When people think of SEO, the name that inevitably comes to mind is Google.
Around three-quarters of the world’s search traffic comes through Google and many people have it as their home page. Getting your site high on Google’s index is important, and every SEO professional claims they are best at improving your Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) score.
But there is an alternative “search engine” with just as much clout as Google and which is probably more widely seen.
Google News is a regularly updated index of top stories from news sites across the Internet. Google News is still Google, but getting your site indexed by it is a much trickier prospect than ordinary search. Nevertheless, if you’re producing “news”-type items on a regular basis, it’s worth a try.
Succeed and you’ll find yourself listed on XML feeds used by some of the planet’s most-visited websites via plugins for popular CMS platforms such as Google News for WordPress, or Google’s own targeted feed APIs.
So how do you get in? Google’s official rules for inclusion are …
- Sites that have news content that is original to the site
- Sites which do not solely promote their own activities
- Sites which are written and maintained by a clear organization, one that has multiple writers and editors
Most candidates fail on that last requirement since many news blogs are one-man (or woman) bands. But if you can turn your blog into a “community of newshounds” there is hope.
Having said all this, a quick trawl through Google News throws up all sorts of sites which seemingly flout these rules.
Once again, the mystery of Google is preserved.
