 or h2 tags
- You must publish articles a minimum of three times daily.
- Content and headlines in your articles must be unique
- Your website needs a contact or about page
- Your website should have multiple authors and a page that lists each author
- Each individual article should contain the author’s name
Once your site has met the above requirements, submit your website to the Google News team for review. Once you’ve been approved you’ll begin seeing your articles appear for relevant news-related search pages and also on the Google News page. Once you’ve got your foot in the door, it’s time to build and improve your Google News rankings.
How to rank higher in Google News
- Just like normal search rankings, your chances to show up in Google News relies heavily on the authority of your domain and how well optimised your site is. Make sure your site is up to scratch with SEO and you’ll see subsequent improvements to your overall news rankings.
- Make sure you’re updating frequently. A minimum of 3 times a day will ensure Google sees your website producing frequent content and will show you higher in news results.
- Publish your articles as soon as possible. Google favors articles that have been published first so beating other news sites to the punch will give you a distinct advantage in Google News
- Make sure your articles are over 200 words as Google excludes articles that clock in under this word count minimum.
- Including images in your articles can greatly improve the clickthrough of searchers to your article. To ensure Google displays an image alongside your article, images should be correctly labeled, captioned, have no click-through and be near the article title.
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