(Newswire.net — April 10, 2014) — For a long time it has been a common practice to place a link within the current news story you are writing, to other news stories you have written in the past that are relevant. This is no longer a good practice, because the algorithm now looks at these links as “Speedbumb Links” slowing down the flow of traffic. Many writers place these links in their footers, which Google really hates, so this practice should be eliminated. You can place links to older content that you have written in the area “Suggested by Author” to still have these links on the page.
If your news article footers contain links to your social media accounts this should also be stopped, along with email addresses, along with information about subscribing to your material. Google views these as promotion, and will not tolerate them anymore in news stories. Contact information should be placed in your bio section. An easy way to make sure your news stories do not violate these new algorithm changes, is to make sure all the text in your news story is relevant to the news story.
The nubmer of links in your story is also going to be regulated. Google News algorithms wants to see at least 2 links that go to different sites or pieces of content not on the same webpage. There will also be a maximum of 5 or 6 links that the algorithm will allow in the whole news story, which depends upon the overall length of the news article. Be very careful about where you place these links also, and never put them in the first 100 words of the news story or they can easily get marked as spam. Google now also does not want to see the links too close togehter, or especially in the same paragraph.
The length of the news story paragraphs is also a major consideration by these Google News algorithms. Your paragraphs cannot be one standalone sentence anymore, because Google wants all paragraphs to be at least two sentences. Too many short paragraphs in a news story will not make it into the Google News sitemap, because it will be labled “fragmented content” by Google’s algorithm. Paragraphs should not be too long either, or the reader will lose interest and you will also gain a penalty for having over 100 words per paragraph.
Not only are paragraph lengths under scrutiny, but the entire news story now has word count regulations. This becomes very important, becauses many news stories contain quotes from other news and those quotes will not be counted in your news story word count. Also news stories that have been written in a more descriptive way have a better chance of filtering to the top of Google News. The new Google News algorithm updates require your news story to have 300 original words without counting any quotes you are using. Google is still looking for quote use though, so do not eliminate your quotes from your story.
Photos and images will also be examined much closer for copyright infringement. If the photo was taken from a published social media site, purchased, you have written permission to use the photo, found in a search under Google images labeled “Free to use with Modification” or your very own photo, then you can use it. Always label any photos that you have obtained written permission for with something like “Image used with permission by (name of owner)” so you will not draw undue attention to your photos.
Another thing that the updates to the Google News algorithm will be placing a penalty on are features in your news article like block quotes within the first 150 words. Numbered lists, and bullet points will not be tolerated at all, because the algorithm crawler will label your content “Disproportionately Short” causing it to not get any ranking.
Your news headlines should never be duplicated within your content, and should be written AP style. Abbreviating state names is a good practice so you can have room for more important text, because the Google News algorithm does not like titles over 70 characters. The shorter the better. Never put times or dates in a title, or use numbers at the beginning of your title. Starting your title with a number will effect mobile search, and many people search news stories from their mobile devices.
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