Google for the keywords

For years, I spent hours a day working on the typical search engine optimization (SEO) methods. I spent
hours and hours creating backlinks, creating blogs that linked to my landing pages, etc., etc. Then, I
started wondering about the News Results that appeared on the front page of Google search engine
results. I wondered how I could become one of those sites.
I searched high and low to find information about becoming a Google News site, but only found the list
of requirements that Google puts out. Some bloggers mentioned the process a little, but nobody got
into detail about it. I had a newsy looking site that had been around for years. I applied for it to become
a Google News site and it was denied. I created a few more sites and they were all denied as well.
The reason that everybody is so hush hush about Google News is because it is a goldmine that people
want to keep to themselves.
Take a look at the image below. This is the first result page on Google for the keyword “foreclosures”.
This keyword is highly competitive. AdWords advertisers pay up to $10 a click for top placement in the
sponsored listings section. Being listed on the front page with an organic listing is like winning the
lottery, something you will most likely never accomplish.
Notice what is just below the sponsored listings and above the organic listing: News Results!
Google News: Your Untapped Source for High Paying Keyword Traffic
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News results can appear anywhere on the search results page. Google users can also get News Results
by clicking on the “News” link that appears at the top left of every page of Google. Google News is
accessed by over 30 million people a day, making it the number one news aggregator in the world.
There are only about 20,000 websites that are official Google News Source Sites. That may sound like a
big number, but consider the fact that most webmasters are fighting for ranking in the regular search
engine results against almost a billion other sites and 20,000 doesn’t seem so big anymore. Also,
consider that 30 million people are looking for news from only 20,000 news providers!
After two or three years of trying, I have now cracked the code to getting my sites approved by Google
News. Since my breakthrough site, every site that I have applied for inclusion has been approved!
In this eBook you will learn how to create a site that follows the requirements of becoming an official
Google News source site. I will show you the blueprint that I use to get sites approved. You will also
learn how to take advantage of being a Google News site by maximizing your profit potential using
AdSense and other revenue streams.
I recommend printing out and reading this eBook one time while you are away from the computer. At
first glance it may look like a lot of work, but I am confident that every step can be accomplished in one
weekend, no matter what your webmaster skill level is. I have done this many times in less than a day
and so have many of my students.
Google News: Your Untapped Source for High Paying Keyword Traffic
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Copyright © 2010 gNewsNow.com. All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
Step One: Creating your new news site… Page 3
Step Two: Setting Up Categories… Page 6
Step Three: Proper Permalinks… Page 8
Step Four: The Must Have Plugins… Page 9
Step Five: Setting Up Your Organizational Structure… Page 10
Step Six: Initial Article Population… Page 12
Step Seven: Initial Ad Placement… Page 14
Step Eight: The Application Process… Page 15
Step Nine: Submitting a Google News Sitemap… Page 19
Step Ten: Once You are Approved… Page 20
Bonus One: Maximizing Profit… Page 21
Bonus Two: Making Your AdSense Ads More Clickable… Page 23
Bonus Three: Getting Others to Write for You for Free… Page 25
Google News: Your Untapped Source for High Paying Keyword Traffic
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Copyright © 2010 gNewsNow.com. All rights reserved.
Step One: Creating your new news site
You are going to set up a brand new WordPress site. WordPress is software that creates an easy to use
blog. It is used by millions and is very easy to understand. Though we are using blog software, you are
not creating a blog, you are creating a news site.
It doesn’t matter if you have a blog already. Your blog stinks and doesn’t make money, that’s why you
bought this ebook. Plus, your blog is, well, a blog. Blogs are not news sites and a news site is what we
are going to create. Google News only accepts news sites or else they would call it something else.
If you have experience setting up a WordPress site then you can skip this part and head straight to the
Themes section. If you have no idea what you are doing, then keep reading. Don’t worry, it’s like child’s
play!
You need to have two things in order to get started. You need a domain name and you need to host it
somewhere. I have been using HostGator for years and recommend them to everybody I talk to. You
can sign up for a hosting plan for just $4.95 a month. You can register your domain name and set up an
account all at once. HostGator accounts also have what is called a “cPanel”. Your cPanel has a special
feature that allows you to install a new WordPress site in less than a minute. It is by far the easiest way
to create your new site.
If you are going to use HostGator, you should use this link to sign up for your account because I make
money every time I refer a new client to them – and I like money. If you are using an existing host plan
or a different company, then go ahead and install your new WordPress and skip to the section that
discusses themes. For those of you that are going to use HostGator or have a cPanel with your existing
account, then keep reading.
