Optimising for Google News

Slides from my talk at Digitalzone Istanbul 2018 where I spoke about how news websites can optimise their visibility in Google News and Top Stories.

Transcript

1. @badams #Digitalzone @badams #Digitalzone Optimising for Google News Barry Adams Polemic Digital
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3. @badams #Digitalzone @badams #Digitalzone What is ‘SEO?’
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5. @badams #Digitalzone Web Search Engines Crawler Indexer Ranker
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7. @badams #Digitalzone The Three Pillars of SEO Technology Relevancy Authority
8. @badams #Digitalzone Relation to Web Search Technology Crawler Relevancy Indexer Authority Query Engine
9. @badams #Digitalzone @badams #Digitalzone Google News
10. @badams #Digitalzone History of Google News • 2002: initial beta • 2006: official launch • 2007: Universal Search • 2015: Accelerated Mobile Pages
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14. @badams #Digitalzone ?
15. @badams #Digitalzone ±11.5% of Google search results have a Google News element
16. @badams #Digitalzone ‘Top Stories’ onebox
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18. @badams #Digitalzone Growth of Mobile
19. @badams #Digitalzone Mobile News Carousels
20. @badams #Digitalzone Mobile Publisher Carousels
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22. @badams #Digitalzone Accelerated Mobile Pages
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24. @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
25. @badams #Digitalzone AMP is mandatory No AMP AMP
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27. @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
28. @badams #Digitalzone Keeping Google News Clean
29. @badams #Digitalzone @badams #Digitalzone Optimising for Google News
30. @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.
31. @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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33. @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.
34. @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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37. @badams #Digitalzone Title Not Found
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39. @badams #Digitalzone Article Fragmented
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41. @badams #Digitalzone Google News Crawling & Indexing Crawler Indexer Ranker
42. @badams #Digitalzone HTML Parser
43. @badams #Digitalzone http://www.stateofdigital.com/common-crawl-errors-google-news/
44. @badams #Digitalzone @badams #Digitalzone Leveraging Google News for regular SEO
45. @badams #Digitalzone News sites dominate Google
46. @badams #Digitalzone Why?
47. @badams #Digitalzone Links, links, links, and more links
48. @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
49. @badams #Digitalzone Leveraging link power
50. @badams #Digitalzone Topical Hub Pages
51. @badams #Digitalzone Internal Link Power Article Links Article Tags
52. @badams #Digitalzone https://econsultancy.com/blog/65433-why-internal-links- and-hub-pages-are-a-major-factor-in-seo-success/
53. @badams #Digitalzone @badams #Digitalzone Don’t Overdo It!
54. @badams #Digitalzone 17 internal links to topic pages 4 internal links to topic pages
55. @badams #Digitalzone TheSun.co.uk Paywall
56. @badams #Digitalzone The Sun vs Daily Mail
57. @badams #Digitalzone @badams #Digitalzone Newspocalypse
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60. @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
61. @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
62. @badams #Digitalzone “Stay In Your Lane” update
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65. @badams #Digitalzone What’s Coming?
66. @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>
67. @badams #Digitalzone NewsArticle Extensions ➢ AnalysisNewsArticle ➢ BackgroundNewsArticle ➢ OpinionNewsArticle ➢ ReportageNewsArticle ➢ ReviewNewsArticle
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70. @badams #Digitalzone https://newsinitiative.withgoogle.com/
71. @badams #Digitalzone @badams #Digitalzone Summarised
72. @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
73. @badams #Digitalzone @badams #Digitalzone Barry Adams ➢ Doing SEO since 1998 ➢ Specialist in T echnical SEO & News SEO ➢ Co-Chief Editor at State of Digital ➢ Columnist for Search Engine Land
74. @badams #Digitalzone @badams #Digitalzone Thank You. barry@polemicdigital.com @badams