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The post How to Get Your WordPress Blog Listed in Google News appeared first on WPExplorer.
Do you want your WordPress site to show up in Google News?
Getting your site in Google News can skyrocket your website traffic and help you reach new audiences. It also helps build credibility and authority for your brand.
In this article, we will show you how to submit your WordPress site to Google News.
Here are the topics we will cover in this tutorial. You can use the links below to quickly navigate through the article:
Introduced in 2002, Google News is a news aggregator that shows the latest news and stories from the last 30 days.
The goal of Google News is to provide recent news updates and headlines from around the world. It uses multiple sources to provide content and is available in numerous languages.
When you perform a Google search, you may see results from Google News near the top of the page under the ‘Top stories’ featured snippets.
You can view a dedicated page of Google News stories by clicking the ‘More news’ button.
Alternatively, simply click the ‘News’ tab at the top of a Google search results page.
Google News is one of the most trusted sources when people look for the latest stories from around the world.
Getting your WordPress site to show up in the Google News section can instantly boost your organic traffic and help you reach new audiences.
It also helps build credibility and authority for your brand because your site will likely be shown next to big brands like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and more. This suggests that your site is trustworthy and offers quality information.
Besides that, getting featured in Google News can have a positive impact on your WordPress SEO. More websites will pick up your content as a source that provides backlinks. As a result, your website rankings will improve for other keywords.
Now that we know the benefits, let’s take a look at the eligibility requirements for being listed in Google News.
Since December 2019, you are not required to submit your website to be eligible for Google News. Publishers who meet their criteria are now automatically considered for inclusion in the ‘Top stories’ featured snippet and News tab of Google search.
However, the submission process still exists, and it’s a good idea to use it. By submitting your WordPress website to Google News, you will increase your chances of being featured.
Before you do, it’s important to make sure you meet Google News policies.
Google has set specific content guidelines that determine if your content qualifies to appear in the Google News section. If your site doesn’t meet these guidelines, then it will be rejected.
For example, your content shouldn’t be dangerous, deceptive, hateful, or include violence or gore. Similarly, advertisements shouldn’t exceed your content, and you should disclose if your content is sponsored.
Besides that, you will need to provide clear dates, author bylines, and information about the company or network behind the content.
There are more guidelines that you will have to comply with. We recommend following these policies very carefully to avoid your site being rejected by Google News.
That being said, let’s see how you can create a news sitemap for your WordPress so that you can submit it to Google News.
The first thing you will need to do is create a Google News sitemap for your website. After setting up a news sitemap, you can then submit your site to Google News.
A sitemap is a file that lists all your website content and helps Google find new articles and display them in the search results. It also makes search engine bots crawl your site faster and improves the indexing of your content.
It’s important to note that a Google News sitemap is different from a regular XML sitemap. Google News Sitemap only includes news articles, and it allows the search engine to quickly discover content that needs to appear in the news section.
To create a Google News sitemap, we recommend using All in One SEO (AIOSEO). It’s the best WordPress SEO plugin and helps you optimize your site for search engines without hiring an expert or requiring technical knowledge.
We will be using the AIOSEO pro version for this tutorial because it includes the Google News sitemap and other powerful features like the redirection manager and schema markup. There is also a free version of AIOSEO that you can use to get started, but it doesn’t come with the news sitemap.
First, you will need to install and activate the AIOSEO plugin. If you need help, then please refer to our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, the plugin will launch a setup wizard. You can click the ‘Let’s Get Started’ button to configure AIOSEO on your site.
You can follow our beginner’s guide on how to properly set up All in One SEO for WordPress.
After that, you can head over to All in One SEO » Sitemaps from your WordPress dashboard and then navigate to the ‘News Sitemap’ tab.
Next, you will need to click the ‘Activate News Sitemap’ button.
Once active, make sure that the toggle for ‘Enable Sitemap’ is switched on. There’s also an option to preview your news sitemap.
Next, you can scroll down and edit other settings related to the News sitemap.
For example, you can add the Publication Name that you will enter in the Publisher Center in the next step. If you don’t enter a name, then AIOSEO will automatically use your site’s title.
Aside from that, you can select which content to include in the news sitemap under Post Types.
You can include posts, pages, and events or check the box for ‘Include All Post Types’. It’s important to note that the Google News Sitemap will consist of content that’s been published in the last 48 hours.
Next, you can click the toggle for ‘Advanced Settings’ and exclude any page or post that you don’t want to be included in the news sitemap.
Once that’s done, go ahead and click the ‘Save Changes’ button.
AIOSEO will now create a Google News sitemap for your WordPress website.
Once your news sitemap is ready, you can submit your website to Google News.
To start, you must go to the Google Publisher Center website and log in with your Google account.
Adding Your WordPress Site to Google News
Once you are logged in, you will see the ‘Get started with Publisher Center’ page. Simply click the ‘Add your publication’ link to continue. Alternatively, you can type in your website’s URL and then click ‘Add’.
Next, a popup window will appear where you can add the details of your publication.
You will have to enter the URL and name of your WordPress blog and select its home country and primary language.
