You can often see Google News results integrated in the main SERPs on various keywords. Those are news stories from various news sites that are in Google News. And Google displays those often high in the results for various keywords regardless of the competition.
I’ve always thought that Google hand-selects those sites because usually you can see the likes of NYTimes, some big PR sites, etc. As it turns out it’s a costly assumption to make, because you can submit your news site for consideration to be included in Google News. They even provide guidelines and technical requirements your news site has to meet.
And that’s huge because the possibilities of having a site like that are endless. Imagine being able to rank for any keyword you want regardless of competition, even if just for a few hours. It’s hard not to make money with such a site.
So I have a business plan which I’m considering to try out. Which is in a nutshell… you guessed it, a news site approved by Google News!
Looking through the technical requirements and sites that are already in, they don’t seem very high. A simple WordPress blog with the correct url and page structure would work. So the investment to create the site itself is minimal. Getting accepted, though, might be slightly more difficult.
I think the key is to show you’re serious about it. Hire a full time writer that would write news stories daily and make sure the quality is high. Making the design of the site look professional wouldn’t hurt as well.
I’m intrigued by this model and will give it a go. And as I do, I’ll document my progress on this blog.
Getting a website approved by Google seems like a great thrill as well as having boundless potential. I was curious if you decided to give this a go?
No, I haven’t tried it. It got saturated very quickly when this rolled out. Perhaps now with some time passed and dust settled it would be a good idea to finally try this. Just need to find the time.