Optimizing News Website: It is something DIFFERENT

Aug 18
12:32

2016

Pamela  Scout

Pamela Scout

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Website optimization, especially, optimization of news websites is different from the rest. One must keep in mind certain key things while doing that. This article speaks about the various considerations that should be made while optimizing a standard news website.

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Is your website is all about news? Then it must be optimized for search engines with different strategies.

The first and foremost thing you have to do is to construct a really informative website with separate news section for different news or updates. If your news site follows what some popular sites do like Huffington Post or The Guardian then chances are there that your website also gets indexed quickly and gets a decent placement in Google search results.

As per Google,Optimizing News Website: It is something DIFFERENT Articles sharing news is not marketing and hence we have to think or try something really different while optimizing a news website.

ACCELERATED MOBILE PAGES (AMP)

This goes for all websites, but with the colossal amount of people checking news on their mobile devices, you want to make certain this is done correctly on your news site. AMP’s goal is to let somebody see articles instantaneously on a mobile device, instead of loading the full-size desktop site or all the fancy things we fashioned in our responsive website. AMP strips all the design and fancy objects and focuses on conveying the key content as soon as possible.

WEBSITE’S CRAWL SPEED

You want your news website to be indexed and crawled by Google. But you have been noticing that it is not happening that fast as per your expectation. There are certain things, following which your website’s crawl speed can be increased. Make sure to the xml sitemap is made available to your site. However, don’t create the sitemap using regular sitemap generator. Instead, use News SEO plugin to get that done.

If you are unable to add the sitemap, seek help from experts. Don’t just wait and keep on trying yourself. Remember one very important thing. Avoid creating new sitemap for each of the new articles shared in your website.

Crawl rate will also be enhanced if you time after time post new articles on your news website. If Googlebot finds fresh stuff on your website with every crawl, it will come to your website over and over again. This also means you have to have a concrete hosting server, so your website is up whenever Googlebot visits your site. That very Googlebot might essentially cause downtime, in case it visits your site too frequently and your server is crappy.

SITE STRUCTURE MATTERS A LOT

You have shared a blog or article in your news website and just laid back. This is not the way you must work to get your website run well. It is important that you put articles on one site, testimonials on another side and so on. You must consult a senior website analyst or optimizer to get the structure in the correct format.

You must follow certain steps to get it done:

  • Evaluate your website categories
  • Add sub-categories and tags wherever required
  • Add pagination
  • Get rid of outdated content
  • Add unique and updated content

WORK ON STANDOUT TAGS AND NEWS KEYWORDS TAGS

Standout tags can be used to emphasize your original reporting. It is for news that you, as a news association, have shaped yourself. This might escort to Google listing it as “featured” in the news results.

We said valediction to Meta keywords a while back, but Google is still using a variant of that tag: Meta news keywords. Just for Google News, parenthetically. It is not rather magic that will make you rank improved, but helps Google News to establish what your article is all about. It is of no use using this tag when you are not in Google News.

UPDATE CONTENT REGULARLY

It is really important that you keep on feeding your news website with fresh, correct and new content. This will help your site to get indexed faster than ever. Make it a habit.

Remember, Google loves fresh and informative content. So, avoid posting generic articles or any other posts. Another benefit of sharing fresh and updated content is that your audience will be able to view and read updated news and hence, chances will increase that they will keep on visiting your news website again and again.

ASK EXPERTS

Stop assuming that you know everything. It is always good that you consult with experts who have better knowledge and experience in website optimization. They will be able to guide you on optimizing your news website.

CONCLUSION

There are many things that can be done to get a fully optimized website. Apart from monitoring crawl rate, load time, keywords tags and website structure, there are many other things which can be done. Hence, you must contact a professional website analyst and optimizer to get the work done with sheer perfection.