How to Add Your Website to Google News and Gain Extra Traffic

Google News is an aggregator of news articles. It collects news from various sources and provides it to users in a convenient format. For users, it is convenient and practical, and for site owners, it is another way to get organic traffic to their site. Of course, you can order SEO site promotion in our agency and leave this and other tasks related to online promotion to professionals. But you also have the opportunity to add your news to the aggregator yourself.

Today we will talk about how to add a site to Google News and discuss the nuances of optimizing articles for this aggregator.

It will be useful!

What is Google News?

The Google News news aggregator allows users to conveniently and quickly find news from various sources on a topic that is relevant to them.

The aggregator has several sections:

• Ukraine (or another country, depending on the settings);
• In the world;
• Local news;
• Business;
• Science and technology;
• Entertainment;
• Sports.

There is also a selection «For you», based on your favorites.

What are the benefits of adding a site to Google News?

News selections in Google News are dynamic and contain the most relevant articles. Thus, the reader is always up to date with the latest events, while receiving information from trusted sources, because not every article can get into Google News. The aggregator has a huge audience and a high level of user trust, and the articles receive a lot of clicks and organic traffic.

This is a great opportunity for your site to make itself known, gather a large audience, and increase authority.

Let's see what you need to do to add a site to Google's news feed.

News requirements for display in Google News

Articles are added to Google News automatically. Moreover, the aggregator does not look for resources, and then articles on them, but news according to the topic chosen by the reader, on various platforms.

To get into Google News, you should follow some rules:

1. Do not steal content - write only unique news articles.
2. Trust the writing to proven authors. It is good if your authors already have authority on the Internet, for example, they have written for large media outlets. News from the name of such an author on your site, getting into Google News, will increase the authority of your resource.
3. Write news, not blog articles. The topic should be relevant, «hot», and not evergreen - such material simply does not get into the Google News sections.
4. Publish fresh news regularly - at least two news articles a day.

In other words, new, relevant news written by authoritative authors is your guarantee of getting into Google News. However, not every content can get into this aggregator.

What content is not allowed

What you can't share on Google News:

• Confidential information, such as your patients' personal information or your client's financial information;
• Content that infringes someone else's copyright;
• Content that is sexually explicit;
• Content that is illegal, including promoting violence against a group of people based on ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, or religion;
• Graphic and other content that depicts and/or promotes violence;
• Spam;
• Sponsored content;
• Content with spelling errors, manipulation of substitution characters.

Practical recommendations for optimizing news for Google News

The two most important conditions that you must always adhere to if you really want to add a site to news aggregates are quality and relevance. But if these are obvious parameters, there are a number of requirements that are not on the surface but are still important:

• the volume of your news should be at least 2 thousand characters without spaces;
• no «water», write useful articles;
• if after publishing the news you received some additional information, do not create a new page, but supplement the existing one and update the title (while preserving the URL of the publication!);
• the date of publication is a mandatory attribute for articles in Google News, make sure that it is in the snippet of each of your news;
• add micro markup. It helps the search engine better understand what is on the page and is a fragment of HTML code that needs to be inserted into the page. Use Google's markup wizard or micromarkup generator to generate the correct code. For news articles, use micro markup like News;
• add an author. Google loves it when articles have an author, and news articles are no exception. If you have great journalists or experts on your staff, their authority will bring even more benefits to your site. Create separate pages for each author and assign news articles to them.

To make it easier for you, here is a short instruction that will help you add a site to Google News.

How to add a site to Google News?

1. Log in to your Google account and go to the News Tool section.
2. There are two options (if you use Google Webmaster Tools):
   • a list of your sites will appear in front of you, click «Send a request to be added to the Google News index» next to the desired site;
   • there is no list of sites (or the desired site is not in the list), you can add it manually by clicking on the link next to »Send a request to be added to the Google News index», filling out a special form and sending it for consideration.
3. If you are not yet using Google Webmaster Tools, you will need to verify your site using the most convenient method (using a tag, HTML file, etc.). After verification, you can submit an application to be added to Google News.

Applications can be reviewed up to 3 weeks.

A separate sitemap will help increase the chances of your news being displayed in the Google News block. What are its features:

• it must contain URLs of articles published in the last two days, links to articles published earlier can be removed;
• the sitemap for Google News must be updated as new articles are added;
• this sitemap can contain no more than 1000 URLs, if you need to add more links - create more files.

For more information about the special sitemap for Google News, read here.

How to track statistics?

You already know how news is added to Google. But how do you understand whether there is any benefit from placing your articles in this section?

You can track all conversion statistics using Google Search Console in the special Google News section.

With this tool, you can find out the number of impressions and clicks on your news. Here you will also see what positions your articles occupy in the aggregator.

Conclusions

Google News can be an additional source of traffic, and in some cases, conversions, to your website. However, to definitely get into the aggregator, you should make some efforts. IDEA Digital Agency recommends using this method in addition to search engine optimization to get even more benefits.

FAQ

1. What are the minimum requirements for a news article? Unique content, a clear news topic, a length of ~2000 characters without spaces, publication date, author, no spam or rule violations.

2. Can I update a news article that has already been published? Yes, and it is recommended. If new information appears, supplement the existing article by updating the title but keeping the URL.

3. Why is micro-markup needed for Google News? It helps the search bot understand that the page is news: where the title, date, author, and main content are. This reduces the risk of the material being ignored.

4. Is it necessary to create a separate sitemap for Google News? Not necessary, but desirable. A news sitemap increases the speed of indexing and increases the chances of articles appearing in the news feed.

5. How to track the effectiveness of Google News? Through Google Search Console — in the Google News section, you can see impressions, clicks, CTR, and the positions of news materials.