What Google News syndication offers is not simply a way to develop targeted traffic, but it can also serve as a powerful indirect link building method in itself.
Traffic
If you get syndicated by Google news, you can immediately tap into unique traffic streams. Likewise, if you can provide a genuinely useful source of news, users will book mark your site and subscribe to your RSS feed. This isn’t simply a matter of traffic acquisition – but also traffic retention.
An additional concern from an SEO perspective is that as search engines are increasingly looking at how to combine user behaviour data with rankings, a good news source driving quality traffic can potentially tap into additional human user approval for a domain.
Links
Sites syndicated by Google News immediately increase their online presence, and can be picked up by other news syndication services – providing both temporary and permanent links to your news items. Additionally, I’ve found it’s not uncommon for individuals and organisations to link to websites reporting on stories involving them – and can be a great way to get links from blogs and authoritative organisations.
Of course, your news item may even be added to social networking sites – potentially gaining traffic and links from the chatter it generates.
The challenges of getting noticed
Okay, now let’s underline both of these points – Google News syndication can drive additional targeted traffic to your website, and also allow quality organic link development.
Let’s look at a couple of the catches, though:
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You have to keep your news section regularly updated
Keeping a news section regularly updated is time consuming. The key pointer here though is that that the more regularly you can put stories on your news section, the greater the increase of your online presence. -
Try and be unique in your stories
Writing stories that all the other news organisations are writing about can easily leave you buried under them.
Traffic generation therefore lays in targeting a niche, the smaller stories – and especially in unique stories.
If you can release a story before it’s news, you position yourself far more ideally for capturing the direct and longtail keyword searches that will bring bigger traffic to your story - and site.
How to get into Google News
Of course, if you’re up for the traffic and link development, and can put the time and effort into posting regularly and trying to be unique, you need to know how to get into Google News. Here’s some key pointers:
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Only submit established sites
When you submit your news source for consideration, you want to show a track record of having kept regularly updated for a significant amount of time. My personal policy is to ensure 6 months running before I even consider submissions, though in practice I’ve usually submitted only after a year. -
Organisations only
Google News has a policy of only accepting news sources run by accountable corporations. In other words, no to news sources run by individuals. So if you have a registered corporation/company – LLC, Ltd, etc – then ensure you have an about section on the news source that clearly shows it run by the company, not an individual. In that regard, it’s probably good practice to ensure you carry a disclaimer and privacy policy on the site as well, both for quality assurances, and also distance your business from editorial policy. -
Resubmission
Google News *does* keep a record of which sites have been submitted. So if you’re rejected at first, ensure you address any concerns raised before you consider resubmission. Fix them - double check - resubmit.
Tips on optimising for Google News
There are a couple of tips you might want to bear in mind with Google news to optimise your exposure.
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No links in titles
The Google News crawler can’t handle links in titles. Run your titles in h tags and include a permalink on the page that the Google News bot can use. Otherwise, you simply get your news source title on all news stories – no good for keyword searches. -
Numericals in the URL
Ensure the URLs for each news item are unique, unchanging, and don’t change or produce duplicate items. You’ll also need a short numerical string in your URL. These are simply so that Google News identify the news item. Unique dates (ie, day, month, & year) plus keywords, are usually fine. -
30 days limit
When Google News crawls and indexes your stories, it’ll keep them on Google News for 30 days. After that, the story is gone from their record. This is where regular news items are essential – the more you can post, the greater your presence on Google News. -
Images
Try adding images to your news story. That way there’s a chance that Google News will display your image beside the story. This won’t increase your story rankings, but can be a real benefit for improving clickthrough rates. Sometimes when there are a lot of related stories, Google News can even publish your image - with a direct link to your news item - beside the main headline. This is even if you have to otherwise dig through a mass of related stories for your actual story. -
Add to favourites and Feed links
Another tip here – Google News doesn’t care about your feed link or “add to favourites” button – but human users may. If traffic retention is an aim of your site then do ensure you have clearly visible links for both of these next to your stories.
Conclusion
So, now you know what you’re doing, what are you waiting for? :) Here’s the link: Submit to Google News.
Wow amazing first article Brian. Keep it up ;)
Just to follow up on this article -
This week Mozilla released Firefox 2.0.
Instead of posting this as news on Platinax the day it broke, I posted a story the following day about the privacy concerns raised over the phishing protection.
Because of this, the story is now frontpage on privacy.org (PR7) and is being flamed on the homepage of a Firefox developers (PR7) blog.
It wasn't intentional to publish the story for organic links - I simply tried to publish a unique news story, and the links followed.
2c.
Hi Brian,
cool article, there's just one thing that is not complete. You wrote you need to be an organization to be added as a source in google news. Well, that's not correct.
I run a multi-author blog and I've been accepted in Google News, without being part of any organization. But if you have a blog, I think being multi-author is the key (and of course writing good content as well) otherwise they won't let you in.
Cheers
Hi Brian.
Great post!
Just one thing, can I get a little clarification regarding the links in title bit...
So, lets say my latest news are all linked to from my /news page.
I should not simply have a list of titles, with a small description, and allow the titles to link to the news pieces url?
This what we are talking about here? - sorry if I am confusing matter more!
Mike
Nice article Brian. Thanks!
How many news articles per month do you think are needed to be considered for Google and Yahoo News? If I average one per day - covering a niche area - is that adequate?
I think 1 a day is a good pace. My news sites very between 14-104 articles per month, depending on the site niche.
Issue there, of course, is that fewer articles means less presence on Google News.
Wow, Thanks! I am going to see if I can get aboard.
Cheers for that, I might change my articles category into a news category, or I may even do both!
Best of luck with it, whatever you do. :)
Thanks for the info, Brian. In regards to no links in titles, you are talking about the title of the news article above the content and not titles as in the meta head area, correct?
If you are talking about the content area, wouldn't using the title as the permalink be more keyword rich than just permalink?
Google News – for traffic, links, and rankings
vs
permalink
Paul - So far as I can tell, SEO optimising for Google News is pretty much standard on-page SEO issues - keyword use in the item title, headings, subheadings, etc - certainly in terms of factors you can directly control.
Ken - Indeed, the title of the news item above the content.
In a number sofware platforms, the news item title will also be a direct link to the title - and Google News doesn't always like that.
However, you can still use a keyword-rich permalink.
Headline: News Item Title! Permalink: News Item Title!
That I think is helpful for both human users as well as the Google News bot.
Hope that helps for both of you. :)
Brian, you can respond to each commenter individually if you hit "Reply to _______" under that person's post.
Oops - thanks. Too used to forums. :)
No prob. Welcome to the blog, new SEOmoz blogger!
Nice article I,Brian. Great minds think alike maybe as I posted about getting into Google News, Yahoo News and Topix yesterday. https://301url.com/goognews Caught 3500 uniques from Digg alone on that one.
I appreciate the detail you went into though, that is something I did not do.
Sounds good. :)
I've written in depth before on this issue, but simply haven't had the audience. I guess SEOmoz is a little more appreciative. :)
If you have an articles category on your website is that the same thing? Do the articles need to be dated?
Articles aren't really news stories, though. You really need to be focusing on writing news stories for Google News.
Hi, I'm an SEO specialist, currently work for website for a major newspaper. I think this information is extremely helpful.
Other than the "traditional SEO techniques" (Such as keyword filled news tite, within h1 tags, etc), is there anything specific about "optimizing for Google News" I should know about?
Thank, --Paul.