How to Get Your Content on Google News Search Results

Google continues to update their suite of products to further improve user experience, and this includes Google News, their news aggregator app.

With the new update, Google News is replacing the former Google News on desktop, Google Play Newsstand on mobile and desktop, and the Google News and Weather app on mobile—which also brings forth new changes to their content guidelines.

If your website content is primarily focused on current events and news, Google News can be an instrumental tool in driving more traffic to your site and consequently boost SEO rankings. Here’s how to do it:

How to get started with Google News

Google News works by pulling information and feeds from publishers and by crawling the web. In Google search engine page results (SERPs), Google News has a dedicated tab where users can find relevant news from their search query, subscribe to specific topics or news publishers, and bookmark and share articles.

There are three ways to get your content on Google News:

1. Setting up Google Publisher Center – You can sign up for the business terms and have your content licensed through Google News Producer. This is not, however, required to be included in Google News, but it does provide a number of benefits for publishers, such as editorial control, monetization opportunities, and placement eligibility.
2. Submitting content to Google News Publisher Center – You can request for your website to be included in News Index through Google News Publishing Center. It must be noted, however, that doing so does not guarantee appearance or ranking on Google News search results.
3. Through normal web crawl – You can still have your content crawled and indexed on Google News without going through the aforementioned steps. Google ranks news content depending on its relevance, accuracy, and transparency, just to name a few.

Best practices for getting your content on Google News Search Results

Content plays an important role in getting your content on Google News search results. Here are a few best practices to take note of:

1. Start with clear, accurate headlines – Be sure to use an <h1> tag to allow web crawlers to accurately identify your web page headlines. For more information, check out Google’s guidelines on news headlines.
2. Present accurate times, dates, and bylines – Show one clear and accurate time and date right after the headline and just before the start of the article text. It’s also important to be transparent of the author of the article by providing a visible byline and contact information.
3. Avoid duplicate content – If you a operate a network of websites that share and republish duplicates of the same content, it’s advised to identify the original article and consider blocking web crawlers from accessing the duplicates or using canonical tags to duplicate content and point users to the original.
4. Use structured data – Structured data can help web crawlers better understand your content. For news content, it’s particularly helpful to use the datePublished and dateModified schema and use the correct time zone designator.
5. Secure your website – Google makes sure that every user is protected online, and recently, they’ve started implementing website security as a major ranking factor. Be sure to obtain an SSL certificate, which you can secure through most of the major web hosting sites (e.g., GoDaddy, BlueHost, etc.). For more information, check out Google’s guidelines on HTTPS implementation.

Following the aforementioned best practices can definitely boost your chances in ranking on the search results of Google News. What’s important, however, is that you publish timely, accurate, and impartial news content that’s relevant to your audiences.

If you want to know more about SEO best practices, or if you’re interested in any of our digital marketing services, give us a call at 888-420-5115, or send us an email to [email protected].

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