How To Distribute Content With Google News

If you’re a daily news outlet, or your brand is in the news/journalism sector, Google News is likely high on your radar for distributing content.

Google News is a great way to reach a wider audience and increase engagement with your readers. So how do you get started with Google News and make sure your content is published on the platform?

In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into all things Google News, giving you some information on what it is, why it’s useful, and how you can distribute your content on Google News. We’ll also provide you with some top tips for increasing your chances of being featured on this platform.

What Is Google News and Why Should You Be Using It?

Google News is a free platform designed to display news articles from different sources on the internet. Articles are sorted by relevance and date, which allows users to sort through lots of different topics.

These include the following:

• Local News

• Business

• Technology

• Entertainment

• Sports

• Science

• Health

It’s a useful system, particularly if you want different perspectives on topics, as Google News aggregates its articles from thousands of online sources, such as media outlets, local newspapers, and blogs.

Users can personalize their news feed based on what they want to read about. You’ll also be provided with a section called ‘Picks for you,’ which displays articles Google believes will interest you based on your reading history.

So why should you be using Google News as a publisher? The main reason is that it allows you to reach a wide audience of people, providing more exposure for your content and, ultimately, an increased level of traffic to your website.

There are also opportunities for increased brand recognition, as your brand will be seen as more credible if it’s featured on sites such as Google News.

How To Distribute Content With Google News

Now that you know all about Google News, and why it’s worth using it as a publisher, let’s get straight into a step-by-step guide for distributing content with Google News.

1. Visit this link: https://publishercenter.google.com/.

2. Enter the URL for your publication.

3. Give your publication a Name and Location.

4. Follow the below instructions to verify that you own your domain using Google Search Console (GSC). If you’re not using a custom domain (e.g. a beehiiv hosted domain), you’ll need to add a tool such as Google Tag Manager or Google Analytics within your beehiiv settings, which will allow you to verify your account in GSC.

5. Once verified with GSC, visit your publication settings by clicking your publication name at the top of the screen and select the first option on the dropdown list.

6. From here you can change the name of your publication, as well as the primary language, location, URL, contact info, and additional website properties. From the Visual Styles tab, you can add a logo and custom fonts. You can also update organization settings and user permissions from this page.

7. Once you’ve finished this section, go back to the main screen and click Add Content Labels.

8. Here, you can tell Google more about what your publication offers by choosing relevant labels to describe your site’s content, e.g. Blog, Press Release, User-Generated, etc. You can also further define categories for your website via the Area Content Labels section. Here you can add a URL and assign it a specific category.

9. Go back to the main screen and click Open within the Explore Products section.

10. Select Edit in the top right corner.

11. Choose a Category, and then select Distribution Countries. Select which Google Properties you’d like to associate with this publication.

12. Add Sections based on areas of your website that hold content you’d like Google News to publish. These could include your website feed, web locations, videos, and personalized feeds.

13. Use the Access Groups section to limit your content to specific people, such as authorized testers. (We don’t recommend you do this if you want to reach a wide audience of users with your content.)

14. Click Next, and on the following page you can review your Google News app publishing status. Once you’re happy with each section, you can click Publish to ensure that Google News starts picking up your latest news articles.

Tips for Increasing Chances of Appearing on Google News

Now that you know how to get your website articles published on Google News, we’ll run you through some quick guidelines for giving your website the best chance of appearing on Google News.

Content Guidelines

One of the most important parts of your website, which must be up to scratch if it’s going to be picked up by Google News, is your content. This involves ensuring your website follows guidelines from Google on what kind of content is suitable, as well as the quality of the content on your site.

Google has specific policies that must be adhered to when it comes to publishing content–these can be viewed in full here. We’ve detailed below a few main points to give you a rough idea:

• Types of content to avoid (e.g. dangerous content, sexually explicit content, etc.)

• Ads and sponsored content

• Misleading content

• Transparency

Ensuring that your website follows the above policies will help when attempting to have your content published on Google News.

Optimize Website

Another key step to successfully distribute content on Google News is to make sure your website is fully optimized for the platform.

In short, this means that your website is tailored to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices. There are many ways you can do this–try starting with the following ideas to get you on your way to a well-optimized website:

• Use relevant keywords in page titles, meta descriptions, and throughout the site content

• Ensure images and videos are used regularly (with appropriate alt tags)

• Structure content in a way Google can read (e.g. title tags, alt tags, etc)

• Ensure your site is mobile-friendly and quick to load

For more top tips on optimizing your website and blog posts, take a look at our SEO checklist.

Work With Other Publishers

Working with other publishers can also give your site a higher chance of being distributed on Google News.

Google News encourages publishers to work together and collaborate on different articles to benefit users by linking relevant articles together.

You can show Google you’re aware of this by linking to similar articles within your website content and by crediting other authors/creators on your site where necessary.

Wrap Up

We hope that after reading this guide you feel confident in publishing content on Google News and are raring to go with spreading the word about your brand.

If you’re concerned because you don’t have a website on your own domain, there’s no need to worry! You can use your beehiiv custom URL to link your website content with Google News and start distributing your content!

Sign up for free with beehiiv today to get started! We’ve also developed a video that you can use to start publishing content on Google News–check it out here.