Google News Optimization Tips

This week Google put out a video to give publishers more information on how Google News works and how best to optimize for it. I pulled out some of the more useful tips, combining information from some of the slides with additional details provided by Google’s Maile Ohye.

Article Ranking Factors within a Story Cluster

While there are a wide range of ranking factors these four were highlighted:

• Fresh and New – Priority is given to articles that are recent, substantial, original and focused on the topic. Articles need to be “objective news” to lead a story cluster (op-ed, satire, press releases and subscription content are not eligible to lead clusters).
• Duplication and Novelty Detection – More credit is given to original sources of content. Google News uses “Citation Rank” to try to determine the original source (i.e. a lot of subsequent articles linking to a particular source or referencing it within editorial text).
• Local / Personal Relevancy – Weighted by section and story; more credit given to local sources. For example the Charlotte Observer is likely to be given more weight on stories about North Carolina.
• Trusted Sources – Trusted sources are given a boost in each edition and section via various signals. This is data driven and not an “arbitrary decision.” For instance Google News factors in how often articles from particular sources are clicked on in determining user trust.

Image Optimization for News Search

• Use large image sizes with good aspect ratios
• Include descriptive captions and ALT text
• Place image near article title (helps Google News to associate the image with the subject matter)
• Use inline, non-clickable images (as opposed to linking them to something else)
• JPG images are preferred (PNG was specifically cited as not being as good)

the video:  

Google News Optimization Best Practices

• Articles must be on unique, permanent URLs with at least 3 digits – This helps Google News to differentiate articles from static Web pages. Three digit URLs are not required if you submit an XML news sitemap.
• Don’t break up the article body – Articles should have sequential paragraphs; don’t break them up with user comments or links to related posts.
• Put dates between the title and body – Helps the date extractor to establish the correct publication date.
• Titles matter – Create good HTML title tags and on-page article headlines. The title should be “extremely indicative of the story at hand.”
• Separate original content from press releases (and other forms of non-news content) – separating articles in the directory structure helps Google News identify what is specifically news content.
• Publish informative, unique content – Sites are encouraged to produce strong original content as opposed to repurposing or duplicating stories

Some other information:

• Story clusters (i.e. a group of articles on a particular topic) are ranked according to “aggregate editorial interest.” So news that generates a lot of coverage will be given priority on the home page and category pages.
• Using XML news sitemaps is encouraged.
• Articles are now re-crawled to look for updates, typically within the first 12 hours. This confirms a recent discussion in a Google help thread (See Google News Now Recrawling Updated Articlesfor more information).
• To get your videos into Google News you need to create a YouTube channel. Other video hosters may be included in the future, but for now YouTube is the only way in. Creating textual descriptions and transcripts is helpful.
• PageRank is a lesser factor in Google News, used “delicately” since the linking structure of a brand new article is going to be different from an article published years or months ago.

3 Myths About Duplicate Content

The words “duplicate content penalty” strike fear in the hearts of marketers. People with no SEO experience use this phrase all the time. Most have never read Google’s guidelines on duplicate content. They just somehow assume that if something appears twice online, asteroids and locusts must be close behind.

This article is long overdue. Let’s bust some duplicate content myths.

Note: This article is about content and publishing, not technical SEO issues such as URL structure.

Myth #1: Non-Original Content on Your Site Will Hurt Your Rankings across Your Domain

I have never seen any evidence that non-original content hurts a site’s ranking, except for one truly extreme case. Here’s what happened:

The day a new website went live, a very lazy PR firm copied the home page text and pasted it into a press release. They put it out on the wire services, immediately creating hundreds of versions of the home page content all over the web. Alarms went off at Google and the domain was manually blacklisted by a cranky Googler.

It was ugly. Since we were the web development company, we got blamed. We filed a reconsideration request and eventually the domain was re-indexed.

So what was the problem?

• Volume: There were hundreds of instances of the same text
• Timing: All the content appeared at the same time
• Context: It was the homepage copy on a brand new domain

It’s easy to imagine how this got flagged as spam.

But this isn’t what people are talking about when they invoke the phrase “duplicate content.” They’re usually talking about 1,000 words on one page of a well-established site. It takes more than this to make red lights blink at Google.

