Would you like Google News to feature your WordPress site?
Getting your website listed in Google News can help you reach new audiences and increase your website traffic. It also aids in the development of your brand’s credibility and authority.
We’ll show you how to submit your WordPress site to Google News in this article.
What is Google News, exactly?
Google News, which was launched in 2002, is a news aggregator that displays the most recent news and stories from the previous 30 days.
Google News’ goal is to provide up-to-date news and headlines from around the world. It has content from a variety of sources and is available in a variety of languages.
When you search for a topic in Google, you can view Google News in a dedicated ‘News’ tab.
Additionally, under the ‘Top stories’ featured snippets, Google News appears at the top of the search results.
What Are the Benefits of Submitting Your WordPress Site to Google News?
When people are looking for the latest news from around the world, Google News is one of the most trusted windows.
Getting your WordPress site to appear in the Google News section can boost your organic traffic and help you reach new audiences almost immediately.
It also helps to establish your brand’s credibility and authority because your site will most likely be displayed alongside major publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and others. This indicates that your website is reliable and provides useful information.
Aside from that, getting your WordPress site featured in Google News can help your SEO. Your content will be picked up by more websites as a source of backlinks. As a result, your website’s rankings for other keywords will improve.
Let’s look at the eligibility requirements for being listed in Google News now that we’ve learned about the advantages.
Requirements for Google News Consideration
It’s critical that you comply with Google News policies before submitting your WordPress website to Google News.
Google has established specific content guidelines that determine whether or not your content qualifies for inclusion in the Google News section. Your site will be rejected if it does not follow these guidelines.
Your content, for example, should not be dangerous, deceptive, or hateful, nor should it contain violence or gore. Similarly, advertisements should not take precedence over your content, and any sponsored content should be disclosed.
Aside from that, you’ll need to include dates, author biographies, and information about the company or network that created the content.
There are a few more rules that you’ll have to follow. To avoid your site being rejected for Google News, we strongly advise that you adhere to these policies.
Let’s take a look at how to make a news sitemap for your WordPress site so you can submit it to Google News.
Using WordPress to create a Google News Sitemap
The first step will be to create a Google News sitemap for your website. You can then submit your site to Google News after creating a news sitemap.
A sitemap is a file that lists all of the content on your website and aids Google in finding new articles to display in search results. It also speeds up the crawling of your site by search engine bots and improves the indexing of your content.
It’s important to understand that the Google News Sitemap is not the same as a standard XML sitemap. Only news articles are included in the Google News Sitemap, which allows the search engine to quickly find content that should be included in the news section.
We recommend All in One SEO for creating a Google News sitemap (AIOSEO). It’s the best WordPress SEO plugin for optimizing your site for search engines without the need to hire an expert or possess technical knowledge.
For this tutorial, we’ll use the AIOSEO pro version, which includes the Google News sitemap as well as other useful features like the redirection manager and schema markup. You can also use a free version of AIOSEO to get started, but it does not include the news sitemap.
The AIOSEO plugin must first be installed and activated. If you need assistance, see our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.
The plugin will launch a setup wizard after it has been activated. To set up AIOSEO on your site, click the ‘Let’s Get Started’ button.
Then, from your WordPress dashboard, go to All in One SEO » Sitemaps and select the ‘News Sitemap’ tab.
Then, select ‘Activate News Sitemap’ from the drop-down menu.
Once active, make sure the ‘Enable Sitemap toggle is turned on. You can also see a preview of your news sitemap.
After that, you can scroll down and make changes to the News sitemap’s other settings.
You can, for example, include the Publication Name you specified in the Publisher Center. If you don’t provide a name, AIOSEO will default to your site’s title.
Aside from that, under Post Types, you can choose which content to include in the news sitemap.
You can select from posts, pages, and events, or select ‘Include All Post Types’ from the drop-down menu. It’s worth noting that the Google News Sitemap will only include content from the previous 48 hours.
Then, using the ‘Advanced Settings’ toggle, you can exclude any page or post that you don’t want to be included in the news sitemap.
When you’re finished, click the ‘Save Changes’ button.
For your WordPress website, AIOSEO will now generate a Google News Sitemap.
Google News Submission for Your WordPress Site
You can now submit your website to Google News once your news sitemap is complete.
To begin, go to the Google Publisher Center website and sign in using your Google account.
You’ll see a welcome message once you’ve logged in. To proceed, simply click the ‘Got it’ button.
After that, select the ‘Add publication’ option from the menu on the left.
After that, you’ll be prompted to enter the name of your WordPress blog, its URL, and a location in a popup window.
After entering these details, click the ‘Add publication’ button and check the box to certify that your publication is principally and permanently located in the country you’ve chosen.
The Publisher Center will now include your publication.
Select your publication and click the ‘Publication settings’ button.
You can edit your Publication name and choose a ‘Primary language’ from the dropdown menu under Basic information on the next screen.
After that, scroll down and make changes to your publication’s Location and the Primary website property URL.
If your website hasn’t been verified yet, click the ‘Verify in search console’ button. This will prompt you to open the Google Search Console in order to confirm your site’s ownership.
Please see our guide on how to add your WordPress site to Google Search Console for more information.
Return to the Publication Settings after verifying your publication and scroll down to see more options.
You can, for example, add more website property URLs. These links will be used as a content source by Google News. Similarly, you can include an email address for your publication’s contact.
Click the ‘Next’ button once you’ve finished entering these details.
After that, you can add your publication’s logo. For adding a logo to your site, Google News provides several options.
A Square logo and a Rectangular logo are both available. You can also upload your own fonts.
Simply click the ‘Save’ button at the top to return to the Publisher Center homepage after uploading your logo.
Then, from the menu on the left, select your publication and then click the ‘Google News’ box.
To configure your site for Google News, go ahead and click the ‘Edit’ button.
Next, enter Basic information including a Publication description, which acts as a meta description and helps people find your publication. Then, from the dropdown menu, choose a Publication category.
Distribution settings can be found by scrolling down. Your content will be available in all countries and on all Google products by default.
You can, however, limit your site’s visibility to specific regions by allowing and disallowing countries from the ‘Countries’ dropdown menu. Similarly, the Google properties settings can be changed using the dropdown menu.
When you’re finished, don’t forget to click the ‘Next’ button.
Then, in Google News, you’ll need to add Sections, which will appear as tabs. In Google News, sections help you organize your content.
You can, for example, add videos, a web address, a feed, or create a personalized feed for your website.
Simply select an option and click the ‘+ New section’ button to get started. We’ll use a Feed in this tutorial.
When you select Feed, a popup window will appear.
Add a section title, an RSS feed URL for Google News to use as a content source, and a permissions list for who can see this section. After you’ve filled out these fields, click the ‘Add’ button.
To organize your publication in Google News, you can add as many sections as you want.
In addition, under the ‘Access groups’ settings in the Google News app, you can restrict certain sections of your publication to specific people.
Don’t forget to click the ‘Next’ button when you’re finished.
After that, you can check the ‘Google News app publishing status’ for any missing items and test your app.
Simply select any item and click the ‘Review’ button to see what information is missing or what requirements you haven’t met.
You can scroll down to the ‘Testing your publication’ section and click the ‘Follow publication’ button before submitting your work. This will make your site appear in the Google News app’s Favorites section.
Then, under the Google News app publishing status’ box, click the ‘Publish’ button and accept the terms of service agreements.
Your publication has now been successfully submitted for review. The review process usually takes 2 weeks or more to complete.
We hope you found this article helpful in figuring out how to submit your WordPress site to Google News.