The Ultimate SEO Guide For Google News

Google News can be an excellent channel for marketers and SEO specialists to take advantage of, in order to improve organic users and user engagement.

This is especially the case if you have the right kind of website, such as a magazine, or if you are an industry leader reporting on new trends within your sector. But you need to ensure that you can optimise your news articles in order to be more likely to appear within news-related searches and Google News.

Throughout this SEO guide, we will break down what Google News is, how users discover news and how you can optimise your content to become more visible for news-related searches. Explore our full guide to find out more.

What is Google News?

Google News was first launched in 2002 as a news aggregator, continuously sharing news links from thousands of publishers and magazines. Google News shares news on a wide variety of topics across a wide range of industries and sectors, but the main ones are:

• Business 
• Technology 
• Health
• Entertainment
• Science 
• Sport

These are in addition to local news and world news. Google News has, however, developed since its introduction in 2002. It is now trying to give personalised news to every user based on their interests and search preferences.

It also gives publishers a new way of getting their high-quality articles out there and gaining traction from another channel outside traditional papers and forums.

How Do Users Discover News on Google?

Google News shares its coverage over lots of different Google-based channels other than the platform itself. Channels such as Google Search and YouTube also pull in links from Google News.

There are three separate ways in which Google News differentiates what articles to add to which channel. All based on the user’s preferences.

The Three Ways Are As Follows:

Top/Trending News

This includes news and articles such as breaking news on Google News or breaking news on YouTube.

Personalised News

News that would show up in the ‘For You’ section in Google News or the latest section for YouTube.

Detailed Content

Long-form content usually ranks best in the top stories section, Google Search or Top News on YouTube.

Benefits of Using Google News for SEO

There are many benefits to utilising Google News for SEO. The primary reason for this is that it ranks organic content in a very similar way to commercial and informational content, so the optimisations are practically the same, with some variations. 

It also allows the right users to find your website, as this type of traffic is typically highly relevant to your business. So, see all the benefits of utilising Google News below and why you should be using it as an additional channel to gain high-quality users.

Why Use Google News?

As mentioned previously, there are many benefits to having a Google News account for a magazine or publishing agency. Not only can you find the right audience for your content, but it can also provide users with only your best and most relevant content as well.

Most importantly, you can tailor your content to rank well on Google News, getting more users to your content and becoming a more authoritative site.

In the next sections, we will cover how to get set up with Google Publisher, exactly how you can rank on Google News and finally how to optimise your content to become more visible.

Which Websites Are Best for Google News?

Before deciding if Google News will be beneficial to your overall outreach and SEO strategy, you need to know what type of site performs best in Google News. It isn’t a strategy that you can use for every website, but it can be beneficial for:  

• News and publisher websites
• Large enterprise websites
• Websites which already have a high level of authority or expertise (industry experts)
• Websites specialising in a niche topic
• Websites which create frequent news/article content

How To Get Set Up on Google News Publisher

Now that we have gone over why you should use Google News and what sites are perfect for it, we will go over how you can get started. In this next section, we will discuss how you can get set up with Google News Publisher, so you can start to gain more visibility and engagement for your news content.

Setting Up Google Publisher

When you open Google Publishing Centre with your Google business account, the first thing you need to do to set up your account is to add your publication name (company name), your website URL and where you are located.

Google accepts any business wanting to add to Google News, but remember that Google will favour news publishers and online magazines. It’s useful, especially if you have a website that has a lot of authority on a particular subject.

Once you have put in the information, you should be ready to go. If you prefer, you can upload a particular location of your site. E.g., Latest News.

If you need any extra help, here is a great guide you can use from the Google Support page to get started with Google News.

Adding Articles

It’s really easy to upload articles to Google News. You don’t even need to add your entire article, as Google News only pulls the links straight from your website. Just add the link to your articles from the core part of your website. For example, a topic cluster section would be perfect to add to Google News.

You will be more likely to have Google News use your articles to reach the audience of that niche topic if your subject is also niche.

If you want to produce an article on new regulation changes for finance, this will reach the intended target audience a lot quicker than a lengthy blog or article, which you may want to use to follow up on this subject instead.

Ranking Factors for Google News

So, what are the Google algorithms looking for when it comes to rankings and displaying news articles and blogs?

