With over 60 percent of people trusting Google News over other news outlets, Google News can be a gold mine for marketers. But, as content marketers know well, Google intentionally keeps its algorithms and updates private. Here is what we at Flying Cork Media have learned in how to get your articles on Google News.
What is Google News?
Google News is a news aggregator that compiles news articles from over 20,000 publishers worldwide and displays them on the Google News site, Google’s main search results pages, and the Google News app. For users, it provides diverse and relevant news content on a personalized feed based on a user’s settings and past Google activity. For marketers and publishers, it is a huge opportunity for targeted, organic traffic with greater search engine visibility.
Google defines news as “newly received or noteworthy information, especially about recent or important events.” So, even if you don’t consider your site to be a traditional news outlet, if you’re publishing high-quality and timely information to your audience, Google could categorize your content as news.
How to Get Your Articles on Google News
Publishers that produce high-quality content and Google News content policies are automatically considered for appearing on Google News. This means that you could keep posting articles as usual with the hope that Google’s algorithm will pick up on your content. However, as we at Flying Cork Media have discovered, there are a few practical tips and advice to get your articles to appear on Google News.
Google’s Publisher Center
Even though it doesn’t guarantee that your articles will appear in Google News, your first step should be to sign up for Google’s Publisher Center. According to Google, “The use of Publisher Center isn’t related to whether your content is eligible to appear for inclusion on Google-wide news surfaces…The goal of the new Google Publisher Center is to equip publishers to seamlessly handle Google News–related publisher tasks with less effort.”
Valuable publisher tasks include allowing you to manage multiple news publications under one organization, giving you the ability to control your design, branding, and content, and providing you a platform to monetize your content with Google Ad Manager. Additionally, being a Google Publisher allows you to submit your site’s RSS feed and add content labels to help Google understand your content better.
Follow Content Policies
For your article to appear on Google News, you must also follow Google’s content policies. For example, it must be timely, relevant, accurate, original, and reflect industry-leading expertise. Sponsorship and advertisements should be clearly disclosed, the content should not be misleading, and the publication’s information should be clear and transparent. The content must also abide by Google’s search engine rules, such as not including exploitation, violence, harassment, highly personal information, or spam.
Additionally, the content must satisfy several technical factors pertaining to site structure, languages, HTML, anchor links, and domains.
Case Study
Take an article we wrote for our client Tomorrow’s World Today, for example. The article is entitled “How The James Webb Telescope Will Transform Our Understanding Of The Universe” and it was featured on Google News. The article is heavily researched, original, and discusses a newsworthy and relevant story. Additionally, it is optimized so that Google can properly crawl the page.
Thanks to our content team’s work to get the client’s website on Google News, this article received greater search engine visibility and thus higher organic traffic.