Installing WordPress
Log into your new hosting account’s cPanel and click on the icon that says “Fantastico”. When
Fantastico loads you will see a menu of software that is ready to install. You are going to click on
“WordPress”.
Follow the simple instructions, i.e. username, password, etc. When it asks if you want to install
WordPress in a specific directory, just leave that blank. We want WordPress installed in your root
directory. That means when somebody goes to www.yoursite.com, they will go directly to the front
page of your WordPress installation.
Once you are finished with your installation, you need to install your new theme.
Installing Your News Theme
You paid for my blueprint, so I will tell you that I used a theme called “WP Advanced Newspaper”, but
you are free to use whatever theme you want. Just be sure that your theme does not look like a blog. It
must look like a news site!
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Copyright © 2010 gNewsNow.com. All rights reserved.
WP Advanced Newspaper Theme is
the best news theme for WordPress
available. It is professional looking,
which is a Google News requirement,
and it is easy to use, even if you are a
newbie. It is the theme that I have
used for each of my Google News
sites.
The picture to the left is an example
of what the WP Advanced Newspaper
Theme looks like.
WP Advanced Newspaper is made by
Gabfire Themes. It is a premium
theme and costs $59.00. You can buy
and download it instantly here. I am
not an affiliate and have no
association with Gabfire. I am simply
a fan of their themes, because I know
that they work!
Again, you can use a different newsy
theme; however, I strongly
recommend using WP Advanced
Newspaper. Is $59 really that big of
an investment for creating a site that
will make $50 a day with ease? If it is,
then you should not be in business. I
hear McDonalds is hiring, so run
along and get that application in fast!
Google News: Your Untapped Source for High Paying Keyword Traffic
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Copyright © 2010 gNewsNow.com. All rights reserved.
If you are absolutely against spending money on a great news theme or just can’t afford it, then here is
an alternative for you.
I have not used this theme, but it looks the most professional of all the free themes that I have found.
The theme “arthemia” is free and available at this site.
This theme seems to have all of the
attributes of a professional looking
news site, so I will recommend it if
you must have a free theme.
Again, I have not used this theme,
but I did download it and looked
around. It is not nearly as easy to
modify and set up as the WP
Advanced Newspaper theme that I
talked about above, but it looks
like it would do the trick to get you
started.
The installation of a theme into
your new WordPress site is pretty
easy. Whatever theme you
choose will come with instructions.
If you need help, you can find it in
the help forums at our site.
Google News: Your Untapped Source for High Paying Keyword Traffic
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Copyright © 2010 gNewsNow.com. All rights reserved.
Step Two: Setting Up Categories
The news site that we are setting up is going to contain a wide variety of categories. This will allow you
to pretty much write about whatever the hot topic of the day is. Also, sites that cover a wider range of
news categories are more likely to get accepted into Google News. After you get your first site accepted
into Google News, you can create other sites that are more targeted to one specific niche, i.e. a financial
news site or a sports news site.
In your WordPress admin section, add the following categories:
 Featured News
 Finance
 Entertainment
 Sports & Recreation
 Shopping
 Travel
 Business
 Health
These are the basic categories that we are going to start with when we populate the site. As you add
more and more content to your site, the need will come to add more categories. Add them as you need
them, but start with this list now.
Google News: Your Untapped Source for High Paying Keyword Traffic
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Copyright © 2010 gNewsNow.com. All rights reserved.
Step Three: Making Proper Google News Compatible Permalinks
Permalinks are the URLs to your news stories or articles. Google News requires that each of these URLs
contain a unique number with a minimum of three digits. We are going to set that up now.
Log into your WordPress admin section and click on the “Settings” link on the left side navigation. A
number of sub-categories should open below the “Settings” heading. Click on the one that says
“Permalinks”.
On the Permalinks Settings page, the top section should say “Common Settings”. In that section there
will be a number of choices with a checkmark box next to them. You are going to click on the choice
that says “Custom Structure”.
In the “Custom Structure” field copy and paste the following text:
/%postname%/%post_id%/
Once you paste that string of text, click the “save changes” button.
We just accomplished two things. The first thing that we did was change the URLs of your posts to
include the post title. This will help in general search engine optimization. The second and most
important thing that we did was add a post number to the URL. This is the number that Google News
requires.
When you first get started adding posts, that unique number will not be the required minimum three
digits. Don’t worry about that. We will fix that problem in a later section.
Google News: Your Untapped Source for High Paying Keyword Traffic
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Copyright © 2010 gNewsNow.com. All rights reserved.
