Google News, the news-focussed section of most people’s favourite search engine, updates its pages every 15 minutes, drawing in news from thousands of pre-selected news sources. Stories are carried for at least 30 days, gradually pushed back in the queue until their time is up. That adds up to millions of stories, each one of them significant competition if you want your business to appear on the Google News pages.

Sites have been courting Google News over the last several years because of the amazing coverage it provides. Google News reaches more people than any other individual news source in the world. The fact that articles are selected by an algorithm makes the site even more attractive, as you don’t have to spend time courting stressed-out journalists and editors. This algorithm also makes things more difficult, which is why SEO experts have spent considerable time figuring out how to optimise for Google News.

There are a lot of similarities between preparing a piece of SEO content to lure Google News and preparing content to lure Google. There are two factors that are radically different. Google News only sources from selected sites and Google News only selects genuine news articles. Knowing how to satisfy these two requirements is essential if you’re planning on using Google News as part of your off-page search engine optimisation.

• Choose a high quality source. The sites from which articles are sourced for Google News are assessed for their quality and reliability. Google doesn’t just pick up news on the run. News sites have to already be on the list of approved sources before their articles will even be considered. A quick look at Google News will give you some ideas of whom to approach, and there are some handy lists posted around the net as well. Once you select the news sources you want to target, you need to get them to feature your article. This will be a familiar process to anyone attempting to court inbound links

• Create high quality content. Your content has to compete with the standard content coming in from news sources all over the world. This means that your computer technology press release is competing with the technology news from prestigious publications like The Times, which is written by established journalists. Competition is tough when trying to get your article onto the news source in the first place and it can help to get your SEO consultant involved in the writing stages

Some known factors for attracting Google News attention include timely content and using a range of sources. Google scans articles for the number of people, places and things mentioned.

A smart business knows when to compete. If your business has nothing newsworthy to report, approaching Google News may not be for you. You can discuss this and other off-page options with our consultants at SEO Consult. If, however, you can find the right angle, the potential returns of a Google News campaign might make your hard work well worth it.

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