How to optimize articles for News, Discover and Top Stories on Google
Each month, through its platforms, Google sends over 24 billion free visits to the sites of publishers all around the world, allowing them to monetize through online advertising and subscriptions, or to sell their advertising space to millions of advertisers. In short, the publishing sector can significantly benefit from the visibility offered by Google products, but it is not only the websites of newspapers that are classically intended to achieve this goal: Much of the recent or interesting content can in fact be shown on one of Google’s different organic SERP features, each of which requires a specific optimization work to increase our chances.
Google’s different products for news
Going beyond the classic 10 blue links of organic search and also counter the decrease in organic clicks – certified even by some studies, not without controversies: the Google features providing current content, news or editorial insights can really become an important source of organic traffic for sites.
But the optimization of content to increase the chances of them appearing in Google News, Top Stories and Google Discover is unique and in many respects different from the traditional process of acquiring rankings in the 10 organic blue links of the SERP, and also “Google uses a variety of different organic SERP features to showcase recent or interesting content, each of which includes its own set of classification guidelines and reporting capabilities,” explains Lily Ray on Search Engine Journal.
To complicate the situation even more is the fact that “Google only provides dedicated reports on some, but not all, these features related to news via Google Search Console and Google Analytics”, leaving then “some mystery about where exactly in search results a certain article could generate traffic and impressions“.