1.
@badams
#Digitalzone
@badams
#Digitalzone
Optimising for
Google News
Barry Adams
Polemic Digital

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone
@badams
#Digitalzone
What is ‘SEO?’

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Web Search Engines
Crawler Indexer Ranker

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone
The Three Pillars of SEO
Technology
Relevancy
Authority

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Relation toWeb Search
Technology Crawler
Relevancy Indexer
Authority Query Engine

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@badams
#Digitalzone
@badams
#Digitalzone
Google News

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@badams
#Digitalzone
History of Google News
• 2002: initial beta
• 2006: official launch
• 2007: Universal Search
• 2015: Accelerated Mobile Pages

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone
?

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@badams
#Digitalzone
±11.5% of Google
search results have a
Google News element

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@badams
#Digitalzone
‘Top Stories’ onebox

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Growth of Mobile

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Mobile News Carousels

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Mobile Publisher Carousels

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Accelerated Mobile Pages

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Accelerated Mobile Pages
• Alternative versions of your web pages;
➢ Built specifically for speed & mobile
• Mobile first;
➢ Mobile only?
• New standard;
➢ Severely restrictive
• All or nothing;
➢ It either validates or it doesn’t

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@badams
#Digitalzone
AMP is mandatory
No AMP
AMP

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Google News Requirements
• ‘Proper’ news;
➢ Not a news section on
commercial site
• Original content;
➢ Some syndication is fine
• Multiple updates a day;
➢ Actively updated site
• Multiple contributors;
➢ A colophon / authors list helps
• Editorial speciality;
➢ Niche news sites are welcome
• Technical requirements;
➢ News XML Sitemap
➢ Accelerated Mobile Pages
➢ NewsArticle Structured Data

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Keeping Google News Clean

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@badams
#Digitalzone
@badams
#Digitalzone
Optimising for
Google News

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Google News Ranking Factors
1. Editorial Speciality
If your news site is a specialist on a specific topic, you are more
likely to rank in Google News boxes for relevant queries.

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Google News Ranking Factors
2. Headline Keyword Matching
Having the keyword in your article headline is the single most
important on-page ranking factor.

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Google News Ranking Factors
3. Recent News
Google News prefers to show recently published or updated
articles, so publish often & update previous articles.

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Google News Ranking Factors
4. Content Factors
➢ NewsArticle Structured Data
➢ Headlines: max 110 chars
➢ Headlines: <H1>
➢ Articles: 80+ words
➢ Articles: not too long (?)
➢ No article fragmentation
➢ … many more

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Title Not Found

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Article Fragmented

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Google News Crawling & Indexing
Crawler Indexer Ranker

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@badams
#Digitalzone
HTML Parser

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@badams
#Digitalzone
http://www.stateofdigital.com/common-crawl-errors-google-news/

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@badams
#Digitalzone
@badams
#Digitalzone
Leveraging Google News
for regular SEO

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@badams
#Digitalzone
News sites dominate Google

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Why?

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Links, links, links, and more links

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@badams
#Digitalzone
News Sites = Trusted Sites
News articles are cited & linked to very often
News publishers become trusted sources
Published articles rank top in Google
Top ranked articles are read more

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Leveraging link power

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Topical Hub Pages

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Internal Link Power
Article Links Article Tags

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@badams
#Digitalzone
https://econsultancy.com/blog/65433-why-internal-links-
and-hub-pages-are-a-major-factor-in-seo-success/

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@badams
#Digitalzone
@badams
#Digitalzone
Don’t Overdo It!

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@badams
#Digitalzone
17 internal links to topic pages 4 internal links to topic pages

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@badams
#Digitalzone
TheSun.co.uk
Paywall

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@badams
#Digitalzone
The Sun vs Daily Mail

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@badams
#Digitalzone
@badams
#Digitalzone
Newspocalypse

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone
News Sites = Trusted Sites
News articles are cited & linked to very often
News publishers become trusted sources
Published articles rank top in Google
Top ranked articles are read more

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@badams
#Digitalzone
News Sites = Trusted Sites
News articles are cited & linked to very often
News publishers become trusted sources
Published articles rank top in Google
Top ranked articles are read more
Within Your Topical Focus

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@badams
#Digitalzone
“Stay InYour Lane” update

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone
What’s Coming?

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Speakable
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "http://schema.org/",
"@type": "WebPage",
"name": "Jane Doe's homepage",
"url": "http://www.janedoe.com",
"speakable":
{
"@type": "SpeakableSpecification",
"cssSelector": ["headline", "summary"]
}
}
</script>

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@badams
#Digitalzone
NewsArticle Extensions
➢ AnalysisNewsArticle
➢ BackgroundNewsArticle
➢ OpinionNewsArticle
➢ ReportageNewsArticle
➢ ReviewNewsArticle

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone

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@badams
#Digitalzone
https://newsinitiative.withgoogle.com/

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@badams
#Digitalzone
@badams
#Digitalzone
Summarised

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@badams
#Digitalzone
Google News Domination
• ±11.5% of searches have a Google News element
• News publishers leverage internal link power
• AMP dominates mobile SERPs
• Technical SEO is very important for news publishers
• News sites have to stick to their topical expertise

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@badams
#Digitalzone
@badams
#Digitalzone
Barry Adams
➢ Doing SEO since 1998
➢ Specialist in Technical SEO & News SEO
➢ Co-Chief Editor at State of Digital
➢ Columnist for Search Engine Land

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@badams
#Digitalzone
@badams
#Digitalzone
ThankYou.
barry@polemicdigital.com
@badams