1. Review Google News Guidelines & Stick to Them

Before getting to work on starting to optimize for Google News, first, you’ll need to understand what they’re looking for. Review Google’s guidelines around what they see as worthwhile content and stick to their E-E-A-T Policies. 

These content guidelines are pretty specific and detail what the search engine sees as ‘newsworthy’ content and what they’ll likely reject:

• Ensure your content is original and engaging.
• Create posts that are easy to read and understand.
• Write content that boasts significant authority and trust.
• Avoid publishing content that may be seen as dangerous, misleading, hateful, or inflammatory.
• Be wary of posting some high-impact YMYL content (especially around medical topics).
• Watch out for and respond to any manual actions by Google against your site. 

While many of these guideline policies apply to good SEO, in any case, consider approaching their implementation with a focus to get approved for Google News. Here’s a comprehensive list of Google’s News policies. You’ll also find them listed in the Publisher Center. 

2. Audit & Refine Your Site’s Technical SEO for Google News

Next, review your blog by running a site audit to identify any technical elements you can improve to boost your chances to appear in Google News. Some aspects of your technical SEO can be tweaked to make you a better Google News candidate. 

While taking care of your blog’s SEO is essential to ranking well on SERPs, let alone appearing on Google News, these SEO factors should be prioritized: 

• Include Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) versions – While Google no longer requires that your site includes AMPs, having these mobile-friendly versions available is a big boost to your chances of appearing in feeds since most news content is consumed via mobile devices nowadays. 
• Optimize your titles for news – Update and enrich your titles to make them more accurate and prominent. This means getting a little more descriptive with your post titles and using more direct headlines that match your HTML <title> tag. 
• Use headings – This standard-issue SEO rule should be observed at all times. Google News appreciates content that is crawlable and clearly identifiable. 
• Add or update your contact and about us pages – Another SEO-friendly rule that boosts your credibility and authority and is a helpful step in improving your chances. Here’s how to write an about me page. 
• Ensure quality backlinks – Double-check to ensure your links are all working and direct only to reputable, trustworthy sites. Avoid spam links at all costs and avoid using too many affiliate links. 

These SEO guidelines are one of your most important considerations for how to appear in Google News. You’ll need to manage other technical aspects for your site audit (find them in this site audit checklist), but taking care of these important factors is essential.  

3. Review Your Content Strategy & Create More “Newsworthy” Content

Think about how newsworthy your current content stream already is. Is it generally current, useful, and highly accurate? Does your content convert and sell, or does it inform and educate? These content strategy considerations are important to how Google News sees your potential to appear in news feeds and will tell you where you need to start as you optimize for Google News. 

Here are some of the content strategy aspects you’ll need to consider and review if you’re looking for how to get your blog on Google News. 

• Content velocity & recency – News needs to be recent, fresh, and current. This means that newer content will usually get preference on Google News, ranking better and appearing in more feeds. Push content regularly and consistently and try to avoid ‘quiet’ periods or risk becoming less attractive to Google News. 
• Content formats – Publishing your content in the right format is crucial to getting approval for Google News. Ensure you publish in HTML format and avoid posting in PDF or JavaScript format, as Google cannot crawl these content types or display them properly in feeds. Remember to update your articles’ structured data markup to ensure Google knows which information on your site to use. 
• Evergreen content – While evergreen content works wonders for boosting SERP longevity, it has the opposite effect on Google News eligibility. Content that does not display a publication date or reference recency will struggle to rank well. This doesn’t mean you should stop publishing evergreen content – instead, pick your top Google News posts and date those. 
• Watch out for some YMYL content types – Especially topics related to medical information. Getting YMYL content on Google News can be tricky. This is due to the search engine preferring more consumable, faster-paced content for the news aggregator. 

Rather than re-directing your entire content strategy to align with Google News principles, work to incorporate these elements into your existing tactics. This way, you’ll continue to rank well organically while still increasing the likelihood of making it onto Google News.  

4. Submit Your Publication & Get Approved/Verified for Google News

You can submit your blog manually to Google News instead of relying on the search engine’s algorithms to automatically identify your content. This isn’t compulsory but is an effective method of getting onto Google News’ radar.

Submitting your site to Google News takes a little time, and you’ll have to create a new publication to do so. You can submit your site for consideration via the Google Publisher Center. We’ve selected some of the blog or website aspects you’ll need to submit and what to include to set up your Google News Publication: 

• Pick a category – This tells Google how to correctly categorize your articles so that users can search for and find them easier. There are many categories to pick from. 
• Name & description – An obvious one, you’ll need to let Google know what your blog or publication is called and provide a description of what it’s all about. 
• Languages – Tell Google if you’re using only one primary language or if your site also has a multilingual version. 
• Add primary URLs & location information – If your site’s domain changes or moves, it is important to inform Google by sending them updated domain properties. 
• Verify via Google Search Console – Verifying your site with Google means confirming that you are indeed the owner of your content. This can be done via Google Search Console.

Physically submitting your blog site to Google allows you to take control of how your brand design appears in Google News feeds, ensures that you can monetize via Google Ad Manager, and boosts your chances of getting placed in the app’s Newsstand section. 

5. Submit a Google News Sitemap

Sitemaps are critical to ensuring that Google can search for and find your content quicker. While you aren’t required to submit one to Google and maintaining them every time you make a change to your blog can be challenging, doing so will certainly boost your chances of making it onto Google News. 

• Update regularly with fresh content as they’re published – Remember, Google News is looking for fresh content that is recent and current. You don’t need to create a new sitemap for every new article, but you should update your sitemaps to reflect these new posts. 
• Remove any URLs for articles older than two days – Google recommends removing URLs for articles once they age beyond two days. Keep them on your regular sitemaps, but ensure your News sitemap doesn’t display them. This may lead to empty sitemaps (and warnings in Google Search Console) but don’t worry. So long as they’re still in your regular sitemap, you’re all good. 
• Break up larger sitemaps – If you find your sitemaps getting rather large or complex, consider breaking them up into separate sitemaps for different categories. This ensures that Google can review your content faster and more efficiently. 

These XML sitemaps must be approved by Google and can either be added to your existing sitemap with news tags or created separately. Google News sitemaps are different from regular ones, so pay attention to how to make one that works well.