Publishing content on the web is all about getting noticed, which is a challenging task in itself. News websites responsible for releasing a large amount of information every day are continually competing for first place in search engine results.
Before we begin, we will walk you through what exactly is a news website and the benefits of getting into Google News search results.
Table Of Content
Introduction
- What is a News Website?
- Benefits of getting into Google News search results
Steps To Do SEO For a News Website
- Post high-quality Content
- Use Structured Data( NewsArticle)
- Make Sure Your Content Shows up in Google News
- Improve the Content Architecture
- Optimize the Website for Mobile Devices
- Optimize for Crawl Speed
- Check news performance in Google Search Console
Conclusion
What is a News Website?
Are you thinking of starting a news website? Even if you’re not planning to be the next New York Times, there’s plenty of space for creating your news site for your favorite topic, local area, or anything else.
A news website is a website where you can publish news about any topic of your choice. Nothing stops you from going viral or being a top publisher in your business with your news website.
Benefits of Getting into Google News Search Results
While your website may provide outstanding material, your audience will not visit your site if your articles do not appear in Google News. Google News SEO can be a game-changer for news sites. Google News has various benefits, including the potential for driving website traffic.
Here’s how Google News looks like:
1. Leverages Brand Value
As Google enforces strict standards, Google News shows that your brand is trustworthy and authoritative. Websites approved into Google News must post original content, and the number of adverts and sponsored content on the site must not exceed the news content. Google is one of the most trusted news search engines, and regularly publishing news on your website will help you establish your brand.
2. Increases Website Traffic
News published on Google News-approved websites are quickly indexed, resulting in increased traffic to your website. Google will display your news in the right place in Google News search based on the quality of your information and your website’s brand value, and you will begin receiving immediate traffic to your website. Take, for example, any potential visitor looking for specific service types in a phrase or keyword into Google News; they shall get the exact results as per their specification.
Original and well-researched news content has a high chance of generating a lot of traffic.
3. Fast Indexing of Website
The Google News crawler is a unique crawler that indexes news in real-time. Within minutes of publishing your story on a Google News-approved website, it is crawled and indexed. Once indexed, you’ll start attracting traffic right away. You can also use Rank Math’s easy-to-use news sitemaps feature to get your news website indexed lightning-fast and drive more traffic.
You can enable the News Sitemap module by navigating to Rank Math > Dashboard > News Sitemap from the WordPress menu. Once you see the News Sitemap option, please enable it.
4. Increased User Engagement
Because Google News feeds are customizable, if you consistently publish great content to your site and establish a unique brand, you may also see that users are more likely to engage with your content. Users who interact with your content and opt to see “more stories like this” will be served additional content from your website in the future.
5. Increases Authenticity Status of Your Website
Suppose your website is present in Google News, the authenticity or the authority of the site increases. This further increases the ranking of your website, and you’ll receive more organic and news traffic to your website. Over time you will see growth in search engine results pages (SERP) ranking for your website content. So, this is a win-win situation for your brand.
Steps To Do SEO For a News Website
Post-High-Quality Content
Your fundamental motive as a news site is to write about current events.
However, 90% of the time, when you write on relevant topics, your articles will undoubtedly have a short lifespan. You will witness a rise in traffic to your content at first, but that article will receive fewer and fewer visitors as time passes. That’s the nature of news! To consistently drive a good amount of relevant traffic to your website, you must do your best to pump out more news.
You must follow the rules if you want your news items to appear in Google News. Not only that, but you’re one of the hundreds of competing publications, so you’ll have to work hard to get your content to reach the top stories.
The easiest way to improve search visibility is to have an arsenal of tactics at your disposal for creating a top-ranking page. Find out what distinguishes you from others: what is your voice? What can you do to make that stronger? Why are you the most qualified and trustworthy person to disseminate such information?
Use Structured Data
Structured data is essential in this day and age. The search engines can clearly understand what your page or content is about with the help of structured data. The same goes for news content too.
For the news content, you should at least use the Article structured data to describe your articles. Rank Math supports News Schema, and you can choose your article to be a news article for the factual news content.
Make Sure Your Content Shows up in Google News
You need to ensure that your content appears in Google News. You need to follow Google guidelines to ensure that your site’s content is up to Google’s standards. Most reputable news sources already follow these guidelines.
Next, check the technical guidelines to ensure Google can crawl your site and help to determine which web pages are articles. You can then submit your site to Google for approval once everything looks good.
Improve the Content Architecture
One of the most crucial SEO areas to keep an eye on is architecture, which directly impacts how Google and other search engines view, understand and rank your sites. Content architecture is especially crucial for news organizations because:
- The website is likely to provide new content on a daily/weekly basis.
- The content added is likely to be highly time-sensitive.
- Newly added content is more likely to drive massive traffic from search results.
You can organize your content with the help of categories and tags so that it’s easier for the readers to find what they’re looking for on your site. You can create different tags and categories that describe your content in the best way.
Another way to improve your site’s structure is by adding pagination. Pagination has a real impact on your architecture and link authority distribution. With the help of pagination, users will need fewer clicks to reach specific content without wading through other irrelevant pages first.
Optimize the Website for Mobile Devices
Mobile usability is essential for any given website, but it’s more important to a news site. Most readers consume the news on their mobile devices, so you need to make sure you have your mobile site in order.
You can use the AMP plugin, which helps provide AMP experiences for your users on mobile and desktop devices. If you’re using the Rank Math plugin, you can enable the AMP module by navigating to the Rank Math > Dashboard > Modules section.
Optimize for Crawl Speed
When it comes to breaking news, you want Google to crawl and index your content as soon as possible. People aren’t going to wait for a slow site to load, especially when so many other news sources are available.
Various factors can help with crawl speed, such as the site’s speed, hosting performance, XML Sitemaps, etc. Note that a news sitemap isn’t like your regular XML sitemap. Note that a news sitemap isn’t like your normal XML sitemap. Google has some important guidelines for the news sitemaps.
However, with Rank Math, you don’t have to worry about following the guidelines, as Rank Math takes care of that while you focus on publishing the content. You’ll be able to access the news sitemap global options inside Rank Math. You’ll find them under Rank Math > Sitemap Settings > News Sitemap.
The crawl speed can also improve if you post new content consistently on your website. If Googlebot finds new content on your website with each crawl, it’ll often come to your website. However, always keep in mind that quantity does not always equal quality. Ensure that your content is valuable. If you serve excessive, unneeded content to that Googlebot, it’ll waste the crawl budget on less valuable pages.
Check News Performance in Google Search Console
Once you’re up and running, it’s time to keep a watch on the Google Search Console.
Google launched the news performance report to assist publishers in gaining critical information into how people find and interact with their news content.
You’ll find metrics like impressions, clicks, and click-through rate in the performance report. You can also see how frequently items appeared in Google News, which ones did well, and any variances in usage worldwide, among other things.
Conclusion
News websites function slightly in a different manner as compared to regular websites. There are many things to consider when you’re running a news website and want to use, for instance, Google News to the fullest. In this article, we’ve scratched the surface for you to perform SEO for your news website. If you keep these guidelines in mind, you’ll be on your way to having a better-optimized news site and enjoy more traffic and readers on your site.
However, with the advent of new technologies, you need to change the techniques or methods that make your website available everywhere and make your news sites blazing fast.
If you follow any other practices, please share them in the comments section.
