How to Do SEO for News Websites

Google names six of the factors that influence ranking in Google News: relevance of content, prominence, authoritativeness, freshness, usability, and location and language. Nothing on that list is a submission step, a required markup type or a page format. Google says publishers are automatically considered for Top stories and the News tab of Search. What a news site controls includes how quickly Google finds each article, how accurately it reads the page, and whether the publication gives readers and Google grounds to trust it.

There is no application to file

Google’s help page on news content across Google says publishers are automatically considered for Top stories and the News tab, and that they “just need to produce high-quality content and comply with” the Google News content policies. Its guide to how Google News discovers web content adds that publishers don’t need to submit their site, and that Google finds news content through its Search technology. Neither page describes a registration, a feed submission or an application step.

The same pages set the limits. Eligible content is not guaranteed to rank well on Google News, and Google says it cannot guarantee that every article will be published. Two checks tell you where you stand:

Visibility in Google News. The Google News performance report in Search Console is, in Google’s words, the best way to determine whether you have eligible content appearing on Google News.
Indexing. Google suggests a site: search on your domain, and the URL Inspection tool for a single article.

One setting can take a site out of Google News while leaving Search alone. Google’s page on blocking access to content says a robots.txt block on Googlebot-News prevents a site from appearing in Google News, and a Googlebot-News robots meta tag does the same for a single article. Its news content page adds that blocking news access does not affect indexing and ranking in Google Search. If News visibility drops while Search traffic holds, a Googlebot-News rule in robots.txt or in the article template is one of the first things to rule out.

The news sitemap

Google says a news sitemap can help improve how quickly its crawler finds your content. The news sitemap documentation sets the rules:

Rule	What the documentation says
Which articles	Only articles created in the last two days. After that, remove the URL or remove its <!–INLINECODE2–> metadata
Updates	Add fresh articles to the same sitemap as they are published; don't create a new sitemap with each update
Size	Up to 1,000 <!–INLINECODE3–> tags per sitemap; beyond that, split it into several sitemaps
Required tags	<!–INLINECODE4–>, <!–INLINECODE5–>, <!–INLINECODE6–>, <!–INLINECODE7–>, <!–INLINECODE8–>, <!–INLINECODE9–>
Separate file or extension	Either works; a separate news sitemap may make tracking easier in Search Console

Four details in the reference are the ones to check when a plugin generates the file:

<news:name> must exactly match the publication name as it appears on your articles on news.google.com, leaving out anything in parentheses.
<news:publication_date> is the date and time the article was first published on your site, not the time it was added to the sitemap.
<news:title> carries the article title as it appears on the site, without the author name, the publication name or the date.
If you remove old URLs rather than their news metadata, the sitemap empties whenever nothing has been published for two days. Search Console then shows an Empty Sitemap warning, which Google says won’t cause any problems.

Google also says that Google News crawls news sitemaps as often as it crawls the rest of your site.

Article pages Google reads correctly

Google works out each article’s headline, date, lead image and preview text from the article page, its markup and, for dates, the news sitemap. Its best practices for article pages set out what helps it pick each one correctly.

Headline.

Put it in a prominent spot above the article body, such as an <h1>.
Match the HTML <title> to it.
Match the anchor text on your section pages to it.
Keep dates and times out of it, and keep it to between 2 and 22 words and at least 10 characters.
In structured data, Google News says a headline should not exceed 110 characters.

Date and time. To be considered in Google News, an article needs a clear, visible date and a time, ideally between the headline and the article text. Google’s guide to byline dates adds two rules that matter on news pages:

The date describes when the page was published or updated, not when the events it reports took place.
The visible date should match the date in structured data.

If Google still picks up the wrong date, the guide suggests minimizing the other dates on the page.

Lead image.

Use an image that belongs to the story, rather than a logo or a caption.
Declare it with Schema.org markup or an og:image tag.
Place it near the headline and give it a caption.
Make sure robots.txt does not block it.

The Google News minimum is 60 by 90 pixels. For Article markup, Google recommends several high-resolution images of at least 50K pixels, in 16×9, 4×3 and 1×1 ratios.

Preview text. Google’s crawler takes the snippet from body text near the headline. Keep extra text out of the space between the title and the body. Set the byline and date apart from the first sentence, so they are not read as the opening of the story.

Markup. The Article structured data documentation says there is “no markup requirement to be eligible for Google News features like Top stories.” Markup tells Google more explicitly what the page is: a news article, who wrote it, what its title is. There are no required properties. The recommended ones are:

author, with author.name holding only the person’s name and author.url pointing to a page that identifies them.
datePublished and dateModified.
headline.
image.

NewsArticle is one of the three types Google accepts, alongside Article and BlogPosting. For a multi-part article, point rel=canonical at each page or at a view-all page, not at page one of the series. On a subscription site, Google News may read an isAccessibleForFree flag to tell free content from paywalled content. Google’s paywalled content structured data exists so that Google can tell a paywall apart from cloaking.

Updating a developing story

Google’s article page guidelines address dates on developing stories directly. When an article has been substantially changed, they say it can make sense to give it a fresh date and time. They also name two practices as against the guidelines:

Artificially freshening a story when no significant information was added and there is no compelling reason.
Creating a very slightly updated story from a published one, then deleting the old story and redirecting to the new one.

