The Infinitely Absolute Guide to Google News RSS Feed

The Infinitely Absolute Guide to Google News RSS Feed

A long time ago (in a galaxy not so far away) people started their mornings with coffee and a newspaper. Often, the coffee was easier to digest than the plethora of irrelevant content in the paper. Fortunately for us, we no longer live in times of generic day old content on dead tree pulp. Publishers, rejoice!

I like my morning coffee strong, with a serving of relevant content and two sugars. And I don’t even need to look far. Google Now on my Android tablet shows me content relevant to my interests and automatically curated from all the content feeds on Google News. Is your RSS reaching me through Google as I sip my java? If your content is as good as you think it is – it should be.

How to get ready for the Google News feed

1. Get Ready for Google News
Unlike the Google search engine index, Google News updates in real time. That means waiting for Google’s search bot to reach the fresh content is out of the question. You need to spoon-feed it. So before we get down to step-by-step instructions on how to apply for inclusion in Google News, here’s what you need to do to please the Google News bot. Don’t skip these recommendations. If you apply to Google News and get rejected, you have to wait for 60 days before reapplying.

Layout & Content
The title of your post should be identical to the anchor text for the link on your news section page. A difference between the two can confuse the bot. In addition, you should avoid including the author’s name or date of publication in the title.
If your blog is multilingual, don’t put multiple languages in the same post. Create separate sections and feeds for each language. The optimal encoding for Google News is UTF-8.
Headings, anchors, internal links and publication time in the posts have to be HTML only. If your content is hiding behind JavaScript, Google can’t read it.
Since Google demands reliability, it’s important to have an author profile for each of the writers. For Google a contact form is not enough. Include your editorial email, phone number and physical address if possible.
Posts should be at least 200 words long.
URL Structure
Every section and post must have it’s own unique and permanent URL. If you include more than one post per post page, Google News won’t index it.
All the posts have to be under the same domain name as the section index files. If you currently have separate domains for your main site and for your blog, you should merge them. And simply mirror it to the current blog domain.
Crawlability –
Your news section needs to be visible in the robots.txt file. Also check your metatags and header specifications to make sure your news articles are readable to the Google Bot. This shouldn’t be hard since it’s the same bot crawling your website for Google anyway. Just peek in your Webmaster Tools.
If your website news section has a premium or subscription only section, be sure to read Google’s guidelines of the subject.
Formating –

As I’ve mentioned above, Google’s Newsbot can read HTML only. So any content in audio, video, JavaScript, frames and Flash components will simply not be indexed. This means you have to add textual descriptions to everything – alt tags, link anchors, transcripts etc. Note that image links are ignored as well, so if your section index page uses an image to link to post – you’ll need to change that.
The only exception is YouTube videos. And they get indexed only if your YouTube channel is connected to your Google account.
Google doesn’t like news in forum posts. If your blog is currently running on a forum platform instead of a blog platform? You might get rejected or your content might not get indexed.
Age – If you’ve only recently started posting news items or are creating a news section now? Hold your horses. Make sure you have at least 30 items in your news RSS feed before applying. You also increase your chances to be accepted if you’ve been generating content and traffic for at least a few months.

2. Be Newsworthy
At this point you might be asking yourself: Is my content news? There are two possible answers: it might be or it should be. Just about anything can be news. Don’t believe me? Here’s a screenshot of a search I performed a few days ago (for very good reasons, I assure you):

So yes. A corporate blog, a local gossip site or a gaming review page by a bored teen – all these can be news. If Google decides they are, of course.

As you already know, Google has some very strict policies when it comes to publishers on AdSense. Google News is no different, but the submission guidelines are even more demanding. In short, this is what Google demands from you if you want your content in their RSS feed:

Quality
Reliability
Timing
Technical Compatibility

Basically, Google wants original, well written content, published by reliable writers at the perfect time. And served to Google’s bots gift-wrapped and ready to go.

3. What Isn’t News for Google
Yes, everything is news to someone. However, not ALL the content on your page can be considered news. Because it simply isn’t. The “about” page, the contact form and your writers’ biographies are just not news. And as such, it’s important to separate them from original quality content when submitting to Google News.

Other types of content Google News doesn’t consider feed-worthy are how-to articles, weather forecasts, stock market data and advice columns. If you want your content on Google News, make sure to submit only what Google considers news. If you don’t, you may get disqualified.

4. Generating and Submitting a News Map
Although it is possible to create a newsmap manually, no one does this. You can use one of Google’s recommended third-party tools for newsmap generation compatible with your CMS. Just remember you need to upload the file to the root directory of your news articles. If you’re using WordPress, there are several plug-ins like XML Sitemap Feed that will make the process a whole lot easier.

Once you’ve created the newsmap go to Google Webmaster tools. Check if your newsmap appears under Crawl => Sitemaps. Click the “Add / Test Sitemap” button and enter your newsmap URL. Check if any errors and make sure to fix them before moving on to the next step.

Once you have a working news site-map and you’ve done all the technical adjustments above, it’s finally time to finally submit your feed.

If you want a step-by-step guide to getting on Google News Rss Feed then read the full guide: http://www.adngin.com/blog/blogging-best-practices/the-infinitely-absolute-guide-to-get-on-the-google-news-rss-feed/