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Google News and Yahoo! News generate thousands of unique visits each day for a site. Many news publishers fail to understand these two channels, others simply don’t know how to apply for inclusion and how to create a site that qualifies. This is possibly one of the hardest SEO challenges for any news publisher.

In an interview for Ojr.org back in 2008, Google News’ Daniel Meredith stated that “Google News is “in the top five” news portals worldwide. In the same interview, Meredith also advises what news publishers can do to improve their sites up to the point that their sites look better in the eyes of the Google news bot and the editors: original content, multiple authors, proper attribution and response time.

As you see, only news publications with multiple authors get Google’s blessing. Clearly this raises problems for independent bloggers, but this also shows one possible trend for 2009 (already predicted by a few media experts): bloggers will get organized. Too many talented authors go unnoticed because Google doesn’t pay attention to single author news sites and blogs.

One of my 2009 resolutions is to get Pamil Visions’ new news site (in work, not online yet) included in Google News, Yahoo! and Topix. I’ve done it in the past for customers (confidential SEO contracts) and it’s time to do it for my own company as well. From idea to result I’ll have to walk a long way – it’s always hard to promote new sites (new domains). Although requesting inclusion is easy, all requests are subject to editorial approval. I am counting on the quality of the content I will produce to achieve my goal, but as you already know, content alone is not enough.

With very good web hosting (thus server response time) in place, what follows are the steps I will take, steps you could also follow to get your sites included in Google News.

1. Hire two more writers, to get the “multi author” aspect covered (we are already a team of three). Create author profiles for all the authors. You can apply for a position if you are familiar with issues such as online PR, SEO and social media.
2. Create original, non-duplicated content: from editorials to startup reviews, and publishing news from the field the site will cover.
3. Choose a news template for the site – blog templates are usually not accepted (unless the site has the popularity of ReadWriteWeb for example). I’ll go with Revolution News, because I have already purchased the template and it is very easy to work with.
4. Write content rich articles: which should include minimum 250-300 words in the body, images and if possible videos.
5. Article frequency: add at least 3 high quality articles a day, if not more.
6. Set the of the html page to the title of the article – this will show Google that the content of each page is unique.
7. Set the url structure in the CMS (I’ll use WordPress) to search engine friendly permalinks.
8. Create a Google sitemap.
9. Write an organizational About page and add an organizational Contact page.

In addition to these steps, there are some more “tricks” to make a site fit for inclusion: at least 100 articles before completing the request for inclusion and care with the number of advertisements published on the site. Too much advertising might determine the editors reject the application.

If this occurs it is not the end of the world: the Google News editors usually give a reason for rejecting an application. Correct the issues and resubmit.

Google News inclusion has obvious SEO advantages: sites indexed in Google News have more chances to occupy the first positions in Google’s Web search SERPs as well. News sources are also quoted by other sites, thus receiving more links.

Some more tips: on news sites article updates should be avoided, because Google News scans every URL only once. So make sure the information you publish is correct from the start. Try to get as many feed subscribers as possible.

Once you comply with all the above rules, inclusion in Yahoo! News and Topix (via Feedback button in the footer of the site) is really easy.