Google, being the all round Internet giant that it is, has cornered the market on all things search. It has not done this by trying to run before it could walk or offering people incentives to search (like Microsoft’s Live search did recently). No, Google has become the giant that it is today by giving people the most relevant results to their query. Basically, when you perform a search on Google, for whatever you might be looking for, you’ll find what you need.
Google works where other search engines don’t.
One of Google’s most popular, and effective, offerings is Google News. Google News is a service that gathers together the best content updated throughout the day from a preselected list of websites. These website are all chosen, or approved, by Google for their quality, impartiality and accuracy with regards to offering news. Websites such as the Times Online and the Independent are joined by specific niche sites on divorce news and celebrity news, amongst others. If it’s a topic you want news for, you’ll find it in Google News.
When a site is listed in Google News it will benefit from more traffic, obviously, because every time the website posts a story the article is spidered and indexed by Google News very quickly, sometimes within a few minutes. This means you could post an article and be receiving Google traffic for its subject in minutes!
Google News publishers also benefit from increased links. There are millions of websites that use Google News for their content, subscribing to various searches to pull headlines through to their site. This means your article, when indexed and picked up, could provide you with a huge amount of Inbound Links (IBLs) instantly.
Also, other sites use Google News to subscribe to for their writers and editors to find news to write about. Therefore you’ll find your article rewritten, quoted and referenced a multitude of times. Of course, this also means IBLs for you!
So how do you get into Google News? That’s the tricky part. Google offer advice on the technical requirements, which we’ll cover another time, and they offer advice on the content requirements, which we’ll speak about now.
Firstly, to be considered for Google News your content can’t be solely about your company and your products. You must have news related to your industry, news that does not contain a sales pitch for your business and is up to date.
Secondly, you must have more than one person writing on your website. Google News requires that your authors are varied, and that they are all experts in their field. Using just the one author and writing all of the content yourself won’t work.
Thirdly, your website needs to represent an organisation, business or a club. It can’t be a personal website with your own thoughts and ramblings. Your own blog for example wouldn’t get accepted for Google News.
Finally, and this true of any content publishing on the Internet, your website must contain unique content. If you’re copying content from other websites don’t even consider applying for Google News.
If getting into Google News is something you’d like to do, you need to make sure your content complies with the standards set by Google News.
Does it?
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