Chris Snider

Ranking high in Google News search results is a great way to drive more traffic to your breaking news stories. And jumping to the top of the Google News list isn’t as difficult as you may think.

We’ve been experimenting with getting our content higher in Google News search results for the past few months. Here are some tips to get your content ranked at or near the top:

Google News likes content that is: Original, recent, from a source close to the event and from a trusted source. So focus more on your local stories instead of trying to rank high for big, national news that happens outside of your coverage area.

Use keywords in headlines – preferably at the beginning. If you want people to find your article by searching “Iowa Hawkeyes football,” then ideally your headline will start with the words “Iowa Hawkeyes football.” At the very least, be sure to get all three words somewhere in your headline.

Not sure which keywords or key phrases to use? Tools like the Google keywords tool and Google trends are a great place to see what words people actually search.

Use your keywords in the first paragraph. You’ll want to repeat your keywords in the first paragraph of your story. Again, these will ideally go at the beginning of your story. Try to avoid feature lead-ins and stick to news leads online.

Use a photo. Preferably a jpeg that appears near the headline and is between 250×250 and 400-400 pixels. Make sure your image has a caption and alt text.

Include a video. Google likes multimedia, so embedding a video helps your ranking.

Include links. Make sure you are linking to other content – whether on your site or on other sites. Google likes links. And make sure those are in-text links (links from actual words within the article).

Get other people to link to your story. OK, so you can’t really control this, but the more other people link to your story the more authority Google gives that story. If you’re part of a network of sites, try to get others to link to your story.

Point internal links to your new story. Add in-text links from sidebar stories to point to your main story. This helps build the authority of the main story.

Include a dateline. Google news groups stories by location.

Keep your story organized. Google likes well-organized content that is logically divided, easy to scan and read. Google also likes bulleted lists and stories chunked into small parts with subheads.

More tips:

• Having trouble ranking high for your keyword? Use keywords tools to find alternative keywords. They may not drive as much traffic as the main keywords, but you’ll increase your chances of getting to the top.
• Make sure your URLs have at least three digits – which helps Google News determine it’s an article and not a static page.
• Don’t break up the body of your story with related links, multiple pages or user comments.

Interested in learning more? Sign up for my March 27 workshop on SEO and writing for the web?

Here’s a great presentation from Nathan Wright of Lava Row on how newspapers can foster community with social media.

Read Nathan’s full post on the subject here.

Mashable asked that question on Sunday. The answer?

No.

BUT… Let’s look at this from a more positive standpoint. If the NYT can get that “Yes” number up to 10 percent, then perhaps they’re onto something. The question: Is one paying subscriber more valuable than 10 non-paying?

Perhaps.

I’ll be teaching entrepreneurial journalism at Drake again this semester. Last semester, we relied on readings from the web for class. This semester, I think I found four books that will really help the students think about how journalism (and the web) is changing.

Here’s the list:

• ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income
• Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust
• Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation
• The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

Are there any other books you’d recommend for entrepreneurial journalists right now? I’d love to expand or improve my reading list in future semesters.

Last night I read the 2007 book The Dip by Seth Godin. It’s a quick read and an inspiring book, but one passage certainly stood out to me:

Persistent people are able to visualize the idea of light at the end of the tunnel when others can’t see it. At the same time, the smartest people are realistic about not imagining light when there isn’t any.

If you work at a big city newspaper, you can see that there’s no light at the end of that career-choice tunnel. Circulation is dropping, and it’s going to drop even faster. Most papers have little chance of replacing their traditional business with an online alternative. As a result, every day at most papers is going to be just a little bit worse than the day before. Every day you stay is a bad strategic decision for your career because every day you get better at something that isn’t that useful – and you fall another day behind others who are learning something more useful. The only reason to stay is the short-term pain associated with quitting. Winners understand that taking the pain now prevents a lot more pain later.

It’s nor fair to judge two paragraphs without context of the whole book, but I felt I should share anyway. To me, the point of the book was that it’s not worth doing something unless you’re willing to push yourself to be the best. It’s much better to be the best at one thing that to be pretty good at several things.

My digital focus in 2010 for the Des Moines Register is simple – stop trying to add more and more features to the web site, and start focusing on doing a small number of things better than anyone else.

As for Godin’s advice on getting out of newspapers, I can’t disagree. We’ve heard about the end of printed newspapers for a long time. If you’re a journalist whose skills are exclusive to the print product, it’s time to start learning some digital skills. Or get out.

1. This tweet from @TracyGardner pretty much sums up what I’ve been trying to teach my Online Entrepreneurial Journalism class this semester as they try to find their niche in the digital media world.

2. Chris Brogan shares his advice for businesses getting started on social media. Read more about what he’s saying here.

Chris Brogan Shares Social Media Tips from Michael A. Stelzner on Vimeo.

3. If your blog needs a redesign (I’m starting to think that mine does), here are some great Wordpress themes via Smashing Magazine.

4. Like new tools but hate spending money? Check out these free alternatives to some common multimedia tools.

The Yankees won the 2009 World Series last night. So let’s take a quick look at pages from a couple national sports sites and the New York newspapers.

ESPN

Sports Illustrated

New York Times

New York Post

New York Daily News

I like what the Post did with the background image on the page. I like the overall look of ESPN the best. And I appreciate how SI.com was able to go big and keep an ad above the scroll.

Your thoughts?

I am teaching a weeklong class on visual communication at the University of Iowa this summer, and in doing a little research for the class I discovered that the UI journalism school has a new director – David D. Perlmutter.

What’s perhaps most impressive about him is that he has appeared on The Daily Show.

Sure, it’s an old clip. But as a UI J-school grad, this makes me proud.

You can find out more about David on his blog.

Have you been sitting on the sidelines, waiting for someone to grab your hand and pull you into the new digital world of journalism? Well, wait no more. Here are 15 ways you can jump in right now.

1. Read Chris Brogan’s blog.

2. Read this one post by Rob Curley.

3. Read Mashable. You don’t have to read every post, but skim the headlines and see if anything catches your eye.

4. Stop talking about why you’re not going to join Twitter. And join Twitter.

5. Go to Wordpress or Blogger and start a blog. About anything – your family, your love of puppies, how much you hate blogs (just make sure you are passionate about the topic).

6. Start using an RSS reader. Here are feeds from Chris Brogan, Rob Curley and Mashable to get you started.

7. Start clicking around the SND toolkit page. Any of those seem useful?

8. Buy a URL (try GoDaddy or FatCow). Use the free sitebuilding tools to get your site up and running. Or better yet, use a program such as Dreamweaver or iWeb to create your site.

9. Start doing these tutorials.

10. Shoot a movie with your digital camera, edit it in whatever free movie editing program came with your computer (iMovie or Movie Maker, perhaps), and post to YouTube.

11. Go through this HTML tutorial.

12. Start following these new media blogs:

• Old Media New Tricks
• BeatBlogging
• Poynter E-media tidbits
• Journalistopia
• OJR

13. Set up a Google alert so that you are e-mailed anytime someone posts your name (or your companys name) online.

14. Create a Google map of everywhere you ever lived (click on “My Maps” and “Create new map.”)

15. Create a delicious account and start saving interesting stories you find online. Start following other feeds as well. (Here’s mine.)

Photo by the_tahoe_guy on Flickr.

Hopefully this video makes you want to dive headfirst into some new technology.

And good news, there was still a newspaper in this video! But I don’t think it required a printing press to make.