Step Four: The Must Have Plugins
One of the reasons that WordPress is a great piece of software is because it allows for Plugins. There
are literally thousands of plugins available for you to use. These Plugins are written by developers,
hobbyists, and businesses. Some cost money, but most are free. All of the ones that we will be using
are free.
Installing a plugin to your WordPress site is easy. Once you download the must have Plugins, log into
your WordPress admin section and click on the “Plugins” link on the left side of your menu bar. Once
that page loads, click on the “Add New” button at the top. There will be a text menu at the top of the
page. Click on the link that says “Upload”. Once that page loads, use the browse button and navigate to
the plugin that you are loading. Activate the new plugin by clicking the “Activate Plugin” link that
appears. Some Plugins will require an initial setup. The next section will go over the setup of your must
have Plugins.
Here is the list. Go to each of the links below and download the Plugins to your computer’s hard drive.
Do not unzip the files. You will be uploading them to WordPress in their zipped format.
 Google News Sitemap Generator – This is not the same as a normal Google Sitemap for search
engine listings. The sitemap that this plugin will generate is specific for Google News. Google
News has a lot of specific rules and this sitemap generator will take care of all of them.
 Meta Tag Generator – Your new site will have to be added to Google Webmaster Tools. In order
to add a new site to Webmaster Tools, you will need to add a special Meta Tag to your site that
Google will provide you with. WordPress does not allow you to add Meta Tags, so this plugin
was created. Download and install it, then forget about it for now. We will address it again
later.
 Secure Form Mailer Plugin for WordPress – Google News requires a contact page. This plugin is
the most widely used plugin for creating contact forms in WordPress. It is professional looking
and simple. Download and activate. We will come back to this plugin later with details.
 SEO Smart Links – This plugin will be used to create more revenue streams for your blog.
Download and activate. We will come back to this plugin later with details.
 WP Super Cache – This plugin creates a cache of every page that gets accessed by a visitor.
Caching is basically taking a photograph of a page when the first person visits that page. That
photograph is then presented to the visitors that follow, instead of working your database every
time a visitor comes to your site. This serves two purposes. 1) it makes pages on your site load
faster and 2) it saves you from getting suspended by your hosting service. From time to time
you will post an article that gets extremely high amounts of traffic in a short period of time.
Without this plugin, the server load will be huge and your host will suspend your account.
Google News: Your Untapped Source for High Paying Keyword Traffic
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Copyright © 2010 gNewsNow.com. All rights reserved.
Step Five: Setting Up Your Organizational Structure
Google news has specific requirements that your website must meet in order to become approved as a
Google News Source. These requirements include being an actual organization and some specific pages
that must appear with information about your organization.
Let’s discuss the organizational structure first.
Google News requires that your site have multiple authors and not just one guy sitting in his underwear
banging out news articles. Don’t let this frighten you… even if you are just one guy sitting around in
your underwear banging out articles.
The first thing that you need to do is create about ten ghost names for yourself and add these names as
users in your WordPress admin area. When you start posting articles, you will be alternating between
the “authors”.
The next thing you need to add is an Authors Page. Creating a “page” in WordPress is simple. Click on
the pages link in your admin section and then “add new”.
The title of this page should be “Writers”. You will see a simple editor. This is where you are going to
list your new authors. You want to list their names and a short, one sentence bio below the name, as
well as an email address to contact that writer. You can simply make their name a link to their email
address.
Here is a sample of what you can put on that page:
MyNewsSite.com features a team of talented writers with a variety of background. Click on the writer’s
name to send them an email.
Mike Jones
Mike is the editor and chief of MyNewsSite.com. He has over seven years experience as a
journalist and we love him for his attention to detail.
Sandra Smith
Sandra is a graduate of the University of Some State with a bachelors degree in journalism.
Sandra’s focus is financial news.
Steve Rose
Steve is our lead technology writer. We call him our resident geek.
I’m sure that you get the picture.
The next thing that you need to create is an About Us page. Create the page in the same way that you
did above, by clicking on the Pages link and then “add new” in your admin section.
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The About Us page can be as short or long as you want it to be. I recommend it being about three
paragraphs about how you have a skilled team of writers that works hard to bring the facts to our
readers on a daily basis, bla, bla, bla.
You will also need to create a Privacy Policy page. I have pasted a sample of what you can put there. I
am assuming that you will be using AdSense on your site, so this privacy policy includes the mandatory
AdSense statements.
Your Privacy
Your privacy is important to us. To better protect your privacy we provide this notice explaining our online
information practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used.
To make this notice easy to find, we make it available on our homepage and at every point where
personally identifiable information may be requested.