Many sites, including some of the most popular blogs on the internet, frequently repost articles that first appeared somewhere else. They don’t expect this content to rank, but they also know it won’t hurt the credibility of their domain.

Myth #2: Scrapers Will Hurt Your Site

I know a blogger who carefully watches Google Webmaster Tools. When a scraper site copies one of his posts, he quickly disavows any links to his site. Clearly, he hasn’t read Google’s Duplicate Content Guidelines or the Guidelines for Disavows.

Ever seen the analytics for a big blog? Some sites get scraped ten times before breakfast. I’ve seen it in their trackback reports. Do you think they have a full-time team watching GWT and disavowing links all day? No. They don’t pay any attention to scrapers. They don’t fear duplicate content.

Scrapers don’t help or hurt you. Do you think that a little blog in Asia with no original writing and no visitors confuses Google? No. It just isn’t relevant.

Personally, I don’t mind scrapers one bit. They usually take the article verbatim, links and all. The fact that they take the links is a good reason to pay attention to internal linking. The links on the scraped version pass little or no authority, but you may get the occasional referral visit.

Tip: Report Scrapers that Outrank Your Site

On the (very) rare occasion that Google does get confused and the copied version of your content is outranking your original, Google wants to know about it. Here’s the fix. Tell them using the Scraper Report Tool.

Tip: Digitally Sign Your Content with Google Authorship

Getting your picture to appear in search results isn’t the only reason to use Google Authorship. It’s a way of signing your name to a piece of content, forever associating you as the author with the content.

With Authorship, each piece of content is connected to one and only one author and their corresponding “contributor to” blogs, no matter how many times it gets scraped.

Tip: Take Harsh Action against Actual Plagiarists

There is a big difference between scraped content and copyright infringement. Sometimes, a company will copy your content (or even your entire site) and claim the credit of creation.

Plagiarism is the practice of someone else taking your work and passing it off as their own. Scrapers aren’t doing this. But others will, signing their name to your work. It’s illegal, and it’s why you have a copyright symbol in your footer.

If it happens to you, you’ll be thinking about lawyers, not search engines.

There are several levels of appropriate response. Here’s a true story of a complete website ripoff and step-by-step instructions on what actions to take.

Myth #3: Republishing Your Guest Posts on Your Own Site Will Hurt Your Site

I do a lot of guest blogging. It’s unlikely that my usual audience sees all these guest posts, so it’s tempting to republish these guest posts on my own blog.

As a general rule, I prefer that the content on my own site be strictly original. But this comes from a desire to add value, not from the fear of a penalty.

Ever written for a big blog? I’ve guest posted on some big sites. Some actually encourage you to republish the post on your own site after a few weeks go by. They know that Google isn’t confused. In some cases, they may ask you to add a little HTML tag to the post…

Tip: Use rel=“canonical” Tag

Canonical is really just a fancy (almost biblical) word that means “official version.” If you ever republish an article that first appeared elsewhere, you can use the canonical tag to tell search engines where the original version appeared. It looks like this:

That’s it! Just add the tag and republish fearlessly.

Tip: Write the “Evil Twin”

If the original was a “how to” post, hold it up to a mirror and write the “how not to” post. Base it on the same concept and research, but use different examples and add more value. This “evil twin” post will be similar, but still original.

• Example Guest Post: Common Website Navigation Mistakes
• Example Post on My Site: Website Navigation Best Practices

Not only will you avoid a penalty, but you may get an SEO benefit. Both of these posts rank on page one for “website navigation.”

Calm down, People.

In my view, we’re living through a massive overreaction. For some, it’s a near panic. So, let’s take a deep breath and consider the following…

Googlebot visits most sites every day. If it finds a copied version of something a week later on another site, it knows where the original appeared. Googlebot doesn’t get angry and penalize. It moves on. That’s pretty much all you need to know.

Remember, Google has 2,000 math PhDs on staff. They build self-driving cars and computerized glasses. They are really, really good. Do you think they’ll ding a domain because they found a page of unoriginal text?

A huge percentage of the internet is duplicate content. Google knows this. They’ve been separating originals from copies since 1997, long before the phrase “duplicate content” became a buzzword in 2005.

