How Do I Get My Website Approved as a Google News Site?

This article will tell you all the steps to get your website approved as a Google News site. Having your site approved as a Google news site is essential to gaining more traffic. Your site can be creating quality content, but if your site is not approved by Google, then it will be limited to people trying to find it. Therefore, Google News is very important and getting approved should be your first priority. The best part is you don’t need to be a huge news outlet to have your site on Google News. In this article we discuss the importance of Google News, the steps to get approved, and ideas for news stories. 

How do I get my website approved as a Google News site

How Google News Works

Whenever someone Googles something, take “NBA” for example, Google will show games coming up or going on and under that it will show a tab called “top stories.” You can swipe through and see what basketball news there is relating to the NBA. Also, right below the search bar, there’s a specific tab that says “News.” Selecting this tab will show only news articles based on your search.

These articles are usually organized in synchronous order so you can get the latest news. Although your article was the latest posted, it won’t show up unless your site is approved as a Google News site. Once you get approved, your site will have the potential to be ranked higher than others. However, getting approved won’t automatically boost website traffic. You will also need to incorporate SEO strategies.

Why It’s Important to Get Approved as a Google News Site

A Google News site is a website that has been approved by Google as a news source. Google holds 90% of the total search engine shares across the internet. This means that 90% of people use Google to search up whatever they desire. Everyone wants access to news and what’s going on in the world.  Google is the first place people go because of how efficient and easily accessible it is. If you want to improve your Google search ranking, 

Therefore, getting approved will allow people to find your site more often. It also means that Google trusts your site and will recommend it in search results down the line and not just in the news category. There are steps you can take to get your website approved. You can incorporate the techniques which will be discussed in the next section on how to get your site approved as a Google News site.

how to get news for my website

Steps to Getting your Website Approved as a Google News Site

Here are the steps you can take to getting approved as a Google News website:

Optimize Your Website

First, it’s important to optimize your websites for search engines. If you want to improve your Google search ranking, SEO is necessary. SEO optimizes your website for search engines so that your site will rank higher among your competitors. SEO leads to more traffic to your website and overall growth Some examples of SEO services are: Using specific keywords, making the website code more efficient, and building credibility. Using SEO techniques will not only make your website appear more on searches but also establish credibility with Google’s algorithm. So, in your future news articles, there will be a higher chance that your website will appear up top on the search engine results page. 

Publish New Content Daily

To get approved a Google news site, you will need to know some tips for how to write a news article. Your site should be posting articles daily, try to create your own content instead of using other news sources’ content. Content shouldn’t be repetitive as well, try to diversify the things you post and release things that people actually want to read. Posting fresh content daily will show Google that your site deserves to be ranked higher. If you need ideas on what news articles to post, you can go to Google Trends to see what’s trending and what Google will favor at any moment.

Establish Authority

Google likes timely, up-to-date, and reliable news sources. That being said, access to the publisher and authors information must be accessible to show Google that your article is authentic and there’s somebody authentic. If you were to go to any ESPN (one of the most popular sport news sites) articles, you can see the name of the author and their social media along with the publisher’s information.

Google news publisher console

Google News Producer & The Publisher Center

After completing the three basic steps above, next is to actually get on Google News. There are two ways of doing this: through the Google News Producer and The Publisher Center.

Google News Producer

The Google News Producer is a tool that allows you to create a feed of your existing content. You can import content from your site including visual elements like photos and videos and also optimize this content. Items in your feed can be shown on the Google news feed.

Publisher Center

The Publisher Center is a place where you can manage your news sites. You will need to get your website listed with the Google News Publisher Center. Your website will first need to be approved through the Google webmaster tool and after that you can change your URLs, website details, and label sections.

These two applications aren’t necessary to get your website on Google News; however, they are better for smaller businesses who haven’t built their credibility yet. Sites like The New York Times, ESPN, and BBC are regularly shown first when someone searches news about world events or sports.

After your website is on Google News, you will need to create a Google site map.

Google Site Map

Google has something called the “Google Crawler.” This is basically a bot that goes across all your websites and picks out information determining if it’s good or not. It’s essentially just an algorithm. A site map is basically a file with all the web pages you want to upload. where you submit it to Google, and they crawl through it with their algorithm. Google uses the site map to differentiate pages on your website and link pages together. By creating one, it will give you a higher chance of showing up on Google News.

However, you don’t need a sitemap for your website, site maps just help Google go through your site and determine if it’s eligible to appear on Google News. It’s important to note that if your news page isn’t approved, it doesn’t mean it will not appear on Google, it will just not appear in the Google news section. 

After completing these steps, your website will be eligible to be approved as a Google News Site.

how to become a Google news site

Google News Publisher Console Functionalities

We briefly discussed the Google News Publisher Center, but to give you a better understanding, here are its functionalities so you can be fully prepared to get your website approved.

Basic Information

You can add the basic information of the publisher, author, and contact details.

Content

You can add content in the form of feeds, URLs or videos. Sections added under the content tab will allow your articles to show on the Google News app.

Verification

The content ownership must be verified before you can submit it for approval.

Ads

With the Google news publisher center, you can set up ads and monetize your content.

Images

You can add a logo and customize your presence on Google News with the images feature

Review and Publish

Lastly when you are all done, you can review the publication setup, look for issues, and publish the final version to Google News.

How to Get News for Your Website

If you are just starting out and need ideas on what articles to put out on your website, there’s many things you can do. For example, Google Trends can help you come up with news article ideas. Here you can see what’s trending on Google based on people’s searches. By writing articles on what’s trending, you can have a higher chance of Google putting your article in Google News. Especially when you should be posting daily, coming up with ideas may be hard, so Google Trends is a great place to get some ideas.

Another way to get news is to follow well known politicians, celebrities, and athletes. Many people idolize these groups and want to know what’s going on in the news with them. Also staying up to current events is critical, no one likes an outdated news source talking about something that happened months ago. There are several different strategies you can use to think of ideas for news articles

Google news

How to Get Your Website Approved as a Google News Site

In this article, we discussed the steps you can take to get your website approved as a Google News site. It’s first important to understand how Google News works; articles show up in synchronous order with the best rated showing up first. You can use SEO strategies to make your articles rank higher than other news outlets. After optimizing your website, establish authority by making the authors and publishers information public. Then you can go to the Google Publisher Center and plugin your website which will allow Google crawlers to go through it. All the site information can be organized through Google’s sitemap. The Google Publisher Console has many functionalities and can make creating news articles extremely easy. Lastly, if you need any ideas on what news to write about, a great place to start is Google Trends.

We specialize in SEO services and can give you great advice on your website here at SEO Design Chicago. Feel free to reach out to us for a free consultation today!

FAQ: 

  • How does Google News work?
  • What is a Google News site?
  • What are the steps to be approved as Google News site?
  • How do I find news for my website?
  • What is the Google News Publisher Center?

Contact Us Today!


Call Now