If you manage and promote a website, you have probably already gone over the popular promotion methods – Google PPC advertising, organic SEO through the blog, email marketing, social media work, and more. Another way that can bring additional readers to your blog is Google News. In addition, using Google News helps you improve the quantity and quality of traffic to your site, improve keyword rankings in organic SEO, and generate more revenue. To have your articles published on Google News, you will need to invest time and effort, but the end result is worth it. In this guide, we will discuss getting content from your website into articles in Google News. First, let’s get to know the platform in depth.
What is Google News?
Google News is Google’s platform for promoting stories and news, ranking articles according to their level of timeliness. It is a platform that aggregates and categorizes news articles expected to be interesting to a broad audience of readers. Due to Google’s immense popularity as a search engine and as a company, using Google News has become a great way to drive massive traffic to your blog.
Despite the many benefits you and your website will gain from publishing articles on Google News, submitting your site as an authority publishing news stories in a specific niche is not a simple process. To get your site’s content into Google News, you must have it indexed as a news publishing website through the Publisher Center so that your content appears on Google News.
How to submit your website to Publisher Center?
If you think the content you write is newsworthy and relevant enough to appear in Google News, use the Publisher Center and fill in the required information – site description, website URL, category, etc. After filling in the relevant information about your organization and website, you need to verify domain ownership using Google Search Console by clicking the “Verify in Search Console” button. Now you will need to wait for the approval period, which takes between 2 to 4 weeks for Google to review and approve the site.
Remember that Google has the option to decide that your site is not suitable for publication in Google News, and during the review, they will evaluate your level of relevance and suitability. If you are eligible, you will be able to upload content directly through Google News or wait for Google to crawl your website, automatically recognize you as a Publisher, and pull your posts into Google News (such scenarios usually happen with major news sites like Ynet or Mako).
After filling out the details and adding a new account to Publisher, you will arrive at the main screen where you can edit the publishing business settings and submit for approval. Click on the Google News tab and then on the Edit button, and you will reach the following screen:
In the General tab, review the business details – basic information about your business, a full description of the business, the category your website deals with, which countries you want the content to appear in on Google News, and which Google properties you want your content to appear in (it is recommended to leave the Allow all Properties option selected).
In the Content Settings tab, you configure the retrieved content that Google News pulls from your site to publish. In the Sections section, you will need to choose the type of content you want the system to pull, with options including: Feed, Personalized feed, Website, and YouTube channel for YouTube promotion. At the bottom, the Access Groups section is used to restrict content viewing to managers and testers who will review the content before it reaches Google News.
In the Review and Publish tab, you will get a summary of all the information you entered in the Google News and Google Publisher settings. If you are missing settings or have not entered a source from which Google News pulls content, a warning will appear detailing why you cannot proceed and the Publish button will be grayed out. If everything is in order, you will have the option to click Publish and submit your Google News account for review by Google. It is also recommended to click Follow Publication, which basically makes you a follower of your Google
News updates, so that if you are approved, you will receive an alert for every post of yours published on Google News.
Why is it important to start with the highest quality content on the site?
It is very important to start on Google News with the most innovative content available on your site. Google News is aimed mainly at news websites and local newspapers, and if you want to get your website’s blog inside, you will need to show Google that you are relevant; this is done with innovative, high-quality, well-written content with no errors. Getting into Google News does not obligate you to turn into a news site; you can keep parts of your website’s blog for guides, webinars, and other posts that don’t need to reach News, and you can decide which content you want Google to crawl for Google News.
The more you focus on producing high-quality content, the number of users exposed to the content will also increase. Do your best to consistently create content that includes information about the products and services you offer, and remember that the goal of content is to tell a story. People reading posts on Google News are looking for captivating stories and headlines that catch their attention from the start. Follow social media posts on topics related to your websites to analyze the audience discussions happening among users in your field, helping you deduce what content will be most relevant to them. Additionally, publishing content that interests users in your niche will help you create buzz and make users like, comment, and share your content.
Why is it important for your blog to be search engine friendly?
Before you even begin to hope to enter Google News, you must make your blog Google-friendly. For Google to understand how your website is structured, it needs to crawl and index it. Google also crawls reviews that users leave about your site, both on the site itself and on Google My Business. You must ensure that the URL does not contain strange characters and includes words relevant to the content’s topic, because the slug (the relative part after the URL) helps Google read the page faster.
The more crawl-friendly you make your website, the higher the chance that you will enter Google News. You can also generate an XML sitemap designed for news updates called a News sitemap. The purpose of this sitemap is to notify Google that the content it is crawling is newsworthy and suitable for Google News. If you have the ability to bring additional writers to your site to create innovative content updated daily, it will increase the chance of Google News approving your request and displaying your content in the News section in search results – which will increase traffic to your site and rank you higher in terms of organic SEO.
Summary
Displaying your content on Google News is by no means an easy task. Typically, highly authoritative websites that update daily with new content enter Google News. For example: Ynet, Walla, Maariv, Sport 5, ONE, and others. Positioning yourself in Google News will drive a high volume of traffic to your website in addition to your existing sources, establish you as an authority in the field, and organically boost your pages and posts in Google Search. To successfully reach Google News, you need to publish high-quality, innovative content with a clear message that conveys your story and that of your business to the user.
About the Author
Dvir Naaman, 26 years old, an entrepreneur at heart, loves e-commerce websites and specializes in SEO.
