Google News: Getting Ranked and Indexed

Google News is great for boosting your site performance in addition to attracting a lot more traffic to your site.   Whenever you add anything newsworthy to your site, you should get it included in Google News. The first thing that you should do is ensure that the following requirements are met before it can be included in Google News.

- All article URL’s need to contain at least 3 digits and must look static.
- It is considered better if the article name is H1/H2-tagged and the name should always be the same as the title page.
- It is recommended to publish your articles at least 3 times every day.

If possible you should have more than one site author and list these authors on a separate page. Each article for a news release should have your company information completed and contact details included and signed by the author. With articles it is very beneficial to include some images and video as this increases the richness of content and quality of your article, especially in post Panda update days.  Once you are happy with what you have and ready to display it to the world, submit your article to the Google News Team for review.

Some other suggestions to keep in mind are the factors of your own site where your article is hosted and how it relates to On-Page SEO and your domain strength. Much like general search ranking, this will influence your news rankings and display. It helps to update and publish article son your site site more than 3 times each day. It is most important to have original, unique article titles and content as Google News filters out any duplicate articles (we should know this by now right?). Being first or amongst the first to publish your news will get you more links and get you noticed by Google News.

Ensure that your articles are at least 300-500 words long.  Articles that are too short tend to be filtered out. If you are reporting on any local news, be sure to include the city and zip code as this could get you noticed in Google Local News. If possible, add images next to your listings.  When using images, ensure they all have captions, of medium size on page with no hyperlinks or link through.  Just display them close the the title of your article and you will be set to explore the world of news publication.

Hope this short article helped, stay tuned for our next update which will be a step by step guide in creating a news worthy article.

SUBMIT YOUR SITE TO GOOGLE NEWS HERE