While the fundamentals of SEO for news websites largely mirror those of other sites, a nuanced and tailored strategy is important for the success of the website. This article will explore effective strategies tailored specifically to enhance rankings, visibility, and traffic for news sites.
Tips on SEO for News Publishers
The following tips on SEO for journalists and new websites can help the news websites to gain more visibility.
1. Add Your Site to Google Publisher Center
Add your site to Google Publisher Center to manage its appearance on Google News. This simple task takes about 30 minutes. While not necessary for ranking, there are benefits.
You can directly share your content with Google instead of waiting for it to find your site. Google doesn’t guarantee placement, but setting up Publisher Center means you meet the standards.
To submit your site, go to Publisher Center, enter your URL, and click “Add.” Choose your publication’s name and location, then verify your site in Google Search Console. Once approved, share content directly to Google News, including RSS feeds, website URLs, and videos.
2. Creating Unique Content of High-Quality
Creating high-quality content with a distinct perspective is essential for achieving visibility on platforms like Google News. Adherence to Google News content policies is crucial for eligibility in the top stories carousel.
These policies address issues such as harmful or deceptive content, emphasizing the importance of credibility and accuracy in content creation. Additionally, they emphasize the expertise and authority of content creators.
Related Article: Content Quality vs. Quantity: Striking the Right Balance
3. News-Specific Structured Data
Structured data is important in modern SEO strategies, enabling websites to communicate effectively with search engines about their content.
This applies particularly to news content, where utilizing structured data such as the NewsArticle Schema is essential for accurately describing the nature of the content.
While the Article structured data is a viable option, employing news-specific structured data ensures optimal categorization and visibility in search results.
Below is a small example of the code structure of a NewsArticle:
4. AAccelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Since Google no longer insists on using AMP to be featured in the top stories carousel, its importance has decreased. However, for websites aiming to cater to mobile users, AMP can still be helpful.
It makes sure news articles load quickly on mobile devices, focusing on delivering content fast without the extra design elements found on desktop sites.
5. Crawl Speed and Site Speed
To ensure your news articles are quickly indexed by Google, focus on improving both crawl speed and site speed. Prioritize optimizing your site’s loading time, and make sure you have XML sitemaps available. However, it’s important to note that a news sitemap has specific guidelines:
- Include news from the last two days only, as articles remain in the news index for 30 days.
- Continuously update your news sitemap with fresh articles as they are published.
- Each news sitemap should contain a maximum of 1,000 URLs, but you can use multiple sitemaps if needed.
- Instead of creating a new sitemap for each article, update your existing sitemap regularly to ensure efficiency.
Useful Article: How Important Is Page Speed for SEO?
6. Site Structure of Your News Site
The structure of your news website is crucial. Just like other websites, it’s important to organize articles and taxonomies, such as categories and tags, effectively. Pay attention to these taxonomy pages as they can be more important than the articles themselves.
Here are the essential steps to optimize your news website’s structure:
- Evaluate your categories
- Add sub-categories and tags
- Enhance internal linking
- Remove outdated content
7. Update Your Article as News Comes In
In the fast-paced world of news, timeliness is key. Publishers should strive to update articles promptly as new information becomes available, ensuring that their content remains current and relevant.
By maintaining a single, continuously updated article for ongoing news events, publishers can signal freshness to search engines and potentially improve their rankings in news searches.
8. Include Shareable Images on Every Page
Visual content, such as images, help to enhance user engagement and sharing on social media platforms. Publishers should prioritize the inclusion of unique and relevant images on every page, ensuring that they enhance rather than hinder website loading speed.
By optimizing image sizes, formats, and compression techniques, publishers can strike a balance between visual appeal and SEO performance, encouraging increased sharing and visibility of their news content on social media platforms.
Summary of News Website SEO
SEO for news websites is a complex approach that involves various strategies listed here. By following these SEO best practices, news publishers can enhance their website’s visibility.