Google News results ...can it be SEOed?
-
Hello Everyone.
I simply wanted to know if anyone had some useful insight on what it takes for a legitimate website to appear within the Google News results.
I have rarely, or ever, had to dabble in this kind of SEO, but after coming across a situation with a perfectly legitimate website, I'm now scratching my head.
The site in question is a very well established website, with 0 "seo" done to it. All links organic, all traffic legit and they have VERY strong social media presence. The site's current DA is 50. Its a 3 letter domain.
Some of the points I believe are important
- quantity and quality of content (% of aggregated vs actually original content)
- overall % of "news" content vs rest of the site content
- authors/writers credentials (how would Google evaluate the authority of a writer, so his/her content is newsworthy?)
- overall site authority
- rich snippet and code needed to be indexed? I think rel publisher or rel author tags have something to do with it?
- making sure to have basic SEO in place: canonical tag, unique headers, etc.
What am I missing?
They have one particular competitor that seem to be ranking for almost everything news related, while being a similar site in content and authority, however they are nowhere. They have submitted to Google News before (not even sure what that means) but have failed to be included -- does this put a "stain" on them for any reason or impede the possibility of being indexed in the Google News results in the future?
ANY input is appreciated.
-
PM replied
Just to keep others in the loop (without giving away too much information), it appears that newsworthy and non-newsworthy articles on the site are not currently separated in any way.
For example, sitename.com/articles contains a mix of blog and news articles, which will prevent it from being accepted in Google News because Google News wants only newsworthy content.
I suggested coming up with a way to separate these news articles from the /articles page and only submit that URL to Google News - eg. sitename.com/news
All articles (news and blog articles) could still appear on the /articles page, but the news articles need to be isolated, somehow.
It's a great site and I don't think there will be any issues being accepted in Google News once the news articles can be separated from the non-newsworthy articles.
All the best with it and I'd love to hear how you go!
Cheers,
David
-
Hi David,
Thank you very much for taking the time to respond and for the information. It is very insightful and much appreciated.
-
Hi 1stOTLJK,
I own a site that's in Google News and have worked on getting more dozens of client's sites into Google News.
While it's not mentioned in Google's News guidelines anymore, I believe that you still need to have at least 3 regular authors publishing news content on the site. How many writers does the site currently have?
You also need to make sure that the content you are submitting to G News is actually newsworthy. If the site posts basic blog content like "10 tips to improve X" or "10 best X for you", this needs to separated from what you are submitting to G News.
If you have to, create a 'News' category on the site and only add newsworthy articles to this category. Then, when submitting to G News, only submit this category.
Eg. submit yoursite.com/news/ instead of yoursite.com
And don't worry about being knocked back with your submission attempts - it won't leave a "stain" on the site that will prevent you from being successful with a future submission.
If you can PM me the site, I'd be happy to take a quick look at it and provide you with some more specific tips.
Cheers,
David
-
yes
Having "journalistic standards" and "authority" is vague and doesn't at all help in understanding WHAT about the site needs to be improved/changed, etc.
The site in question seems to have all the criteria to be in the news...but it's not. Looking at competition, which have very sites almost identical, they are in the news. The only diff between them and us is the site has more articles....doesnt necessarily mean they are more newsworthy.
-
Have you tried re-applying for inclusion?
Have you read this - https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40787?hl=en
Cheers,
Jake Bohall
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
URL Parameter for Limiting Results
We have a category page that lists products. We have parameters and the default value is to limit the page to display 9 products. If the user wishes, they can view 15 products or 30 products on the same page. The parameter is ?limit=9 or ?limit=15 and so on. Google is recognizing this as duplicate meta tags and meta descriptions via HTML Suggestions. I have a couple questions. 1. What should be my goal? Is my goal to have Google crawl the page with 9 items or crawl the page with all items in the category? In Search Console, the first part of setting up a URL parameter says "Does this parameter change page content seen by the user?". In my opinion, I think the answer is Yes. Then, when I select how the parameter affects page content, I assume I'd choose Narrows because it's either narrowing or expanding the number of items displayed on the page. 2. When setting up my URL Parameters in Search Console, do I want to select Every URL or just let Googlebot decide? I'm torn because when I read about Every URL, it says this setting could result in Googlebot unnecessarily crawling duplicate content on your site (it's already doing that). When reading further, I begin to second guess the Narrowing option. Now I'm at a loss on what to do. Any advice or suggestions will be helpful! Thanks.
