How to Get in Google News (And Receive 8,000 visitors for One Article)
Glen Allsopp / 
18 Comments / 
May 22nd, 2008 / 
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When this blog was about 6 months old, I considered turning it into an industry news blog or even setting up another one that only covered the latest information. Thankfully, I didn’t really get around to that which is good as it’s not something I was passionate about and probably would have stopped doing after a few months.
The reason I’m telling you that is because one of the reasons I wanted to start a news blog was to get listed in Google News, counter productive I know. Firstly I’m going to look at one example of huge traffic from the source and then tips to get yourself included.
8,000 visitors in One Day
It seems like our clients get a lot of traffic doesn’t it…well, they do. For one particular client (who was already in Google News before coming on with us) we noticed something pretty cool for a brand new article:
- One article
- One day
- One keyword
- = 8,000 visitors
How?
The answer is simple, universal search. Google include blended news results for a lot of highly traffic search terms, the one in question…Facebook.
That’s right, just for writing one article on Facebook and being in Google News, the client received over 8,000 visitors from the search results in only one day.
How to Get in Google News
There are multiple ways to get in Google News, and I’m going to highlight some of them below.
News Website
First of all, there are some technical requirements you need to meet in order to be accepted, Barry Schwartz covers them excellently.
Secondly, you actually have to run a news website then make a ‘request’ for acceptance, according to Google News’ Daniel Meredith. I do recall Danny Sullivan stating that Search Engine Land was included automatically without him having to do anything though.
Meredith also stated that the main things the team looks for before including a site are:
- Original content
- Multiple Authors
- Proper Attribution
- Response time (website speed)
You may need to request to be included multiple times which was the case of Search Engine Roundtable and is probably the same for most publications. I was quite surprised about the fact that numbers need to be in a URL which you will find in the technical requirements.
Paid Press Release
Thankfully, just because you don’t write a daily news source, it doesn’t mean that you can’t be indexed in Google news.
Multiple websites such as PRWeb allow you to send out a paid press release that is likely to be picked up by the news source (and others) and get as many eyeballs as possible on your content.
Make sure your press release has main keywords in the title and also includes them in the copy. Theres some other great information about this over at Web Pro News.
While I’m not saying you should buy a press release about the term Facebook, it is interesting to note the volume of traffic the blended results are sending to individual articles. Can you think of any other high volume keywords that have blended news results near the top of the listing?
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Totally agreed. I do think that Facebook is a term that is insanely saturated but if you double it up with a press release, your chances are great.
What are your thoughts on other PR sites like Businesswire?
Good one. With the clients I have worked with, I have found that submission at free PR sites also works beautifully at getting into Google News. The best we saw was in 4 hours! But yes, I guess PRWeb scores for the feature, where they allow keyword anchor-text in links, which isn’t offered on free PR services. But I’m not sure, if the same anchor-text+link is picked up when other sites feature this PR story. What’s your opinion on this?
I’ve been doing press releases for my clients from both prweb.com and the free services and have been time and time again surprised on the decent traffic that comes in from the right article. I’ve yet to see anything over 4000 unique visitors but you’re giving me some hope here
Thanks for the article Glen!
-Ryan
Very good tips! I never thought of that.
Hello Glen, interesting article. I went to Google and checked where I was to submit my website. I did so, and Google informed me that I was already being crawled by their spider. Then the instructions said to do a site: command at Google News to see how many pages are indexed. I couldn’t find any.
Any idea what that’s all about?
Darren
Glen
You have MORE than inspired me to start my very OWN REAL pressroom. I have a great niche for developing headliners to make the top of Google News with certain keywords. I mainly use FREE press services. I have used PRWeb, PRNewswire, and almost BusinessNewswire. I have always known that content is KING. I have a great following from my Stumbleupon friends so I know my stories are top and newsworthy. Now I see why certain top free press services get my news up so fast! I have been making them SOOO much money. I thought hey, they keep bringing me a lot of traffic. Now I will use my own skills and make my own money! You are the BEST!! Have a winning day.
wow… what a strategy would never have thought of that myself not that i am professing to being brilliant
i will further explore how i can use that on my site
thanks
Glenn,
I wasn’t in. It must have been a glitch. But I followed your advice here, submitted again and was accepted. It was a surprisingly quick process.
I am using prnewswire and satisfied with it though it is very costly but atleast i can make some profit. Well I will use these tricks also and sure to get listed in google news every now and then. Thanks for providing such a great post I am stumbling it here http://lindsayhogan.stumbleupon.com/ so that I can share it with my SEO Group at stumbleupon.
I’ve been trying to find ways on how to get on news sites. I’m so happy I found your site. Very informative and helpful. Thanks for the tips.
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Thanks for this new idea to drive traffic to a site. I, for one didn’t think of this before.
Razvan Dobre