After entering these details, check the box to certify that your publication is principally and permanently located in the country you’ve selected and click the ‘Add Publication’ button.
Verifying That You Own Your WordPress Site
If you haven’t already verified with Google that you own the website, then you will be asked to do that now.
You should click the ‘Open Search Console’ link, and this will open the Google Search Console website in a new browser tab. Now, you can verify that you own the site by following our guide on how to add your WordPress site to Google Search Console.
After that, you can return and click the ‘Check verification’ link and then the ‘Finish’ button.
Your publication will be added to the Publisher Center, and you can customize its settings.
Customizing Your Google News Publication Settings
You will need to scroll down to the ‘More options’ box and expand the ‘Manage your publication and your organization’ section by clicking the arrow on the right of the screen.
This will display three options. You need to click on the first option, ‘Modify publication settings’.
At the top of the page, you will see some General settings, including the publication name, country, and language you entered earlier. You can modify these if necessary.
Now you can scroll down and expand the ‘Publication URLs’ section.
Here, you can see the primary URL you entered earlier. You can also add additional URLs associated with the publication.
Google News will use these links as Google News content sources.
Next, scroll down and expand the ‘Points of contact’ section. Here, you can add a contact email address for your publication.
Finally, you can expand the ‘Visual styles’ section. This is where you can add a logo for your publication.
Google News offers multiple options for adding a logo to your site.
There is an option to enter a Square logo and a Rectangular logo. Plus, you can also upload custom fonts.
Your logo and fonts will be saved automatically after they are uploaded.
After uploading your logo, simply click the ‘← Settings’ button at the top and head back to the Publisher Center homepage.
Now, there are still a few Google News settings that we need to configure.
You will find them by clicking the ‘Open’ button in the Google News box near the top of the page.
This will open the Google News configuration page, where you can customize your publication’s basic information and sections.
Go ahead and click the ‘Edit’ button to configure your site for Google News.
You can now enter the basic information and distribution details for your publication.
Under ‘Basic information’, you can select a publication category from the dropdown menu.
If you scroll down, you will see Distribution settings. By default, your content will be available in all countries and other Google products.
However, you can limit your site to appearing in certain regions by allowing and blocking specific countries from the ‘Countries’ dropdown menu. Similarly, you can also change the Google properties settings from the dropdown menu.
Don’t forget to click the ‘Next’ button when you are done.
After that, you will need to add Sections in Google News, which will appear as tabs. Sections help organize your content in Google News.
For example, you can add videos, web locations, feeds, or create a personalized feed for your site.
To begin, simply click the ‘+ New section’ button and select an option. For this tutorial, we will add a Feed.
Go ahead and add a Section title, the RSS feed URL that Google News will use as a content source, and choose who can view this section.
After entering these details, click the ‘Add’ button.
You can add as many sections as you want to organize your publication in Google News.
Besides that, you can also restrict certain sections of your publication in the Google News app for specific people in the ‘Access groups’ settings.
When you are done, don’t forget to click the ‘Next’ button.
After that, you can review any missing items in ‘Google News app publishing status’ and test your application.
Simply click the ‘Review’ button for any item and see what information is missing or what requirements you haven’t met.
Before submitting your publication, you can scroll down to the ‘Testing your publication’ section and click the ‘Follow publication’ button. This will make your site appear under Favorites in the Google News app.
Next, you can go ahead and click the ‘Publish’ button under the Google News app publishing status’ box and sign off on the terms of service agreements.
You’ve now successfully submitted your publication for review. It usually takes 2 weeks or more for the review process to complete.
Now that you know how to submit your website to Google News, you may like to see some other guides on how to use Google services to increase traffic to your WordPress website:
We hope this article helped you learn how to submit your WordPress site to Google News. You may also want to see our guide on how to get Google sitelinks for your WordPress site or our expert picks for the best email marketing services for small businesses.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post How to Submit Your WordPress Site to Google News (Step by Step) first appeared on WPBeginner.
Google has recently updated the Search Analytics API to include support for Discover, Google News, and Regex data. This functionality was added in response to pressure from developers that were already enjoying access to this data via Google Search Console Performance reports.
Do you run a news site or blog or publish newsworthy content with WordPress? Then put your site on the Google News map with SmartCrawl’s Google News Sitemap…for Free!
Have you heard the good news?
If you are already using our powerful SmartCrawl WordPress SEO plugin and you want to add a Google News sitemap to your site, then look no further…SmartCrawl comes with its own built-in Google News sitemap so there’s no need to install an additional plugin.
So, if you run a news site, news blog, or publish newsworthy content with WordPress, read on to learn more about:
We’ll keep this section short and sweet…
Sitemaps are useful tools for helping site visitors and search engines find content on your site.
An HTML site map helps human visitors navigate faster to content on your site and an XML sitemap helps search engine robots crawl and discover all of your content.
In addition to providing an XML sitemap that offers many advantages over the WordPress core sitemap such as performance caching, including images from post content, adding styling to the sitemap, automatic updates, and auto-notifying search engines, SmartCrawl also offers a configurable Google News sitemap.