Disagree? Got Any Conflicting Evidence?

When I talk to SEOs about duplicate content, I often ask if they have first-hand experience. Eventually, I met someone who did. As an experiment, he built a site and republished posts from everywhere, verbatim, and gradually some of them began to rank. Then along came Panda and his rank dropped.

Was this a penalty? Or did the site just drop into oblivion where it belongs? There’s a difference between a penalty (like the blacklisting mentioned above) and a correction that restores the proper order of things.

If anyone out there has actual examples or real evidence of penalties related to duplicate content, I’d love to hear ’em.

7 Ways to Get People to Share Your Content

People who are new to content marketing sometimes say, “I want my post to go viral.” Or, “We want content guaranteed to go viral.” It’s a great goal, but even the best marketers in the business don’t go viral every time they publish.

Getting a post to go viral requires a mix of first-rate content, a responsive audience, and serious content promotion skills. It is rare for an unknown blogger or videographer to come up with even a genius idea and have it hit the mainstream.

While viral hits are unusual, practical marketers with reasonable resources can see a viral win at least a couple of times of a year. They just have to understand their audience, content promotion, and what content tends to get shared.

We’ve covered content promotion in other articles. (“The Secret to Successful Content Marketing” is a recent article.) But we have not considered what makes people share content. So let’s take a look at that now.

There are two levels of sharing content. First, there are the deep psychological forces that shape our behavior. Then there are the more tangible, quantifiable things that get people to share — like added images, colors, and features that get us to click.

Psychological Forces Behind Sharing

It appears no one, even online, likes a sour puss. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have found people are far more likely to share positive content than negative. Other data supports this.

HubSpot’s Dan Zarella, for example, found negative comments suppressed audience growth.

The U. Penn researchers also found people shared content that inspired awe in them. Awe was the most powerful indicator of sharing. That’s also what Noah Kagan, the Internet entrepreneur, found after he studied 100 million articles and how they were shared.

Practical, useful content is also far more likely to get shared. You can see this all over the Internet, in “most popular posts” lists on almost any site. “How to” posts do well, especially when they are easy to understand and to apply. The New York Times discovered this in their study, The Psychology of Sharing. Ninety-four percent of the people they interviewed “carefully consider how the information they share will be useful to the recipient”.

How to Get People to Share Your Content

1. Make it easy for people to share your content. Any more than 2 to 3 clicks of a button, and it’s too much work to share your content. One simple example of making content easy to share is “tweetables”. Blogger Michelle Shaeffer recently added tweetables to her posts and got significantly more traffic.

2. Ask them to share it. Don’t make people remember that they could share your content, either. Remind them with a call to action. Pinterest pins with a call to action get 80 percent more shares. Tweets that ask people to retweet them get 51 percent more retweets than tweets that never ask.

3. Use images. Tweets with images are 94 percent more likely to be shared, and photos on Facebook get 53 percent more likes. According to media firm Social Bakers, 93 percent of the 5,000 most shared posts on Facebook last spring were photos. Only 3 percent were status updates.

It works for Twitter, too. Tweets with images are 92 percent more likely to be retweeted.

4. Create “round-ups” as blog posts or other content. Round-ups are a content format. You ask a bunch of experts one question, then round up all their answers in a blog post. Round-ups can also be SlideShares or audio recordings, but most of the time they’re blog posts.

Round-ups can get very high share counts. That’s because once the post is published you can reach out to everyone who participated in it and suggest they promote the post. Experts who get asked to do roundups typically have large audiences. So instead of just you promoting your post, you have all the experts you worked with promoting your post.

Round-ups leverage the principle of influencers. They are just one tactic of the growing popularity of “influencer marketing.” Here’s some more evidence of the power of influencers.

5. Write listicles. Listicles are articles based on lists. This post is a hybrid listicle. Some people look down on listicles as being too formulaic. But for better or worse, listicles get shared more than almost any other format. That’s why people like me keep writing them. To see an example of how widespread listicles are, check Jeff Bullas’s very popular blog. These are the most popular posts on his site.

Eleven of those twelve posts are listicles. Noah Kagan’s analysis of 100 million articles also confirmed listicles get large amounts of shares. In his study, only infographics get more shares than listicles.

