I regularly get asked about official Google documentation relating to Google News, as well as helpful resources and tools that can inform and educate people interested in the topic.

Rather than type out a fresh list of links whenever such a question pops up, I figured I’d create a single list of resources that I can keep updated and send people to.

So that’s what this edition will be for.

Below I’ll list various docs, guides, tools, etc. categorised in a way that sort of makes sense to me and along the lines that people most regularly ask me about. If you know of any link that you feel should be added to this list, please let me know via a comment or email: barry@polemicdigital.com.

I’ll be updating this page with new and changed links to documents, guides, and tools, so make sure you bookmark this URL and check back regularly.

Getting into Google News

How do you get into Google News? That’s the million-dollar question. Here are all the best documents and guides I can find on the subject.

Official Google Documentation

• Appear in Google News

• Google News policies

• Technical Guidelines

• Best practices for your article pages

• Understanding the sources behind Google News

• Publisher Center FAQ

3rd Party Guides

• How to get into Google News - Coywolf

• How to get approved as a Google News source - Alexa

• The complete guide to Google News SEO - DeepCrawl

• How to get your website listed in Google News - SEJ

• Thoughts on Google’s Algorithmic News Inclusion Process

Optimising for Google News

Getting included in Google News doesn’t mean the traffic just comes flooding in. Your articles need to be optimised for maximum visibility.

Official Google Documentation

• Ranking in Google News

• Google Discover

3rd Party Guides

• The ultimate guide to Google News SEO - SODP

• News SEO: How to optimize your news site - Yoast

• How do I optimise for Google News? - SISTRIX

• WTF is SEO - Jessie Willms & Shelby Blackley

Technical SEO

A technically sound foundation is crucial for all SEO success. Here are some Google documents and 3rd party guides that provide best practices on various aspects of technical SEO.

Official Google Documentation

• Technical Guidelines

• Best practices for your article pages

• Article structured data

• Large site owner’s guide to managing crawl budget

• How HTTP status codes, and network and DNS errors affect Google Search

• Ask Google to recrawl your URLs

• Update the AMP Cache

• Remove your AMP pages

• Robots.txt Introduction & Guide

3rd Party Guides

• Technical SEO: The Definitive Guide - Backlinko

• SEO for Extensive Websites - SISTRIX

• Technical SEO Beginner’s Guide - Ahrefs

• Pagination & SEO: Ultimate Best Practice Guide - DeepCrawl

• How to do a Technical SEO Audit - Optimisey

• TechnicalSEO.com - Merkle

XML Sitemaps

Sitemap files allow you to submit to Google all the pages you want crawled and indexed. For news publishers, extra challenges arise regarding large scale sitemaps and Google News specific sitemap files.

Official Google Documentation

• Build & Submit a Sitemap

• Submit your Sitemap to Google

• Split up your large Sitemaps

• Google News Sitemaps

3rd Party Guides

• Perfecting XML Sitemaps - Polemic Digital

• XML Sitemap: The Ultimate Guide - ContentKing

Video SEO

Video content is a cornerstone of many publishers. Google have some official documentation on how to maximise your videos’ potential impact in search.

Official Google Documentation

• Video Best Practices

• Video sitemaps

• Video structured data

• A new way to enable video key moments in Search

Page Experience / Core Web Vitals

The Page Experience update is now rolling out, which means core web vitals are now ranking factors. Slow loading pages are at a disadvantage in all of Google’s results.

Official Google Documentation

• Page Experience FAQ

• Web Vitals

• Evaluating page experience for a better web

• Core Web Vitals GSC report

• Optimizing Web Vitals using Lighthouse

3rd Party Guides

• Advanced Core Web Vitals; a Technical SEO Guide - SEJ

• How to Improve Core Web Vitals - Simon Hearne

• The Ultimate Guide to Page Experience - Onely

• Core Web Vitals Audit - Seosly

Paywalls

When it comes to paywalled content, there’s a lot of confusion about what to show Google versus what to show your end users. Here are some official Google docs and general guides into paywalls for publishers.

Official Google Documentation

• Subscription and paywalled content

• Content encryption

• Googlebot verification

3rd Party Guides

• Paywalls, SEO, and the need for a damn good brand - CXL

• Publisher paywall strategies from WaPo, Le Monde, and Substack - Press Gazette

Tools

SEOs rely heavily on tools to help them identify and analyse issues. Here are some of the most useful tools from Google and 3rd party providers that I regularly use in my work.

Official Google Tools

• Publisher Center

• Web.Dev Measure

• Rich Results Test

• Mobile Friendly Test

• PageSpeed Insights

• AMP Test

• Realtime Content Insights

3rd Party Tools

• NewsFlashboard - check if a site is in Google News

• NewsDashboard - Google News tracking

• NewzDash - Google News tracking

• SISTRIX - SEO Suite

• DeepCrawl - SEO crawler

• Sitebulb - SEO crawler

• Screaming Frog - SEO crawler

• Schema Markup Validator

• TechnicalSEO.com Tools

This is just the first version of a comprehensive list of resources for people working in news SEO. I’ll be expanding and updating this list regularly, so make sure you bookmark this page and check back once in a while.

And please do let me know what links you feel should be added here. I want this list to be as good and useful as possible, which can only happen with your help. Leave a comment on email me on barry@polemicdigital.com.

As always, thanks for reading and subscribing. Please send this on to anyone it may be useful for, and see you at the next one.

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