Busting Into Google News For Massive Traffic

After reading a few articles about additional ways to send traffic to your site and how to make the most of what you have, I ran across a nice refresher course that I’ll explain in a little more detail. Basically it’s 11 different ways you can optimize your news related blog to join the ranks of Google News and Yahoo News. Trust me, once you’re in, you’re golden.

All of the tips below actually make very logical sense, as they are ways to let Google and Yahoo know that you’re a true news site - not just a vomitorium of articles that everyone else is posting. Of course, you may not be in a position to break the latest and greatest news in your specialty niche, but having plenty of fresh and unique content is key. Anyway, you’ll see what I mean below:

1. Look, without a decent amount of original content, you’ll never get it. Original = not regurgitated news that’s already on 1500 other sites before you post it.

2. Company/Organization Info - It’s key to have your contact info on a dedicated page that shows you’re not some half baked spammer in your mom’s basement. I’m talking business address, business phone, multiple emails (tips@yoursite.com, sales@yoursite.com) - even a contact form if you fancy it.

3. Multiple Authors And/Or Contributors - Whip up a dedicated page on your site that showcases your contributors and regular authors. This makes it look more “newsy” and will boost your rep in the news business. It’s just kosher to do this.

4. The theme - Use a news template theme for your blog. Usually these are multiple column themes and are found all over the place - obviously I’m a fan of the Revolution series, as you have several choices with that brand. There are others though - just Google it.

5. Logo/Header - Make sure your header clearly gives off the impression of whatever industry or segment you’re in. Professionally designed logos are a must.

6. Make sure your URL’s appear static and not dynamic, and are at least 3 digits. If you go to Google News and hover over the links, you’ll see most of them contain dates (example - //www.nytimes.com/2008/08/23/us/23storm.html

7. Titles - Make sure the article titles are the same in the title tag and <h1> tag.

8. Posting frequency - You need to be publishing new material at least 3 times a day (morning, noon, and evening perhaps?) - any less and you’re just a regular Joe.

9. Author name - Each article should have the author’s name and any other additional information about them (like a photo maybe). The more the merrier.

10. Advertising/Sponsorships - If you’re flashing some decent advertisers, this makes you look like your site is traffic worthy, and lends more credit to your brand. In other words, it makes you look important.

11. Use images and videos whenever you can. No good news site out there doesn’t have a ton of vids and pictures. So get used to it. It’s extra work but totally worth it!

Hope the above tips help you in your quest to get listed in the ranks of the big news sites. When you’re ready to take a chance and submit your sites for inclusion, here is where to go:

Google News Submission

Yahoo News Submission

5 Classic Ways To Build Links To Your Site

Getting quality links coming into your site, often referred to as “backlinks” or “incoming links” is usually the quickest and most powerful way to start ranking for your targeted keyword(s). As a matter of fact, even in late 2008, links are still the magic bullet that gets you ranking high for you keywords even after you’ve been a good little SEO elf and performed everything else you can think of. Simply put – without links, you’ve got no chance.

So let’s go over 5 classic ways you can start building links to your site which will greatly enhance and help your overall SEO plan. These are things you should be doing anyway, but even the best of the best occasionally needs a little refresher course to spark the memory.

1. Write an outstanding article – Nothing can consistently generate more natural and quality incoming links than a really, really well written and unique article. Assuming you’ve been involved in your niche for a little while, and have at least a small following of related niche webmasters, if you bust out an outstanding article that grabs someone’s attention – you can bet that chances are good they’ll blog about it! When they do blog about it, chances are also good that they’ll include a link or two back to your article and your site. This is one of the most classic and natural ways to build incoming links, and those who have been doing it on a regular basis are the ones who are holding the top rankings.

2. Review under-rated products/services – At any give time on the internet, there are hundreds, if not thousands of start-up companies that are desperately trying to gain exposure however they can. If you have a knack for finding these companies, you have a great chance at landing links from their site if you blog or write about their product/service. Let’s look at another scenario that I experience last year – I found a social networking site that was just being launched, and I immediately emailed the founder/owner and asked for an interview. Not only was I the first interview, but I was the only interview, and when the site started to get popular, my blog was ranking above it for its own name just from that interview! Not to mention it generated links from social media bloggers who were interested in finding out more about the company. Just be creative, and be the early bird, and you’ll definitely get a whole lot of worms!

3. Link Exchanges – So exchanging links has definitely lost its appeal in the last year or two, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely worthless. Perhaps the easiest way to gain links to your site is by exchanging links with like-minded webmasters. Just hit one of the popular webmaster forums, and you’re bound to find an entire section dedicated to link exchanges where hundreds or even thousands of webmasters are trading links on an hourly basis. Let’s put it this way – if link exchanges weren’t popular and beneficial, then there wouldn’t be hundreds of thousands of webmasters doing it daily.

4. Hold a contest – People love, and will always love, free stuff! Simply holding a contest (just like brick and mortar stores do to attract customers) will attract not only incoming links, but also new readers and extra traffic. The cool thing is that the higher the prize value, the more attention your contest will receive. Give away a $10 gift certificate to Starbucks, and sure, you’ll get a few inquiries – but give away a Nintendo Wii, and you’ll have half the blogosphere talking about it! I’ve successfully given out prizes that were worth $250-$500, and trust me; you can’t buy the kind of publicity it gives you. It’s a small price to pay for what you get in return (and especially if you make them link back to your blog as the way to enter the contest!)

5. Become and expert – Last but certainly not least, becoming and authority or an expert on any given subject will always land you extra links and exposure down the line. This may not be the fastest way to getting tons of links, but over time, it is a strategy that has definitely paid off for many big time webmasters and bloggers. Pick something (say, social networking sites) and become the “go-to” person for it. After a while you’ll have enough of a following to where they’ll turn to you for the latest and greatest in your specialty, and the incoming links will flow.