The benefits of having informative news content on a website are widely publicised in SEO circles. To name but a few, having fresh, industry specific content on your site can boost business authority, attract more visitors to a site and increase SERPs.

The question is, how do these visitors find your news? Do they simply discover the news when looking on your website, or do they come in via channels such as Google News? According to a State of Search blog, Google News generates almost half of the visits to online news providers.

Such figures show that Google News is an important tool in boosting traffic to your news site, but with stringent entry requirements in place, it’s vital to ensure your news site is adhering to all Google regulations, using multiple writers, listing author names and submitting a Google News friendly sitemap. In addition to the technical aspects, your news must be commercially neutral – this means it’s a big mistake to mention your own company! Stick to developments in your industry field and don’t be afraid to mention negative news to show your transparency and honesty.

For companies with a broad business remit, Google News can be one of the biggest traffic drivers to their site. Nevertheless, for businesses that offer more specialist products in a niche market it can be more important to focus on the use of keywords and internal links, to complement existing SEO work, rather than putting all eggs in the Google News basket. Instead of desperately trying to remain commercially neutral, it could be better for specialist industries to focus on including a plethora of relevant keywords and attracting the attention of a standard organic search.

Indeed, even for the big players such as The Times, Google is certainly not King. By introducing paywalls, these publishers are showing hostility towards the search engine giant. However, it remains to be seen whether this go-it-alone strategy will pay off.

Unfortunately not all companies have the fortune of News Corporation backing, so for them, getting included on Google News is a welcome bonus that should be pursued with arms open. Whilst the benefits of increased traffic from Google are clear, it’s important not to forget to align your content marketing strategies with SEO work to see the best results from an organic perspective.