Google News

If you have been looking for a new venue in Search Engine Marketing, maybe its time to consider the impact that being listed in the Google News syndicate would have on your marketing efforts. Google News has been listed as one of the five most visited news portals available on the web, for this reason alone they deserve consideration for any SEM campaign. I am always surprised at why more businesses don't employ Google News, due to the customizable nature and the ability to reach a very targeted viewing audience for almost all niche market. I suspect the reason more business owners don't employ this tactic is because being accepted by Google News isn't an easy task.

Here are the basics to consider before applying to Google News:

1) Original Content: If you have heard before that content is king then you have probably been involved with Internet marketing for more than 15 minutes. In the case of Google News though that's not all they expect. Here the key is 'Original' content, just reproducing available content from around the web simply is not enough, your website must provide valuable and original information for Google news viewers.

2) Multiple Authors: Unfortunately for many of us who have spent a large amount of time building an informative blog, they wont work with Google news. The reason is easy enough to understand as Google expects a creditable news source to provide content from multiple authors.

3) Organizational Structure: Personal Blogs and websites that don't give the impression of being an organization wont be accepted. Contact information displaying company information information and information about editors and the writers is advisable. Hence, its important to give evidence that you are a business when someone views your pages.

I realize that these three things can seem a bit overwhelming and this could even seem outside the realm of normal consideration.For this reason I am also including a list of tips below that will help you structure your website for acceptance.

1) Using Templates: It is important that when you begin designing the website that you intend to submit to Google News, you avoid the blog style and feel at all costs. Make sure your website has NO blog style look or feel to it at all. As you begin working on your homepage it is also important to be very clear about your industry and respective niche.

2) Using a Content Management System (CMS): Ensure your newly created website posses a content management system that can handle news style content. The CMS should be capable of performing URL rewrites in order to create search engine friendly URLs this will aid in spider crawls and allow you a better chance at high Google News rankings. Caution should be taken when using a content management system ensure that your URL rewrites do not end up with more than two variables as this can cause problems during a crawl.

3) The Article URL: Make sure that each of your articles is indexed with a unique URL, further more this URL should contain a unique three digit number assigned to each article. The thing to remember here is that Google News cannot crawl URLs with two digit URLs such as http://www.mynewssite.com/breakingnews01.html and with that being said avoid URLs that could be confused with years such as http://www.mynewssite.com/breakingnews1986.html these can't be crawled either. So the important thing here is use 3 digits no more and no less.

4) Company Information and Contact Pages: By making these pages very visible and easy to identify you will gain favor with Google News. Don't make your About Us pages or Contact Us pages more than one mouse click away from your home page. It is also important to note that you must be very clear about your organizations name and industry. Providing a link to a page with all of your writers and editors information is also a very good idea. If possible set up email accounts for each of your authors and editors so they may be contacted by your readers.

5) Basic Article Format: Care should be taken when you prepare an article for publication. Do this by making sure the article follows a news format. Take a look at some news sources to get a feel for what a news format should resemble, but at a minimum the article should contain a Title, Author, and roughly 300-450 words.

6) Your Articles Title: The title tag on your HTML page should be set to the article title as well as between your <H1></H1> tags. Care should be taken to avoid long article titles Using 2-12 words seems to be most effective.

7) The Number of Articles: If you are planning to apply to Google news after a meager 25 articles chances are very good you will be turned down. You must give the aura of authority and activity and it is advisable to avoid applying to Google News until you have reached 150-200 articles.

8) Frequency of Article Posts: More is better in this case and my recommendation is to post 4-6 articles a day to build your activity level. Without activity your chances of acceptance are reduced by a factor of 10.

9) The Images: Using video will help you immensely if used in conjunction with a text based article. Avoid trying to use video only articles. Also like all SEO utilizing well placed relevant images with the corresponding ALT tags will also help your efforts.

10) Your Ads: Giving the impression to Google News that you have a motive that is solely advertising based should be avoided, find balance to your ad campaigns that you intend to run on your news site also non existent ads or very little may give the impression that you don't get traffic and hurt your efforts at giving the impression of an authority site. Check commission junction for advertisers in your related niches and find some that you are comfortable with.

If you have followed these steps then you are ready to complete the Google News application follow the prompts and complete the process. Don't be discouraged if you find yourself rejected the first time. Often the Google News team will inform you of the reason you were not accepted, just correct the oversights and reapply. Good Luck.