When you start a blog, whether for personal expression or for business, you share the same goal as other bloggers, you naturally want your blog to be read by thousands of people every day. While there are many ways to achieve this, with social media, bookmarking and blog directories, many people often neglect one of the most effective ways to have your content read and used as reference in other posts – Google News.
Of course, like ranking high in search results or being included in anything Google related, this isn’t something that is extremely easy to do, but with a little bit of effort, you will be able to increase your readership and your backlinks as well since your credibility also increases as a blog included in Google news. The backlink aspect comes in as you will likely be referenced on the subject since your blog will be highly visible.
So this all sounds great right? Be prepared for a lot of hard work to come, but if you can get included in Google News, it will be well worth the effort.
1. You Must Have High Quality Content
One of the most important aspects of getting your blog accepted into Google news is having quality material. Content that is full of a variety of errors and has a low level of writing will not be accepted into Google’s news system. It should be written in more of a news voice than the typical “anything goes” blogger voice. While some may argue this takes away from the whole point of a blog, you can still keep other sections of your blog available for opinion and other related content. You can point to crawler and one section of your blog which you can reserve for the type of content which is most likely to be included.
2. You Have to Post on A Regular Basis
In addition to quality material it is pertinent that you post on a regular basis and maintain an updated blog and website. You need to have multiple authors and must post new articles each day. The articles need to be at least 300-500 words (closer to 500 is most desirable) in length and of high quality writing. It is important always to include images and include video whenever possible. Remember all content needs to be 100% unique. Google penalizes duplicate content so posting the same content to more than one site or using spun copy can undermine your efforts.
3. Make Your Blog Crawler Friendly
Google web crawlers automatically check the web for items to be included. It is important to take the time to be sure your URL’s and website is web crawler friendly. Make sure your URL’s have no odd characters and the URL ends in three digits. Also the URL title should include the article title. The URL’s play a huge role in Google excepting your website or blog. You will also need to include a specific Google News sitemap on your blog. If you are using WordPress, you may have luck with the plug-in. For other platforms you may need to speak with your web designer or IT team about getting this included. It must be done to exact requirements of Google News in order for the spider to begin crawling it. With this said, it may take some time before you see results but you can check and see if the crawler has been to your site with Google analytics.
4. Have Contributing Writers – Can’t be Just One Author
The look of your website or blog is also very important when Google is deciding who to except. You must look very professional and must appear the website is run by an organization rather than an individual. It is important that you do not use a blog platform to host the site, instead choose a CMS platform. If you do use a blog platform, you will need to host it on your site rather than on the individual platform in order to be included. Also be sure that there is an “about us” and “contact us” page so that the crawler can see author bios and identify that this is not just a site run by one person. Many believe there should be at least 3 different writers listed. This is when guest posting can also come in handy since this allows more and more writers to contribute therefore boosting your sites legitimacy.
5. Make Sure Your Blog Has History
Make sure you have over 100 articles posted before you submit the site to Google. They want you to be established and have a history before considering your addition into their system. Google News will bring you a large increase in visitors to your blog. The increased traffic will give your blog much extra exposure, which can generate advertising revenue and various professional opportunities.
It is important to keep your blog SEO optimized with conversion optimization in mind. Take advantage of as many opportunities as you can to get your blog out there with new content. While it does take some persistence and quality work to get listed in Google news, it is possible. Once you do it will be worth the trouble getting listed. Your increase of traffic and exposure will get you the readers you have been looking for.
Elizabeth Murphy is a contributing writer for Invesp, a company which helps clients optimize their sites and helps them create a landing page design that will help turn potential customers into buyers.
I am not sure if this will really work…Anyway, I am going to try this to make sure it will really work for me…
Thanks for making us aware of this news. It has helped a lot. Thanks for the updates…
You are welcome and thanks for stopping by.
Thanks for the tips. These should turn out to be extremely helpful. Are there any topics Google picks up on quicker than others for news?
I know these tips can be helpful and I will definitely try them…I am confident that this will work…
It is important to be listed in google news and I hope these tips can help…
Hi Andy,
Really once you get listed in google news, you see traffic coming to your site naturally. Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
Indeed i recently post a comment on Google PR Update and what i am sure about the Google Update PR Fact was Posting High Quality Content into my blog and posting regularly that was my actual secret to get the PR 2 from PR 0 what you need to do is constantly posting good articles related to the product that you have placed on your website or those services and if you are blogging so blog in a way that it can become possible for readers to understand it easily what help me most to be visible on search engines was regularly posting good articles on my website and unique too Simple =)
Google has introduced website performance to be a factor while ranking page rank which is one more important factor. Update unique content frequently and Create Good internal linking structure to your website, this will help in increasing PR
These Are Really Great Tips!!!
Hi…I am not aware of this post even before and I am really thankful I have found this site…I am glad to see these tips here…
Make Your Blog Crawler Friendly
I’m still considered a “noob” when it comes to knowledge of websites, I use a wordpress blog for mine. Do you know of any plug-ins which make your blog crawler friendly or is that automaticly done by the wordpress theme?
Getting on google for anything is not that easy but as you had mentioned in the blog post i would love to try these 5 tips that you mentioned above!
Truly speaking it can be very difficult in some particular niches. Thanks for your comment David.
I am happy to get the tips from this blog. I hope these tips will helpful for bthe listing in google news. Thanks!!!!!!
I hope you follow the steps correctly and get great success.
yeah getting on top for some niches some time is really tough no matter how competative they are but niche depends!
That’s absolutely right David. Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
Hi…I can consider myself as a newbie in this kind of topic because I am not aware of this even before..Now, I think, I can have my blog listed in Google news through this 5 tips…I hope it will work for me…
This is great news. After reading the title I was wondering what all this was about but now I understand. All the tips you have given are good if put into use. This also requires hard work so any person aiming for Google news should be ready to work hard.
I always wondered about getting into Google news but figured it’d be too hard, thanks for the helpful post
Thanks for sharing these steps. These are very helpful information but I think it needs hard work and patience to do it. Having multiple writers means taking time to invite them.
Thank you, this is very helpful. Does this help get your articles listed with Google alerts too?
Hi John,
I am sorry, thats something that I am not pretty much aware of. Thanks for your comments.
Best,
Prasenjit.
having high quality content and user generated articles are on of the most important factors that play their role in Google news induction.
I believe Google will make it a bit tough in coming years.