6. Write strong headlines. We published an entire post on how to write better headlinesa few months back. It’s worth a read if you want to write better headlines. Your headline largely determines whether or not your article gets shared. 80 percent of people will never read beyond your headline.

One of the most important keys to writing good headlines is grab to your readers emotionally. There’s a tool that can measure the emotional power of your headlines, and even give them a score. It’s the Advanced Marketing Institute’s Emotional Marketing ValueHeadline Analyzer.

While this tool is helpful, don’t abuse it. Don’t promise things in a headline that your content can’t deliver. Facebook recently named this “linkbaiting,” and has banned it.

7. Write long-form content. The blogger who advised us all to “write epic s*&%,” was on to something. Epic content gets shared. Three different studies support this.

Here’s what the Buffer app blog found on a recent content audit.

Here’s what Neil Patel found.

And finally, here’s Noah Kagan’s data.

There’s plenty of proof that longer posts get more shares, but less than 5 percent of bloggers write posts longer than 1,500 words. That’s according to Orbit Media’s survey of 1,000 bloggers from earlier this year.

Those are just a few ways to get people to share your content. There are dozens of tricks of content creation, content promotion and audience engagement that I haven’t mentioned here.

What’s your favorite way to get people to share your content?

SUCCESS IN EFFECTIVE CONTENT AND BLOG using AdSense programme policies by Google

All publishers are required to adhere to the following policies – so please read them carefully. If you fail to comply with these policies without permission from Google, we reserve the right to disable ad serving to your site and/or disable your AdSense account at any time. If your account is disabled, you will not be eligible for further participation in the AdSense programme.

Since we may change our policies at any time, please check here regularly for updates. In accordance with our online Terms and Conditions, it’s your responsibility to keep up to date with, and adhere to, the policies posted here. Exceptions to these policies are permitted only with authorisation from Google.

Google AdSense Policies Overview

Invalid clicks and impressions

Publishers may not click their own ads or use any means to inflate impressions and/or clicks artificially, including manual methods.

Learn more

Encouraging clicks

Publishers may not ask others to click their ads or use deceptive implementation methods to obtain clicks. This includes, but is not limited to, offering compensation to users for viewing ads or performing searches, promising to raise money for third parties for such behaviour or placing images next to individual ads.

Learn more

In order to ensure a good experience for users and advertisers, publishers participating in the AdSense programme may not:

• Compensate users for viewing ads or performing searches, or promise compensation to a third party for such behaviour.
• Encourage users to click the Google ads using phrases such as “click the ads”, “support us”, “visit these links” or other similar language.
• Direct user attention to the ads using arrows or other graphical gimmicks.
• Place misleading images alongside individual ads.
• Place ads in a floating box script.
• Format ads so that they become indistinguishable from other content on that page.
• Format site content so that it is difficult to distinguish it from ads.
• Place misleading labels above Google ad units. For instance, ads may be labelled “Sponsored Links” or “Advertisements”, but not “Favourite Sites” or “Today’s Top Offers”.

Content guidelines

Publishers may not place AdSense code on pages with content that violates any of our content guidelines. Some examples include content of an adult or violent nature, or content that advocates racial intolerance. Please see our prohibited content article for more information.

View full content policies.

Sites with Google ads may not include or link to:

• Pornography, adult or mature content
• Violent content
• Hate speech (including content that incites hatred or promotes violence against individuals or groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status or sexual orientation/gender identity), harassment, bullying or similar content that advocates harm against an individual or group.
• Excessive profanity
• Hacking/cracking content
• Software or other content that violates the Unwanted Software Policy
• Malware or adware
• Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia content
• Content that promotes, sells or advertises products obtained from endangered or threatened species.
• Sales of beer or spirits
• Sales of tobacco or tobacco-related products
• Sales of prescription drugs
• Sales of weapons or ammunition (e.g. firearms, firearm components, fighting knives, stun guns)
• Sales or distribution of coursework or student essays
• Content regarding programmes which compensate users for clicking ads or offers, performing searches, surfing websites or reading emails
• Any other content that is illegal, promotes illegal activity or infringes on the legal rights of others

Publishers are also not permitted to place AdSense code on pages with content primarily in an unsupported language.

