Adam Sherk

  • About
  • SEO
  • Social Media
  • PR
  • Publishing

Take Advantage of Additional Google News Opportunities for Publishers

June 4, 2014 by Adam Sherk

Google News logoGoogle News continues to be an important source of traffic for publishers, in particular from the news OneBoxes that are frequently included in regular Web search results.

While most news search optimization efforts rightly focus on editorial best practices and avoiding Google News errors, there are some additional opportunities that are worth taking advantage of.

If you aren’t utilizing each of these I recommended adding them to the mix.

1) News_keywords tag – Use the news_keywords tag to provide up to 10 defining phrases for each article. While not as impactful as key news search optimization tactics, the tag offers another way to establish the topical relevancy of your content. As I covered in Google News news_keywords Meta Tag: More Cons than Pros? the key is to treat it as a supplement and not a replacement for fundamental editorial SEO.

2) Standout tag – With the standout tag you can highlight up to seven articles per week, which offers a way to give an extra boost to priority content. This can result in articles being given the “Featured” label within the news search results. I did a 90-day study of standout tag usage last year and found that “Featured” articles do appear in Google News multiple times nearly every day.

Featured article with Google News standout tag

3) Editors’ Picks – Creating an Editors’ Picks RSS feed allows you to provide five links to priority content that will potentially be featured in a special module within Google News:

Google News Editors' Picks

There are some specific guidelines to follow for the RSS feed. You can create separate feeds for the Google News homepage as well as specific sections (like Business or Technology) if you have applicable content.

4) Add images to Google News sitemap – Make sure you are including image-specific tags in your Google News sitemap. This will increase the likelihood of your article images being pulled into clusters and other locations in the news search results. There are some general guidelines for images that you should adhere to as well.

Google News image results

5) Google+ and Google Authorship – Google News will sometimes feature Google+ posts from brand pages and individuals among the regular news search results. In addition, through Google Authorship authors on Google+ can get a thumbnail image in the results, similar to Web search.

Google News - Google+ and Authorship

This is another reason that active participation in Google+, at least to some degree, is still worthwhile.

On a related note, if you embed Google+ posts in articles it is important to include enough additional editorial text to meet the 80 word minimum for indexation.

6) YouTube videos – Video content from YouTube is also featured within Google News. Videos embedded in articles can be crawled but setting up a YouTube channel and notifying Google News increases the likelihood of your videos being pulled in.

Google News YouTube videos

7) Spotlight – the Spotlight section and the module on the home and channel pages is algorithmically generated, but if you regularly publish longer-form articles and opinion pieces you have a chance of being pulled in.

Google News Spotlight section

Recommended Tool: Yoast News SEO 2.0

Yoast recently came out with an updated version of their News SEO plugin for WordPress. In addition to creating Google News sitemaps (including the image-specific tags), it supports the news_keywords tag and standout tag and it can create an Editors’ Picks RSS feed. Plus it has a number of other features that are specific to Google News.

So if you do not have the time or resources to develop some of these things in-house, the News SEO plugin is a great option.

Related posts:

  1. Does Google News Sitemaps New Format Help Publishers?
  2. Success with the Google News Standout Tag: A 90-Day Study
  3. Do Google’s Expanded Domain Results Apply to News and Video Listings?
  4. How Much Google News Traffic Do Publishers Get? Here’s Data on 80 News Sites.
  5. Do People Search for “Breaking News”?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Please confirm you are a real person: * Time limit is exhausted. Please reload CAPTCHA.

Subscribe and Connect


Follow @adamsherk

About Adam Sherk

Adam Sherk is an SEO and PR consultant helping publishers with digital strategy and audience development, including enterprise SEO, public relations and social media marketing.

Adam is VP SEO and Digital Strategy for Define Media Group.

Recent Posts

  • 8 Critical SEO and Digital Marketing Opportunities for Publishers
  • How Much Google News Traffic Do Publishers Get? Here’s Data on 80 News Sites.
  • 10 Things That Expose Good Sites to Google Panda
  • Mobile Visits Account for 40% of All Traffic for Publishers
  • The Best Tools for Keyword Research, Competitive Analysis and Trending Topics

Categories

  • Public Relations
  • Publishing
  • SEO
  • Social Media

Popular Posts

  • The Most Overused Buzzwords and Marketing Speak in Press Releases
  • 5 Ways that Social Media Impacts SEO
  • Media Relations Gone Wrong: How Not to Pitch a Journalist (Video)
  • The Most Common Google News Errors and How to Avoid Them
  • SEO Guidelines for Sponsored Content and Partner Links
  • 8 Social Media Questions Publishers Should Be Asking Themselves
  • Top Link Building Tactics for Publishers
  • The Best Free (or Cheap) Tools for Blogger and Influencer Outreach
  • A Simple Workflow for Keyword Research for Content Planning
  • Beyond Facebook Insights: Useful Facebook Analytics Tools
  • The Best Free Tools for Twitter Analytics
  • Editorial SEO Tactics for the Newsroom
  • SEO Metrics for Publishers: How are You Tracking and Measuring Success?
  • Free Tools for Monitoring Hot Search Trends
  • Google News Optimization Tips

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed on this blog are Adam Sherk's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of his company or its clients.

Sitemap | RSS | © 2009-present AdamSherk.com