Google News Ranking Factors

Much like Google Search, Google News has its own set of different ranking factors that decide the top content on the platform. Many are similar to the way content ranks in Google, but with some slight changes.

Here are the general ranking factors for Google News:

• Relevance of content
• Prominence
• Authoritativeness – This is a big one
• Freshness
• Location
• Language

The “For You” tab in Google News also sets ranks based on:

• Interests
• Usability
• User preferences for topics or publishers

Authority

Your website has to have authority in a specific area, for example, health, and have trustworthy content, accurate articles and news stories.

As long as you are producing high-quality articles, blogs, and news stories, you will have a good chance of increasing your visibility on Google News. It’s worth checking your domain authority before deciding if Google News is right for you.

How To Get Your News Content Ranking

Using Keyword Research and Google Explore

The research stage is crucial to any piece of content. Google Trends is a good place to start as they have a section for Google News rankings.

By using Google Trends, Explore, you can discover ranking keywords, specifically on Google News. Just simply add the location you want to target (i.e. The UK), the timescale, the topic you want to target, and finally, you can choose ‘news search’ for Google News-specific terms. An easy way to get the best-ranking keywords on.

Photos and Video Content

Photos and video content play a huge part in Google News optimisation. This is because Google News favours articles and stories that include an image, and it is critical for getting visibility on the platform. This is the same for videos, with the addition of good quality and relevant content.

Here are a few things to consider to get your images and videos visible and linked on Google News:

• Use Schema.org: image tags make it clear which image you’d like to be in the thumbnail image next to your article
• Use standard file types, like .jpeg, or .png
• Size your images to at least 60 x 90 pixels
• Make sure your images are indexable on your website through the robots.txt file
• Use Video Schema

Article Length

There are no clear guides to how long your content should be, as both short-form and long-form content appear to rank equally on Google News, so it is very dependent on the topic.

Breaking news/latest news stories may be short, and in-depth topical articles may rank better in ‘top news’. It’s important to be aware of the key aspects which Google News takes into consideration for its content.

This is based on:

• The originality of the content
• The relevance 
• Insightful analysis and information
• The publication date and topic
• The trustworthiness of the content

The Header and Title

Google News is very reliant on article titles (typically headlines) and the Google News crawlers scan headlines to see if they relate to the content and what goes onto the news feed. However, there are some things you can do to help you hit Google’s criteria for what is newsworthy. 

Here are a few tips for optimising your headlines for Google News:

• Your anchor text should match the title of the article on your section pages.
• Ensure that the title of the page (in HTML *title> tag) is the same as the title of the article (in <h1> tag).
• Your article titles should be between two and 22 words long, or between 10 and 110 characters.
• Your article title should not include a date or time.
• Anchor text should not include a leading number.

Article Schema

Another way to get your articles ranking on Google News is to use article schema. Just like other types of schema, article schema is a form of markup language that helps search engines gain a better understanding of your blog posts and news articles, specifically.

It can be very beneficial, especially if your website creates regular blog content, to add article schema and make it easier for Google to understand your content. This helps to make your content more visible on Google News.

Video Schema

Video content performs well on Google News, and plenty of publishers are utilising it to increase rankings and increase traffic to their websites.

Using video schema can help your video content to become more visible in Google News. The structured data helps Google to understand the relevance of your content, which is important when you want to increase your Google News ranking. 

Technical SEO

A separate sitemap specifically dedicated to the /news/ section is also useful to get Google to crawl news pages more often. It helps crawlers to rank your content in Google News and with schema added to your articles as well, it provides your content with the best chance of ranking.

Other Considerations

We have covered the main aspects of how to rank well on Google News. However, there are some other factors you need to consider which can help you increase your rankings.

You should consider:

• Date the publication
• At least one static text link should be available for every page on your site (or for blog topic clusters).
• Structured data should be added to your article pages
• Canonicalisation or blocking of republished content
• URLs should include keywords
• Add relevant internal links

Resources

• https://youtu.be/wArETCVkS4g
• https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=GB
• https://news.google.com/
• https://support.google.com/news/publisher-center/answer/9606702?hl=en-GB
• https://support.google.com/news/publisher-center/answer/10598660?hl=en-GB&ref_topic=9603441
• https://support.google.com/news/publisher-center/answer/9604349?hl=en&ref_topic=9604348