Google search advocates Daniel Waisberg and Cherry Prommawin recently shared valuable insights in a video about best practices for news websites.
Google aims to help news organizations increase the visibility of their content and generate more traffic.
Here’s what the Search Advocate team advises to get a more substantial presence on the search and news surfaces.
Screenshot from: YouTube.com/GoogleSearchCentral, May 2023.
Where news appears on Google
Waisberg and Prommawin begin the video by explaining how news content can be submitted to Google.
They highlighted two key places where Google News content can appear: the Top Stories and the news tab
The Top Stories carousel, a search feature that displays relevant, high-quality news content, varies in appearance based on the user’s query, device, and location.
The News tab focuses on news-related results, other than Google News itself.
They then delved into four common elements of search results that content creators can influence.
This includes:
Text results Rich results Image results Video results
The pair emphasized the importance of understanding one’s audience in order to decide where to invest efforts, with data analysis being crucial to this process.
SEO Tips for News Websites
In offering SEO tips for news websites, the Search Advocate team emphasized the importance of generating useful and reliable content built for people, not search engines.
Waisberg and Prommawin discussed the importance of EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) factors in prioritizing content.
Prommawin states (emphasis mine):
“experience it shows how much the content creator has the first-hand or life experience needed for the topic…
expertise shows how well the content creator has the necessary knowledge or skills for the topic…
authority shows how well the content creator or website is known as a reference source for the topic…
trust is the most important member of the EEAT. Even if the content creator is very experienced, knowledgeable and authoritative, a financial scam will always be unreliable.”
In terms of technical optimizations, Waisberg and Prommawin advise providing publication dates using structured data to help Google better understand when the article was published or substantially updated.
Finally, they recommend building a website around ongoing news and ensuring the use of relevant images and videos.
Eligibility for Google News
Publishers must meet Google News eligibility criteria to appear in Featured News or the News tab.
These criteria include high levels of EEAT, a consistent history of producing news-related content, and compliance with Google News policies.
Transparency is crucial to these policies, meaning that clear information about the authors, the publication, and the publisher must be provided.
Outbound links, paywalls and more
Waisberg and Prommawin emphasize the need to prevent advertising and other promotional materials from overriding news content and distinguishing paid placement.
Leaving spam, paid, or user-generated content links on an unlabeled site may violate Google’s spam policies.
For content to be searchable, it is crucial that Google can crawl and index content behind paywalls.
Implementing a counter, paywall, or login wall with the right structured data can help Google differentiate paywalled content from obfuscation.
Waisberg and Prommawin concluded by encouraging editors to visit the Google News initiative website to learn more about how to be successful in your search.
source: YouTube
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