Google Adsense and the DoubleClick DART Cookie
Google, as a third party advertisement vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on this site. The use of DART
cookies by Google enables them to serve adverts to visitors that are based on their visits to this website as
well as other sites on the internet.
To opt out of the DART cookies you may visit the Google ad and content network privacy policy at the
following URL http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html Tracking of users through the DART cookie
mechanisms are subject to Google’s own privacy policies.
Other Third Party ad servers or ad networks may also use cookies to track users activities on this website to
measure advertisement effectiveness and other reasons that will be provided in their own privacy policies,
YOURSITE.com has no access or control over these cookies that may be used by third party advertisers.
Collection of Personal Information
When visiting YOURSITE.com, the IP address used to access the site will be logged along with the dates
and times of access. This information is purely used to analyze trends, administer the site, track users
movement and gather broad demographic information for internal use. Most importantly, any recorded IP
addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information.
Links to third party Websites
We have included links on this site for your use and reference. We are not responsible for the privacy
policies on these websites. You should be aware that the privacy policies of these sites may differ from our
own.
Changes to this Privacy Statement
The contents of this statement may be altered at any time, at our discretion.
If you have any questions regarding the privacy policy of YOURSITE.com then you may contact us at
YOUR-EMAIL-ADDRESS.
Now you need to create a Contact Us page. This page should either be another list of your authors with
their email address and a main company contact email address or a form that the visitors can type in
their message and send to you. If you choose to use the form, then you will use the plugin called Secure
Form Mailer Plugin for WordPress that you installed previously.
That’s it! Your organizational structure is now complete!
Google News: Your Untapped Source for High Paying Keyword Traffic
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Copyright © 2010 gNewsNow.com. All rights reserved.
Step Six: Initial Article Population
This step is very important. Before applying to become a Google News Source, you must have a history
of providing news online. I am going to teach you an easy way of getting articles into your site, but keep
in mind that this process will only be done this one time. You will never do this again for reasons that I
will explain.
Once you become a Google News Source, your content should be 100% unique. That means that the
articles that you use do not appear anywhere else on the web. I will show you some tricks for quickly
creating unique content later, but right now you need to get content into your site. Just this one time,
you are going to populate your site with press releases. Press releases are available at a number of
press release distribution sites. Below, I have listed links to some distribution sites where you can grab
press releases to add to your site.
www.prnewswire.com
www.24-7pressrelease.com
www.prlog.org
Press releases are written by companies that want to share information about them to the world. You
are free to copy and paste any of these press releases onto your site. We are going to grab quite a few,
but we are going to add them to your site systematically. Follow these instructions:
You are going to copy and paste at least fifteen press releases for each category that is on your site, but
don’t add them as articles yet. Save them to a Word file for now. Most press releases have a tail end
section that usually starts with “About XYZ Inc.” or something similar. You should not include that part.
Once you have at least fifteen press releases for every category it is time to start adding them to your
site. To do this, you will simply click the “Posts” link in your WordPress admin section and then the “Add
New” link.
You will then add the title and contents of your first article. You should also add a picture with every
post that you make from this moment on. You can find relevant pictures by searching Google Images.
The pictures that you use should all be in the jpg format. Google News prefers to use pictures that are
jpegs over any other format. To upload the image, place your cursor before the first letter in the body
of your article and click on the pic icon above the title field. When uploading your pic you will have an
option for alignment of that pic. You want to choose “Left”. This will put your picture in the top left of
your article with the text wrapping around your pic. DO NOT CLICK THE PUBLISH BUTTON YET!
Now, you are going to select the category that your article belongs in. Check the appropriate category,
but also check the Featured News category. Featured news is not mandatory later on, but for now let’s
add all posts to this category as well.
Now, in the field marked “Post Tags” you want to add relevant keywords or keyphrases. Separate each
with a comma and then click the “Add” button next to the Post Tags field.
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You’ve come to a very important step: backdating your articles. Just above the Publish button on the
right side you will see “Publish immediately”. Next to that there will be an edit link. Click on edit. A
calendar will appear. For your first set of articles (one for each category) you want to set that date to
ten weeks ago. Once you set the date to two months ago, click the “ok” button. You are now ready to
click the “Publish” button.
Here is something that you are only going to have to do one time. Google News requires that each of
your article URLs have a unique number with a minimum of three digits. We already set up WordPress
to assign a unique number to each of your URLs, but when you are just getting started, that unique
number is not three digits. It starts at the number 1. This next step may seem a bit tiresome, but you
can do it in less than five minutes.
After you post your first article, click on Posts on the left nav bar. You should see two articles: the one
you just posted and another sample article titled “Hello World”. Delete the Hello World post.
