Requirements to include contents on Google News
It is true that the new IP law that was passed in Spain in 2014 has downgraded Google News a lot, but it still works.
Being present on this service is especially important to improve the traffic of blogs or mass media, especially those that are not behemoths.
In Google News, users normally search for news around a given topic, focusing less on which medium is providing the information. An attractive header of a little-known website can attract as many clicks as any big communication medium.
If you want your contents to be taken into account by this tool, there are some minimum requirements you have to meet.
Hello information. Goodbye marketing
The service aims at offering information to users, not advertorials nor content that clearly focus towards content marketing. If your goal is to sell sponsored articles on your website, Google News is not for you. You may become excluded.
Plagiarism is not nice
Plagiarism is not nice and can lead to bans, both for ranking and on Google News. If you get caught, consequences can be terrible…
Spend some time creating your own original contents or work on something else. The worst idea is plagiarizing other texts.
Optimizing is better
Optimizing is crucial for ranking, and also for Google News. Loading speed is a criterion for ranking, so you should be careful with the size of the images you have on your website. Check also for unnecessary redirections, make sure that the content is conveniently depurated…
There is a guide to improve all these aspects on this link.
Dates and times
This is perhaps one of the most important aspects to bear in mind. It is crucial that sitemaps include exact dates and times of publication (including date, month, year, full time and time zone). This can be generated with plugins like Yoast or others more specific such as Google News Sitemaps.
It is also important to include the dates of publication and update of the news, in both the head and the schema of the code, like this:
Within the head:
<meta name="date" content="2016-11-24T12:11:00+02:00"> (news update on: date)<meta name="DC.date.issued" content="2016-11-24T10:23:57+02:00"> (news published on: date)<meta property="og:updated_time" content="2016-11-24T12:11:00+02:00" /> (news update on: date)Within the schema NewsArticle:
<time itemprop="dateModified" datetime="2016-11-24T12:11:00+02:00" data-timestamp="">Updated on 10-24-2016 12:11</time> (news update on: date)<meta itemprop="dateModified" content="2016-11-24T12:11:00+02:00" /> (news update on: date)<meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2016-11-24T10:23:57+02:00" /> (news update on: date)
Before signing up to Google News it is recommendable to meet at the very least these requirements. Otherwise, the request may be rejected and you cannot send a new one for several weeks (or even months). Therefore, if you do not want to waste your time, check your website thoroughly and make sure everything is working fine.
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