SmartCrawl’s Google News sitemap is specifically designed to meet all of Google News technical requirements for a news sitemap feed.
To enable or disable SmartCrawl’s Google News Sitemap feature, select Sitemaps > News Sitemap in the SmartCrawl plugin menu.
Click Enable…
Once the feature is enabled, you will find fields for entering your Google News publication name (Note: your publication name must match the one you have set up on news.google.com) and the option to include post types (e.g. Posts, Pages, Products, etc.) or exclude posts by category or individual posts.
Remember to click the Save Settings button when done.
View your Google News sitemap at yourdomain.tld/news-sitemap.xml.
Note: Only content published in the last 48 hours will be included in your News Sitemap. If no content is published during this time, your feed page will display an empty sitemap with no URLs.
For more details about using this feature, check out SmartCrawl’s News Sitemap documentation.
You don’t necessarily need to have a news site to get approved as a publisher on Google News, but you must be publishing timely, topical articles, and newsworthy content on a regular basis.
Your site must also be an authoritative source of news in your industry or niche and your content must meet Google’s technical and quality guidelines to get approved.
Note: no amount of whitehat SEO tweaking (or blackhat SEO shenanigans) will get you listed on Google News if your site does not actually meet Google’s stringent criteria for inclusion.
Once Google approves you as a news publisher, you will have access to the Google Publisher Center – an interface where you can submit, manage, and monetize your content in Google News.
You can then copy your news feed URL and paste it into your Google Publisher account, under the publication you set up for your news site in your Google Publisher Center.
Rather than make this a lengthy post, we recommend visiting the Google Publisher Center Help section. It will explain everything you need to know and take you through the entire process of getting started with Google News and setting up your news publication.
In addition to the above, we also recommend checking out this article from the Search Engine Journal and Neil Patel’s excellent tips on getting your website listed on Google News.
If you run a WordPress-based news site, make sure to use SmartCrawl’s Google News Sitemap (available in both the free and pro versions) to get your good news published instantly and automatically.
And if you need any help installing or configuring SmartCrawl, check out our plugin documentation or contact our support team any time of day or night.
Google continues to reveal the details of Android 12, and so far we’ve seen two betas released in May and June. Material You, a new Google material design language that is a great part of Android upcoming update, has been getting a lot of buzz in the digital community.
“We rethought the entire experience, from the colors to the shapes, light and motion, making Android 12 more expressive, dynamic, and personal. This work is being done in deep collaboration between our software, hardware and Material Design teams, and we’re unifying our software and hardware ecosystems under a single design language called Material You.” This is how a new UI by Google is introduced by the Android Developers Blog.
YouTube is the second largest search engine on the Internet after Google. This guide discusses advanced search operators that you can use with your YouTube search queries for more accurate video searches.
Find a specific YouTube channel royal wedding, channel
YouTube will have numerous videos related to the royal wedding but if you are only looking for their official YouTube channel, add the word channel to your query separated by a comma.
Watch live videos on YouTube zoo, live
Add live to your search queries and watch live stream videos such as live news, live gaming channels, live concerts, sports events or even cooking sessions.
Limit your search to recently uploaded videos oprah winfrey, this week
This will only show recent videos related to Oprah that have been uploaded to YouTube in the past week. You may also use “today” or “this month” to limit your search to videos that were uploaded in the past month.
Find only official videos, no fan material please never say never, partner
If you are looking for the ‘official’ Justin Bieber track and don’t want to see any parodies or fan material in the search results, add the word ‘partner’ to your search query.
Find movies on YouTube jackie chan, movie
Yes, you can find full-length movies on YouTube. The search operator for finding movies is, you got it right, movie.
Find 4K or HD only videos on YouTube the king’s speech trailer, hd
Add the keyword hd to your search query and YouTube will only show High-definition video clips that are either 720p (1280x720) or 1080p (1920x1080 pixels). Or add 4k to limit your search to 4K content.
Find 3D video clips on YouTube avatar, 3d
Got a pair of 3D glasses? Add the keyword 3D to your search query and discover 3D videos. You may also enjoy some 3D content on YouTube without the glasses – see details.
Find video playlists on YouTube bryan adams, playlist
Playlists are a great option if you want to find and watch (or listen) multiple related videos in one go – like all the Old Spice commercials or your favorite Savage Garden tracks. You may also copy YouTube playlists to your own account.
Find lengthy videos on YouTube tom and jerry cartoons, long
Add the keyword long to your search query and YouTube will only return videos that are at least 20 minutes in length. Or append short to limit search to videos that are 4 minutes in length or less.
Perform exact-match searches on YouTube allintitle:“google goes gaga”
You can borrow the popular allintitle search operator from Google on YouTube to perform exact title matches. Might be useful when the original video is not available in your country due to geographic restrictions.
Mix and Match YouTube Search operators ted talks, hd, this month, long
The best part about YouTube search is that you combine multiple search operators with commas and apply them all to your query (much like the Boolean AND operator). The above example will help use find all TED talks that have recently been uploaded to YouTube.
Liked it? See similar search guides for Google News, Google Alerts and Windows Search.