Now, click on the title of the post you just made. Now click the “Update” button. When the page
reloads, click it again. Keep clicking it until you do it about 99 times. Each time you click that Update
button, the number of the next article that you post increases. After doing this 99 or so times, your next
post should be compliant with the unique three digit requirement. Is there an easier way? Probably,
but I don’t know what it is, so suck it up and do it! 
Repeat this step for each of the first set articles (one for each category). For the next set of articles, you
want to repeat this except change the date to nine weeks ago. Do this all the way up until you get to the
current week.
Once you reach the current week, you want to start backdating the articles so that they appear about a
day away from each other.
You now have a bunch of articles that that are nothing more copy and pasted press releases. You are
going to want to add some real news articles now.
If you are an experienced writer, then start writing. If not, here is a trick that will make writing very
easy. This is a tactic that is used in newsrooms around the world. It’s called re-writing the news. The
newswires (like AP) send the story summaries to the newsroom and the writers basically re-write the
article in their own words.
Find recent news stories from each of your categories (from Google News, CNN.com, etc.) and re-write
them. Your articles do not have to be epic in length, but they should be no less than 150 words.
You want to add a new article for each of your categories at least every other day, alternating so that
there is always new content on the site. You can do this by backdating or postdating in one sitting or
post them in real time.
(Once you are accepted as a Google News Source, I will show you way to get others to write articles for
you for free, but in the beginning you need to do a little leg work.)
Google News: Your Untapped Source for High Paying Keyword Traffic
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Copyright © 2010 gNewsNow.com. All rights reserved.
Step Seven: Initial Ad Placement
Whatever WordPress theme you chose to use, there will be spots to place banner ads. For now, you do
not want to fill those ad spots with AdSense ads. You want to use regular banner ads. Use affiliate
banners, network banners, whatever banner ads you want, as long as they are not AdSense ads.
Google News does not have a problem with you using Google AdSense ads (how could they!), but before
you are approved we want it to look like you have paid advertising already in place and that this is not a
“made for AdSense” site.
Google News: Your Untapped Source for High Paying Keyword Traffic
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Copyright © 2010 gNewsNow.com. All rights reserved.
Step Eight: The Application Process
This step is crucial, so don’t mess it up!
Before you even think about applying to become a Google News Source, take a look at your site. Go
through as many pages as possible and ask yourself, “Does this site look professional?” If the answer is
no, then you need to make whatever changes necessary to do so. You may want to post a link to your
site in our forums and get the advice of the peanut gallery. They will offer valuable advice.
Once you feel that your site looks good, then it is time to apply for inclusion to Google News.
Google News has a checklist of requirements to become a Google News Source Site. I will list those
requirements below. You must make sure that you comply. If you don’t, then fix it! Some of the rules
will not apply to you at all. Here is the checklist (my notes are in red):
1. Technical Requirements: Article URLs
In order to be included in Google News, your articles URLs should meet the following guidelines:
Be unique. Each of your pages that display an article's full text needs to have a unique URL. We can't
include sites in Google News that display multiple articles under one URL, or that do not have links to
pages dedicated solely to each article. (We took care of this in Section 3)
Be permanent. For example, we wouldn't be able to crawl the page www.yoursite.com/news1.html if it
displayed a different story every day. In order to ensure that our links to articles function properly, each
article on a news site needs to be associated with one unique URL, and that URL must be permanent
(i.e., it can't be recycled). (We took care of this in Section 3)
Display a three-digit number. The URL for each article must contain a unique number consisting of at
least three digits. For example, we can't crawl an article with this URL:
http://www.google.com/news/article23.html. We can, however, crawl an article with this URL:
http://www.google.com/news/article234.html. Keep in mind that if the only number in the article
consists of an isolated four-digit number that resembles a year, such as
http://www.google.com/news/article2006.html, we won't be able to crawl it. (We took care of this in
Section 3)
2. Technical Requirements: Different domains
We won't be able to crawl your articles if they are hosted on a domain that's separate from your main
site. For instance, if your news page is located at www.domain.com, your articles must also be hosted
on this domain. Any articles located at www.differentdomain.com would not be included in Google
News. (This does not concern you, as all of your articles will be on the same domain.)
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3. Technical Requirements: Drop-down menus
If your articles are located in a drop down box, we won't be able to crawl them. Google News is unable
to crawl articles only accessible through a drop down menu. (This does not apply to you.)