Copyrighted material

AdSense publishers may not display Google ads on web pages with content protected by copyright law unless they have the necessary legal rights to display that content. This includes sites that display copyrighted material, sites hosting copyrighted files or sites that provide links driving traffic to sites that contain copyrighted material. Please see our DMCA policy for more information.

Counterfeit goods

AdSense publishers may not display Google ads on web pages that offer for sale or promote the sale of counterfeit goods. Counterfeit goods contain a trademark or logo that is identical to or substantially indistinguishable from the trademark of another. They mimic the brand features of the product in an attempt to pass themselves off as a genuine product of the brand owner.

Webmaster guidelines

AdSense publishers are required to adhere to the webmaster quality guidelines.

View excerpts

• Do not place excessive, repetitive or irrelevant keywords in the content or code of web pages.
• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programmes with little or no original content.
• Do not include deceptive or manipulative content or construction to improve your site’s search engine ranking (e.g. your site’s PageRank).
• Create a useful, information-rich site and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.

Traffic sources

Google ads may not be placed on pages receiving traffic from certain sources. For example, publishers may not participate in paid-to-click programmes, send unwanted emails or display ads as the result of the action of any software application. Also, publishers using online advertising must ensure that their pages comply with Google’s Landing Page Quality Guidelines.

Learn more

To ensure a positive experience for Internet users and Google advertisers, sites displaying Google ads may not:

• Use third-party services that generate clicks or impressions such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, autosurf and click-exchange programmes.
• Be promoted through unsolicited mass emails or unwanted advertisements on third-party websites.
• Display Google ads, search boxes or search results as a result of the actions of software applications such as toolbars.
• Be loaded by any software that can trigger pop-ups, redirect users to unwanted websites, modify browser settings or otherwise interfere with site navigation. It is your responsibility to ensure that no ad network or affiliate uses such methods to direct traffic to pages that contain your AdSense code.
• Receive traffic from online advertising unless the site complies with the spirit of Google’s Landing Page Quality Guidelines. For instance, users should be able to find easily what your ad promises.

Ad behaviour

Publishers are permitted to make modifications to the AdSense ad code, so long as those modifications do not artificially inflate ad performance or harm advertisers. Please see Modification of the AdSense ad code for more information.

Ad placement

Publishers are encouraged to experiment with a variety of placements and ad formats. However, AdSense code may not be placed in inappropriate places such as pop-ups, emails or software. Publishers must also adhere to the policies for each product used. Please see our ad placement policies article for more information.

View full ad placement policies.

Google ads, search boxes or search results may not be:

• Integrated into a software application (does not apply to AdMob) of any kind, including toolbars.
• Displayed in pop-ups or pop-unders.
• Placed in emails, email programmes including webmail or on pages where dynamic content (such as live chat, instant messaging or auto-refreshing comments) is the primary focus. (Does not apply to AdMob.)
• Placed in emails, email programmes or chat programmes. (Does not apply to AdMob.)
• Obscured by elements on a page.
• Placed on any non-content-based page. (Does not apply to AdSense for search, mobile AdSense for search or AdMob.)
• Placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads.
• Placed on pages whose content or URL could confuse users into thinking that they are associated with Google due to the misuse of logos, trademarks or other brand features.
• Placed on, within or alongside other Google products or services in a manner that violates the policies of that product or service.

Site behaviour

Sites showing Google ads should be easy for users to navigate. Sites may not change user preferences, redirect users to unwanted websites, initiate downloads, include malware or contain pop-ups or pop-unders that interfere with site navigation.

Google advertising cookies

AdSense publishers must have and abide by a privacy policy that discloses that third parties may be placing and reading cookies on your users’ browsers, or using web beacons to collect information as a result of ad serving on your website.

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Identifying users

Publishers must not pass any information to Google:

• that Google could use or recognise as personally-identifiable information; or
• that permanently identifies a particular device (such as a mobile phone’s unique device identifier if such an identifier cannot be reset).

