Google News & How To Make It Work For You

1By: Alex Miranda

What does Google News look for?

2By: Alex Miranda

• Do you discuss current events?

• Is your content timely?

• Do you offer commentary?

• How hot is your topic?

• How relevant is your content to the topic.

• Not aggregated. Must be original content.

• Timing is everything.

What is not included

• How to articles

• Advice Columns

• Job Postings

• *Informational Content – Weather forecast, stock data, obituaries

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What is not included (Exceptions)• Weather – If it is breaking news and written as a news story, it will

then be included. • Obituaries – From time to time an obituary will make it through. If

the obituary is breaking news. It will be included. (It cannot be in the obituary category)

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Best Practices

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Images

• Use JPEGS

• Larger sized images

• Description within the captions

• Have images near title

• Inline and non clickable

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Images

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Images

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Title• 70 characters max

• Make it stand out

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Title• Make sure the title entices click-through. 80% of people read

headline copy only• Think of words users are typing to find you. Help people find what

they are looking for.• Whenever possible, use trending words in the title.

• Don't include a date or time in your article title.

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Title• Use keywords within the title. (Only if possible)• It generates clicks from searchers looking for info.

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Summary Description

• Google automatically grabs first 150 characters for description.

• Make sure it immediately summarizes the story.

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All in One SEO

• Always use it.

• Allows you to customize your title or description.

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Article Body

• At least 250 words.• 1 link per 100 words.

14http://www.ncadvertiser.com/30259/around-town-new-canaan-events-in-late-february-early-march/

Article Body

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http://www.ncadvertiser.com/28185/donate-blood-saturday-at-new-canaan-library/

http://www.ncadvertiser.com/26938/new-canaan-nature-center-plans-winter-fair/

News Specific ErrorsArticle Fragmented - Consist of isolated sentences not grouped together into paragraphs. don't use frequent <br> and <p> tags within your paragraphs.

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News Specific ErrorsArticle Too Short - This applies to most pages that contain news briefs or multimedia content, rather than full news articles.

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News Specific ErrorsNo Sentences Found - page appears not to contain punctuated sequences of contiguous words.

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News Specific ErrorsTitle Disallowed - The title that we extracted from the HTML page suggests that it is not a news article.

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News Specific ErrorsTitle Not Found - We were unable to extract a title for the article from the HTML page.Sometimes even if there is a title, this will happen. If it does. Mark as fixed on Webmaster tools.

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.

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Why Get It?• Great if you are consistently reporting or are an expert on a niche

topic.

• Profile picture lends instant credibility.

• Claim your content.

• Photos are eye grabbing. Higher click-through rates.

• Help readers discover your other content on the web.

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• Google News is piloting the display of author information in news search results to help users to discover great content.

• It is not guaranteed.

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How Do I Know I have It

• Go to: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets• Add your article URL

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How Do I Get it?

• Go to: https://plus.google.com/authorship

• Must have a Google+ account. Add a photo to your profile

• Have an email address on the same domain as your content• Edit the about section on your Google+ profile and the

contributor links

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How Do I Get it?

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Adding To WordPress

• If you’re the publisher, add the code below to your header script (This is the NCAdvertiser Google+ URL. Make sure you use your URL)

<link href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/107552986030593043206/" rel="publisher" />

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Adding To WordPress

• If you’re the author, add your Google+ URL to your contact info in your user profile. (This is my Google+ URL. Make sure you use your URL)

Ex: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+AlexMirandaSEO/

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Share• Do not just publish your news story, share it.

• Use Twitter, Google+ & Facebook

• Use #hashtags to share with a targeted audience.

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Alex MirandaWordPress SEO Gurualex@marknetgroup.com