4. Technical Requirements: Embedded JavaScript text
Google News doesn't accept articles embedded in JavaScript because they sometimes display different
content for users (who see the JavaScript-based text) than for search engines (which see the no scriptbased
text). If your articles are embedded in JavaScript, you need to provide the textual contents of
JavaScript in a no script tag, in order to be included in Google News. (This does not apply to you.)
5. Technical Requirements: Flash, graphic/image or JavaScript links
Google News does not recognize or follow Flash, graphic/image or JavaScript links which link to articles.
Our automated crawler is best able to crawl plain text HTML links. (This does not apply to you.)
Technical Requirements: Forum URLs
If your site contains forum posts or user generated comments, please make sure the URLs to those posts
or comments contain specifically one of the following substrings:
* /board/ or /boards/
* /forum/ or /forums/
* /messageboard
* /showthread
* ?threadid= or &threaded
Adding the substrings will ensure that our crawler avoids crawling this type of content in Google News,
and will help us maintain a high quality experience for our users.
Please note, if your original news article URLs contain any of the substrings listed above, our crawler will
ignore those URLs and your articles won't be included in Google News. Keep in mind that we're unable
to include sites that don't have a formal editorial review process. (Use this information only if you install
a chat forum or message board later, otherwise, this does not apply to you.)
6. Technical Requirements: Frames
If your site uses frames, we may not be able to crawl your content properly. Frames can cause problems
for search engines because they usually display several URLs (one for each frame) within a single page. If
there's a version of your site that doesn't use frames, please send us the URL, and we'll be happy to
review it for inclusion in Google News. (This does not apply to you.)
Google News: Your Untapped Source for High Paying Keyword Traffic
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Copyright © 2010 gNewsNow.com. All rights reserved.
7. Technical Requirements: Languages and encoding
Google News is unable to include sites with articles that display more than one language within the text
of the article. Our system is best able to crawl articles written in one language. If you're able to make
changes to your site so that each of your articles is written in only one language, please contact us.
Additionally, please note that sites encoded in UTF-8 are optimal for Google News. (Unless you made
some funky changes to WordPress, you should be good to go with this.)
8. Technical Requirements: Multimedia content
Our news crawler gathers content by extracting text articles. We currently don't accept audio files or
podcasts, but are accepting video via YouTube. If your site displays multimedia content, and we don't
crawl your articles, it may be due to the fact that your articles do not contain enough words. (It is OK to
paste a Youtube video AFTER your article, but your entire article cannot just consist of a video.)
9. Technical Requirements: Non-permanent section pages
If the URLs of your main news sections change on a daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly basis, we may
not be able to include your site in Google News. Non-permanent URLs prevent us from crawling your
new content, as we're unable to detect the most current URL to be crawled. Our automated crawler is
best able to crawl sites when the URLs of their main news sections don't change. (We have taken care
of this in an earlier section.)
10. Technical Requirements: PDF and other non-HTML formats
Google News doesn't crawl articles in PDF format, although this content is included on Google Web
Search. Our automated crawler is currently best able to crawl plain text HTML sites. (This should not
affect you, as long as you post in the way that I explained.)
11. Technical Requirements: Registration/subscription sites
(There is a lot of mumbo jumbo about this that I chose to snip out. My advice to you is to not make your
site a “must register to read content site”. )
12. Technical Requirements: URL errors
Certain URLs may cause technical issues. For instance, articles may be rejected if our automated crawler
doesn't accept their URLs. The list of rejected URLs includes but isn't limited to the following:
URLs can't start with: https or javascript.
URLs can't end with: .gif, .hqx, .jpeg, .jpg or .zip.
If you're able to change your serving protocol or top level domain and follow the other guidelines laid
out in our Help Center, we should be able to crawl your site. (None of this should apply to you.)
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Ok, so those are the requirements from Google News. You should be compliant with all of them and not
have any problems. If you think that your site looks good and you are compliant with the requirements,
then it is time to apply!
The application to have your site included as a Google News Source is located here.
The questions are pretty straight forward, but I will go over a few with you and explain exactly what you
need to do for those steps.
When you first get to the page, there will only be a single question that asks if you are a representative
of the site. Click the “yes” button. Clicking the yes button will open up the questionnaire form.
How many authors and editors contribute to the creation of your news content? You should select
either 6-10 or 11-20.
Contact information available on your site: This is where you are going to put the URL of the Contact
Us page that you created earlier. Go to your site’s homepage and click on the Contact Us page then
copy the URL. Make sure that the URL that you enter is correct.
List of authors and editors available on your site: You should paste the URL of the “Writers” page that
you created earlier.
Site Location Information: Be truthful here.