Within those rules, the main choice is between two patterns, and it is an editorial one:

One living article. Update the same URL as facts arrive, show the update time on the page and set dateModified to match. The story keeps its links and its history on one URL.
A series. Publish a new article when a new phase is a distinct story, such as charges filed after an arrest or a verdict after a trial. Each piece stands on its own, and the earlier one stays up.

The deciding question is whether the new material is a different story or the same story with new details. The editors who know the story are the people to answer it.

Speed, rendering and AMP

Freshness is on Google’s list, and a breaking story stays fresh for a short time. The news sitemap helps with discovery. How the page is built decides how fast it is.

Serving an article as plain HTML does not skip Google’s rendering step. Google’s JavaScript SEO basics says Googlebot queues all pages with a 200 status code for rendering, unless a robots meta tag or header tells Google not to index the page. The same page still recommends server-side rendering or pre-rendering, “because it makes your website faster for users and crawlers, and not all bots can run JavaScript.” For a news template, that means the headline and body arrive in the HTML response, and scripts the story does not need wait until after it loads.

AMP gives no special standing in Search. Google’s AMP documentation says Search indexes AMP pages just like other web pages and “applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page.” A publisher keeping AMP for Top stories alone is maintaining a second template that Search holds to the same standard as the first.

Trust: what Google asks news sources to show

Under Transparency, the Google News content policies list what news sources should provide:

Clear dates and bylines.
Information about the authors, publication and publisher.
Information about the company or network behind the content.
Contact information.

The same policies set rules for sponsored content:

Sponsorship has to be clearly disclosed.
Sponsored content cannot be presented as independent editorial content.
Advertising and paid promotional material shouldn’t exceed your content.

Google says it may remove content that breaks these policies from its news surfaces. Repeated or egregious violations can leave a site no longer eligible.

Two practices are not on Google’s list but serve the same reader: a visible corrections policy with dated corrections, and labels that separate reporting from opinion. Each answers a question readers can bring to any story. What happens when this outlet gets something wrong? Is this reporting or argument?

On the quality side, Google singles out original reporting. Its search quality rater guidelines describe the highest quality news as original reporting that provides information that would not otherwise have been known had the article not revealed it. They add that very high quality news content describes the primary sources and other original reporting behind it. A rewrite of a wire story carries the same facts as every other rewrite of it. An interview you conducted, a document you obtained or a meeting you attended gives the page something only your newsroom has. Raters do not rank pages; Google’s guide to helpful content says they have no control over how pages rank. The guidelines show what Google counts as high quality.

The same guide says E-E-A-T is not a specific ranking factor. It also says Google’s systems give even more weight to strong E-E-A-T for “Your Money or Your Life” topics: those that could significantly impact the health, financial stability or safety of people, or the welfare or well-being of society. The rater guidelines place news along that range:

News about ongoing violence is high on it, because people need accurate information to stay safe.
News about a car accident likely carries little risk of future harm from small inaccuracies in the reporting.
News about a local high school basketball game is unlikely to cause harm.

The guidelines also point to elections and trust in public institutions as examples of societal impact. Election, public safety and public institution coverage sits at the high end of that range. Google’s systems give strong E-E-A-T even more weight on topics like these, so this is the coverage where a missing byline or an unsourced claim can cost more.

Where a regional outlet can compete

Location and language is one of the factors Google names for ranking in Google News. The rest of a regional strategy is editorial:

Cover the local institutions for the long run. The county commission, the school board, the courts and the major employers can be covered by a regional newsroom week after week, year after year. A national outlet may have little reason to staff that beat. The archive gives each new story context, and can make you the first place readers check.
Report the local angle of national stories. “What the new federal rule means for businesses in our region” is a question a national outlet may have little reason to answer and a regional one can report.
Budget for breaking news and explainers. Breaking coverage meets search demand that fades with the story. An explainer on how the county’s property tax appeal process works answers a question readers may bring back every assessment season. A newsroom needs both, and the split between them is a deliberate editorial budget decision.
Stay on the story after the first day. Anyone can publish a fast first take, and speed is an easy advantage for a competitor to match. The second-day story, the explainer and the accountability piece that follow are where a newsroom still covering the story parts ways with outlets that moved on.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to apply to Google News or Publisher Center to appear in Top stories?

No. Google says publishers are automatically considered for Top stories and the News tab. The requirements are high-quality content and compliance with the Google News content policies. The Google News performance report in Search Console shows whether your content is appearing.

Is NewsArticle markup required for Top stories?

No. Google’s Article structured data documentation says there is no markup requirement for Google News features like Top stories. Markup is still useful: it states the headline, the author and the dates explicitly. There are no required properties, and the recommended ones are author, datePublished, dateModified, headline and image.

How long should an article stay in the news sitemap?

Two days. After that, remove the URL or its <news:news> metadata. If the sitemap empties during a quiet stretch, the Empty Sitemap warning in Search Console won’t cause any problems.

When can an updated story get a new date?

When the article has been substantially changed. Google’s article page guidelines say artificially freshening a story, with no significant new information and no compelling reason, is against its guidelines. So is publishing a very slightly updated copy, then deleting the old story and redirecting it to the new one. Show the update time on the page and keep dateModified in the markup matching it.