Tips For Getting Your Site’s Articles Picked Up By Google News

Boost your search engine rank, exponentially increase new and repeat visitors, and be recognized as an authority in your niche. Does that sound like something you'd want for your website or blog? Get your content in front of thousands of readers in the Google News index and watch it happen.

How Google News Syndication Works

Google's computers sort through news sites and feeds and look for frequency, so obviously hard news appears first because everyone talks about current events. According to the Google News About page, their algorithms rank content based on freshness, location, relevance, and diversity.

Google claims there are no human editors. It's important to follow all protocols so the Google bot can easily crawl your site and include your articles in the News feed.

Tips and Pointers for Getting in the News—And Staying There

Find out if your site is being crawled by Google's news bots by going to Google News [http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&tab=wn] and typing site:nameofsite.com in the search box. If you're not already in the bot's path, go to the Suggest News Content page and answer the questions to be considered.

You (or your webmaster) will need to create News Sitemaps specifically for the Google bot. Lengthy instructions are available here but basically the bot wants to know about genres (what type of news it is), original publication times, titles, and keywords. When creating and uploading news content to your site, keep these parameters in mind so generating the sitemap is easier.

Add specific metatags to the html of your articles crediting other sources or flagging the article as original. It's always best to post original content to your blog or website rather than syndicating what other people have said about the topic. Google frowns on content stealing and spam, so make sure your articles are truly original by commissioning them from a trustworthy content provider and properly citing all sources in the article and metatags.

Keywords are king with Google so optimize all content even if it's not indexed by Google News. If you commission some of your content creation, ask the writers to use keyword best practices as they write. Plenty of relevant inbound links from good websites give your site a boost in Google's eyes as well, so work on SEO.

Unique Articles, Multiple Authors

Though it might seem Hollywood stars and national tragedies hog the headlines, Google News has categories specifically for business, science and technology, sports, and health too. Users customize their feeds to show local stories, so if you're location-dependent that's a great opportunity to get articles in front of readers.

Google News really likes multiple authors that frequently generate fresh content on topics that are newsworthy. In fact, you'll need to create a new Sitemap at least every two days, so fresh content is an absolute must. Articles more than 30 days old fall out of Google News but once they're indexed, they're available in the search for a month.

Widen the Net Through Content Syndication

Since you're commissioning frequent content updates, you might as well get your site syndicated by other news providers. When the Google news bot recognizes your original content on other sites, it feels it's more relevant and newsworthy—giving you a definite ranking boost.

Without going into too much detail here, that means creating an RSS feed and submitting it to major news sites that then syndicate your content (crediting you, of course). These sites should be listed in Google News, so check the site:nameofsite.com search before going through a lot of work.

Keep content fresh and frequent. Commission articles with strong keywords and newsworthy topics. Follow Google's protocols to the letter. Syndicate your content on other major sites. It won't be long before you see your site's name in the Google News spotlight.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites