Google News results ...can it be SEOed?

[1stOTLJK]

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.

[HiveDigitalInc]

Have you tried re-applying for inclusion?

Have you read this - https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40787?hl=en

Cheers,

Jake Bohall

[1stOTLJK]

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.

[davebuts]

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

[1stOTLJK]

Hi David,

Thank you very much for taking the time to respond and for the information. It is very insightful and much appreciated.

[davebuts]

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