Content Type: Check the box that says “A Site”
Your contact information: Be truthful here as well. Do not use a fake name. Also, make sure that the
name that you give matches the name in which your domain is listed as owned by. This is not a
requirement, but it helps.
Subject: You want to put something like “Google News Source Application” in this field
Other comments: Do not leave this field blank! Write a letter that begins with “Dear Google”, “To
Whom It May Concern”, or something like that. In the body of your letter, write a brief not in your
words that says you are applying to be added as a Google News Source. Tell them about any experience
that you or your other writers have. Be creative, as they won’t be doing a background check. Tell them
that you believe that your site has passed all of the technical requirements and that you will be
submitting a Google News Sitemap. Ask them to please let you know if there are any technical problems
or questions in general about you or the site.
Ok, now what? Now you keep posting articles. During this application process it is imperative that
you add at least three new news articles to the site every day. These articles must be unique and timely
(or newsy). During this time at least one of your daily articles should deal with current events, for
example: the war in Afghanistan, the Haiti earthquake, Tiger Woods’ marriage problems, etc. Now it’s
time to submit a Google News Sitemap.
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Step Nine: Submitting a Google News Sitemap
You may or may not be familiar with sitemaps already. If you are, a Google News Sitemap is different
than a regular Google Sitemap.
You should have already installed the Google News Sitemap Generator back in Section Four. Setting up
the sitemap is simple. Go to your WordPress admin section and click on the “Settings” tab at the
bottom of the left side navigation. A tree should open below it. Click on “Google News Sitemap”. This
will open the settings page for the sitemap generator.
When the Sitemap Options page loads you only need to make sure that the only two boxes that are
checked are:
“Include posts in Google News sitemap” and “Use post tags as sitemap keywords”
None of the categories should be checked for exclusion at this time. If you decide to put an editorial
category or something that isn’t newsy, then you may want to exclude that category, as Google News
doesn’t like editorials unless you’re well known.
Now click the Update Options button and you are done with this page.
The URL of your sitemap should be at YourSite.com/google-news-sitemap.xml
Check to see if your sitemap is there. If it isn’t, don’t freak out, just let us know in the forums and we
will fix it for you.
Assuming that your Google News Sitemap is there, now it is time to submit it to Google. Most people
have a Google account already. If not, simply sign up for Gmail and you will get one. Sign in to your
Google account and click on Settings > Google Site Settings.
Now you want to find “Webmaster Tools”. Add your new site. You will need to verify it by placing a
special meta tag on your website that Google will give you. Use the Meta Tag generator plugin to add
the meta tag to your WordPress site.
(If you have any questions about any of this, head to our forums and get the answers.)
Once your site is verified, click on Site Configuration >> Site Maps
There will be a button that says “submit a sitemap”. You should enter “google-news-sitemap.xml”.
Once you submit the news sitemap, you will see an hourglass next to it. That hourglass will eventually
turn to a red X. This is because news sitemaps are only accepted by the system for sites that are in the
Google News database. Once you are approved, that X will eventually turn into a checkmark.
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Step Ten: Once You are Approved
You should hear back from Google News within a week, but it may take longer. Be patient. If your site is
not approved, don’t worry! Google News will work with you. Address any problems that they tell you
about and reply to the email that they sent you. The Google News team is not very quick with replies.
Be patient, you may not hear back for a few days, but you will hear back. If you encounter problems or
have questions, head to the forums for answers.
Let’s assume that you are now approved. Congratulations! The approval email will tell you that your
site will be spidered within four weeks or something along those lines. It is usually much quicker than
this. My experience shows that your site will be added to the database within a week. While you are
waiting, it is important to keep posting a minimum of three articles a day.
Do not email support asking them why it’s taking so long! Just wait it out. If for some reason it takes a
few weeks, then it takes a few weeks. This is well worth the wait! Also, the red X will still be on your
news sitemap status. This only goes away when Google adds you to the database.
Now, you should start reading the Bonus sections. There is very important information about making
money as a Google News Source.
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Bonus One: Maximizing Profit with Easy to Create, High Paying Content
Webmasters and bloggers spend years trying to make it to the front page of Google for high paying
keywords. The sad fact is that most are never able to achieve that goal. The highest paying keywords
have just too much competition. You are battling against hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of
other websites for the front page of Google, which only houses ten listings.
Google News changes all of that. Once you are a Google News Source, you can achieve the front page of
Google for a number of high paying keywords. Each article that you write may only be on the front page
for a day or maybe even just a few hours, but you can do it again and again by writing more articles.
I have several sites that are Google News Sources and I have written about or hired people to write on
just about every news topic you can think of. I have learned what are the time wasters and what are the
money makers. I’m going to share that with you now.
