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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2. @badams
   #Digitalzone
   

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

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4. @badams
   #Digitalzone
   

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5. @badams
   #Digitalzone
   Web Search Engines
   Crawler Indexer Ranker
   

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6. @badams
   #Digitalzone
   

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

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8. @badams
   #Digitalzone
   Relation to Web Search
   Technology Crawler
   Relevancy Indexer
   Authority Query Engine
   

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9. @badams
   #Digitalzone
   @badams
   #Digitalzone
   Google News
   

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

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11. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    

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12. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    

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13. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    

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14. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    ?
    

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

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16. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    ‘Top Stories’ onebox
    

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17. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    

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18. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    Growth of Mobile
    

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19. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    Mobile News Carousels
    

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20. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    Mobile Publisher Carousels
    

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21. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    

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22. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    Accelerated Mobile Pages
    

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23. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    

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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
    

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25. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    AMP is mandatory
    No AMP
    AMP
    

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26. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    

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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
    

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28. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    Keeping Google News Clean
    

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

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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.
    

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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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32. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    

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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.
    

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

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35. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    

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36. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    

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37. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    Title Not Found
    

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38. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    

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39. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    Article Fragmented
    

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40. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    

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

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42. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    HTML Parser
    

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

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

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45. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    News sites dominate Google
    

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46. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    Why?
    

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

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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
    

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49. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    Leveraging link power
    

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50. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    Topical Hub Pages
    

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51. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    Internal Link Power
    Article Links Article Tags
    

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

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

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

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55. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    TheSun.co.uk
    Paywall
    

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56. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    The Sun vs Daily Mail
    

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57. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    @badams
    #Digitalzone
    Newspocalypse
    

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58. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    

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59. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    

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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
    

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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
    

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62. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    “Stay In Your Lane” update
    

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63. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    

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64. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    

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65. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    What’s Coming?
    

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

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

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68. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    

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69. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    

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

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71. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    @badams
    #Digitalzone
    Summarised
    

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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
    

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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
    

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74. @badams
    #Digitalzone
    @badams
    #Digitalzone
    Thank You.
    barry@polemicdigital.com
    @badams
    

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