Getting More Traffic and Exposure From Google News Part One

Why Do You Need to Be in Google News?

Because that’s where the eyes are.

We know that reading the news is one of the top four things people do online, and that if you want to be found online as well as off, you need to be a part of that activity stream.

Since more people get their news from Google News than CNN, that definitely includes Google News, if there was ever any doubt.

It’s also faster to get into than Google’s web results. While it’s true that you can initiate content discovery by Google in seconds if you know what you’re doing, getting that content into the database still takes anywhere from a few hours to a few days. And to get ranked for the keyword you want? That could take months if it happens at all.

But showing up in Google News for a keyword you want to be ranked for can happen in as little as 15 minutes, especially if your site is set up to be one of the sites Google reprints headlines and excerpts from.

Not to mention that if your topic is in the news, as Google, Inc. often is, your site could be among those linked to above the web results. Click through to the web results for Google to see an example.

Google News can also get your headlines in other places that your prospects may be following that include or overlap Google News results, such as Moreover Headlines, and Google Alerts.

So, now that you know the benefits, let’s discuss how you, dear reader, can get in on one of the Top 17 Traffic Sources of 2010, Google News.

Getting Into Google News

There are three primary ways to get in:

1. As a publication that is featured in Google News for your industry
2. In a publication that already appears in Google News
3. In a press release

Above, they’re displayed in order of difficulty. We’re going to discuss them now in order of ease.  And the easiest way to get into Google News is by submitting a press release to a site whose releases appear in Google News. I’ve discussed how to get into Google news with articles since 2005, but before today, only told the full story of how to do this with press releases in my High Profile Article Marketing kit. The basics of the method are very simple.

First, find a site whose press releases appear in Google news. You can either go and search Google News for your topic and reverse engineer which sites will appear, or you can go to a site like WebWire or PRWeb and pay the $20, $80, $120 fee to get your press release mentioned in Google News.

With the first way, you may find sites that get listed for free, however, you also have to look out for the fact that some sites are favored on certain days of the week, or won’t show up at all if some major news breaks. Figuring out how likely it is for a free press release to get you into Google News is tricky enough, but then you also have to try and figure out if you’ll be ranked.

For that reason, I always go with the second way, and just submit my press release to several sites, including PRWeb and Webwire.

Next time, how to get into Google News through another publication.