As a website owner, I'm sure you are always looking for new sources of traffic. Have you considered Google News? If you regularly publish news in your industry and want to be seen as a source for news you can request Google include your site.
This can be a great source of traffic and an excellent way to boost credibility for your company.
There are some important details you need to be aware of in order to increase your chances of Google including your site.
First and foremost, you have to request that Google include your site by visiting:
http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/request.py.
Here is some of the criteria Google is looking for.
Make sure that your pages that display the full text of news articles have unique URLs so that the Google is able to index each story individually. URLs with more than one article will not be included on Google News.
The URL for each article must contain a unique number consisting of at least three digits, and should not resemble a date. I've often heard you should aim for more than six digits to be safe.
Here is what Google says about this: We can't crawl an article with this URL:
http://www.google.com/news/article23.html. We can, however, crawl an article with this URL:
http://www.google.com/news/article234.html Keep in mind that if the only number in the article consists of an isolated four-digit number that resembles a year, such as
http://www.google.com/news/article2006.html, we won't be able to crawl it.
Make sure content on your news site is original. You can't republish a CNN story and expect Google to include your site in the News search results pages.
Your site should have more than one author. You should also have a page listing all of the authors with their bios. For Google this is a deal breaker, so don't bother proceeding with your request to be included if you don't have multiple authors.
Articles should also include the writer's name and timestamp.
Other important details to consider:
Make sure you have information about your company/organization. This is often done in the form of 'contact us' and 'about us' pages.
Server response time is important; Google crawlers will look for pages that they can index quickly, and that will load quickly for users. So make sure your server is up to par and can handle the load.
If you aren't already doing these items, get it all in place and run with it for a little bit before your request to be included. I look forward to reading your news in Google next time I search!
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Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing for EcomBuffet.com. Since 1998 Jennifer's expertise in marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients increase revenue. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on SEO and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications. Jennifer is the editor of the popular
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