Just after Thanksgiving, during the peak of the Tiger Woods media storm, we wrote a lot of gossip
articles about the Tiger Woods situation. The golfer’s name was the most searched name in the world
for almost two months. We would write about ten articles a day about him and the number of unique
visitors was through the roof, however, the payout was not. Tiger Woods content may be juicy, but
AdSense ads pay squat for this type of content.
We tried the celebrity thing, writing articles about Adam Lambert, Britney Spears, and the like. More of
the same, tons of traffic, but not much of a payout. Each AdSense click was worth about a dime or less.
We wrote about politics too, but didn’t get much traffic at all. You see, Google News bumps stories
down in rank as newer stories with more information come out. When you write about politics, war, or
the earthquake in Haiti, you are competing with the top news agencies in the world and they are
pumping out articles by the dozen every five minutes, around the clock. Top news stories are just too
difficult to compete with.
Then we moved a different direction. We turned toward the economy. Sure, the economy is bad, but
writing about the bad economy is real good!
We started writing articles about foreclosures and how to avoid them. We wrote about loan
modifications and bankruptcies. What we found was pay dirt! The click through rate of these topics
was 800% higher than that of celebrity news. And the best part was that clicks were paying in the $3 to
$4 per click range! They still are to this day!
Trying to get on the front page of Google regular search results for these keywords is like hitting the
lottery, meaning it probably won’t happen, BUT getting on the front page as a news result is very easy to
do.
Like I said before, there are only 20,000 Google News Sources and most of them are focused on breaking
news stories. Very few are in one specific niche.
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So, I focused on high paying niche news articles. I surfed the web for the latest news about foreclosures,
bankruptcies, mortgages, refinancing, gold investing… anything that had to do with the bad economy. I
found articles and re-wrote them in my own words.
Now mind you, this was a very part time thing for me. If I spent an hour a day writing two or three
articles in this niche, the profits would be anywhere from $40 to $100 a day consistently. Not bad for
one hour a day!
I have a family business to run, but times were tough and that extra income for one hour a day worth of
work really came in handy!
Here is a list of topics that you can write about and the estimated average CPM that you will make from
them. That means this is close to what you should earn from AdSense clicks per every one thousand
visitors for these topics.
Legal 40.00
Banking and Finance 30.00
Medical Treatment 20.00
B2B 15.00
Miracle Drugs or Vitamins 15.00
IT Hardware 15.00
Jobs 12.00
Technology 10.00
Education 10.00
Medicines 10.00
Science 8.00
Automobile 6.00
Webmaster or Hosting 5.00
Fitness 5.00
Consumer Durables 5.00
Hotels and Travel 4.00
Dating 4.00
Social Networking 3.00
Fashion and Clothing 2.00
Music 2.00
Gaming 1.50
Sports 1.50
Breaking News 1.00
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Bonus Two: Making Your AdSense Ads More Clickable
When I first started out as a Google News Source, my AdSense click through rates were very low. I
experimented for a long time until I came up with a winning combination of ad placements and color
variations. I am going to share that winning combination with you now.
Take a look at the screen shot below. Obviously, I edited out the real header to hide the identity of the
site. I will explain what you are seeing below.
What the screenshot above shows are two large rectangular AdSense ads between the title of the article
and the actual content. In most monitors, the “fold” is from the top of the page to the bottom of those
two large rectangle AdSense ads. What I mean by the fold is the area that is visible without having to
scroll down. So, you would actually have to scroll to read the article.
AdSense allows you to change the colors of your ads. Those top two rectangle ads are all in black. The
links are black, the text is black, and the URLs are black. I chose black because the links in my navigation
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bar are also black. Upon first look, the visitor often confuses the ads for a multiple choice of what page
on the site they want to visit.
I further enhanced that feeling by making a typical blue linked ad next to my article. That is the ad that
most visitors are used to seeing on websites and may blank it out do to “ad blindness”. In the visitors
subconscious they are thinking, “ok the blue links are advertisements and I will stay away from them, all
of the black links are the good stuff.”
Those are the only three AdSense blocks that I use. The other banners are there for more psychology
reasons. They are there to scream out at the visitor, “hey, we are advertisements”, bringing more
attention to the links that they feel are part of the site.
This all may sound cheesy, but this is the mindset of your visitors… and it pays off well!
If you are having difficulty figuring out how to place ads or change the colors of AdSense ads, visit our
forums. You will probably find your answers there. If not, just ask. Either your fellow forum members
or I will help you out.
Google News: Your Untapped Source for High Paying Keyword Traffic