Privacy

You must disclose clearly any data collection, sharing and usage that takes place on any site, app or other property as a consequence of your use of any Google advertising service. To comply with this disclosure obligation with respect to Google’s use of data, you have the option to display a prominent link to How Google uses data when you use our partners’ sites or apps.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)

If you implement any Google advertising service on a site or section of a site that is covered by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), (a) you must notify Google of those sites or sections of sites covered by COPPA using the tools found here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/coppa, or the method for apps described here:https://developers.google.com/mobile-ads-sdk/docs/admob/additional-controls, and (b) you must not use interest-based advertising (including remarketing) to target: (i) past or current activity by users known by you to be under the age of 13 years or (ii) past or current activity on sites directed at users under the age of 13 years.

Gambling content

AdSense restricts the placement of ads on gambling sites and gambling-related content. We have different policies for gambling content, based on the country in which a publisher is located. Publishers outside a limited group of countries are not allowed to place ads on any gambling content or on any pages with links to gambling content. This includes any content that allows users to place bets or play games in exchange for an opportunity to earn money or other prizes.

Learn more

In this select group of countries, publishers are allowed to monetise pages with online gambling, information about online gambling content and pages that link to gambling content. Gambling content includes: online casino games, sports betting, bingo, lotteries, tips, odds, handicapping, mahjong, educational/supplemental materials and bonus codes.

Austria	Greece	Portugal
Belgium	Ireland	Romania
Canada	Italy	Serbia
Denmark	Israel	Spain
Finland	Norway	Sweden
France	Peru	United Kingdom

Currently, these publishers must meet Google’s stringent requirements for consideration and need to be selected and approved by the AdSense Policy Team before ads can be shown. If you’re eligible, AdSense will be certain to contact you. Publishers located outside these countries aren’t permitted to place ads on content that allows any type of betting or has links to such content.

To keep the Global Display Network family safe, ads will only be shown on gambling content if both the publisher and the page’s visitor are located within a gambling-approved country and if the visitor is of legal age.

Additionally, publishers now have the opportunity to opt in to receiving gambling ads through the category filtering feature. If you don’t wish to receive gambling ads on your site, no action is required on your part.

Examples

Publishers who have not been selected or approved for gambling content:

allowed	Not allowed
Sites with play-for-fun games, contests, sweepstakes, raffles Location-based gambling sites (hotel casinos and destination travel sites) Sites promoting fantasy sports Sites selling books, ebooks, magazines, TV shows that discuss gambling-related activities Discussion forums or blogs about gambling that don’t drive traffic to online gambling sites Sites selling gambling equipment	Online gambling sites, such as online casinos or online wagering sites Sites that drive traffic to online gambling sites, such as through organic links

Publishers who have been selected and approved for gambling content, and are located in one of the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Israel, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Spain, Sweden or the United Kingdom:

Allowed

Online gambling sites, such as online casinos or online wagering sites Sites that drive traffic to online gambling sites, such as through organic links Sites with play-for-fun games, contests, sweepstakes, raffles Location-based gambling sites (hotel casinos and destination travel sites) Sites promoting fantasy sports Sites selling books, ebooks, magazines, TV shows that discuss gambling-related activities Discussion forums or blogs about gambling that don’t drive traffic to online gambling sites Sites selling gambling equipment

Product-specific policies

AdSense for content: Publishers may place up to three AdSense for content units on one web page. This includes a maximum of one 300×600 ad unit (or similar sized ad) per page. In addition to three AdSense for content ad units, publishers may also place up to three link units and two search boxes on each page. These policies apply to both desktop and high-end mobile-optimised sites.

AdSense for search: A maximum of two Google AdSense for search boxes may be placed per page. Also, a single link unit or image ad only may be placed on pages with AdSense for search results. Queries must originate from users inputting data directly into the search box and cannot be modified. This includes pre-populating the search box with terms or hard-coding direct links to search results pages. AdSense for search code may not be integrated into any software application such as a toolbar. The online AdSense for search product is limited to five (5) billion queries per account from the period from 1 July to 30 June of the following year.

Additional products:

• AdMob
• AdSense for mobile
• AdSense for video
• AdSense for Games
• Custom Search Ads – Desktop Sites
• Custom Search Ads – Mobile Sites
• Custom Search Ads – Mobile Apps