SERP Trends | | dkeipper0 -
Ways to fetch search analytics - historical search query data from Google Search Console
Is there any way to fetch all historical search query data from Google Search Console ? Google allows us to view only 90 days report at the maximum. Does integrating google search console with google analytics tool solve this problem ?
SERP Trends | | NortonSupportSEO0 -
Avvo.com: Are links in the contribution area bad for SEO?
Hello all and thank you for taking the time to read my question. I am struggling with a client of mine. I have done just about everything that I can think of that has worked on other sites. Banging my head up against the wall here. He is VERY active in the contribution area of Avvo.com (answering questions and making guides). His site use to rank very well but now it can't be found at all. One of the things that caught my attention is the way he would leave his citation in his answers for AVVO. He would leave a direct link to his website. Since his rankings have dropped I have advised him to stop. Do you think Google is treating them as spam? His link profile is small >1000 links but half of them are from AVVO I was wondering if anyone else any experience with this? Thanks in advance
SERP Trends | | mgordon0 -
Which is the best and quick way to remove URL(s) from Google,Bing search engines?
"Remove URL", "Set Expiry in meta tag", "no index no follow " or some thing else.
SERP Trends | | ankit.rahevar0 -
External URLs - ones you can't reach out
My fellow Mozzers, I have been reviewing our Google Webmaster error reports and noticed high url errors. These URLs are generated from international sites, mainly China. Upon further inspection, these look to be links to dynamic URLs that are no longer active on our site. (search pages) China is linking to old URLs that simply spew out a 'Bad Request' pages now. Problems I face is that: I can't contact these chinese sites to remove/edit the URLs. I could work with my developers to identify the urls and direct them all to the homepage, but is that good. The URLs are still present. Some of these look like pages that haven't been updated in a while, so now I have links from sites that are archived, or "dead" Have you tackled anything like this before? Thoughts are welcome Thanks
SERP Trends | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Using the same Google Analytics account for two sites
I have a friend who is concerned that his competition is trying something funny to show high traffic. The competition has two sites using the same GA tracking code. What impact would this have on his actual traffic. One site has high traffic 7500 daily the other site has 150 daily but gaining momentum
SERP Trends | | polarking0 -
Can I submit multiple data feed to Google Merchant Center?
I have submitted my product feed to Google Merchant Center. There are 7K+ products in one product feed. (data_feed.txt) I am not satisfy with my products' performance on Google shopping. Because, I am not able to maintain data quality for all products as well as not able to focus on high selling categories. Can I submit multiple product feed with separation of categories as follow. category001_data_feed.txt (With 200 High selling products) category002_data_feed.txt (With 100 offers products)
SERP Trends | | CommercePundit0 -
Google Places - Overcoming a geographical disadvantage
We have done some work on the Google Place entry for this website: http://www.royalhoteliow.co.uk/ We have spent a lot of time ensuring we have consistent address information, to make sure we have a good number of citations, and have worked with the staff at the hotel to ensure that there is a regular stream of reviews coming into a variety of websites that we know are used by Google. However.... Our target searches are 'Isle of Wight Hotels' and 'Isle of Wight Hotel'. If you do a Google map search for 'Isle of Wight', it drops a pin in the middle of the Island, which is 30 miles by 20! The main areas for hotels on the Isle of Wight (dictated by tourism), are about 15 miles from where Google percieves the Isle of Wight is, in the coastal towns. So it seems that no matter how hard we try, in terms of citations and reviews, GP is always going to prioritise those close to the middle of the area. Anyone got experience of a similar issue, or got any suggestions?
SERP Trends | | MatrixCreate430