What We Learned About Getting Your News Article in Top Stories

The Challenge: Articles Not Appearing in Top Stories

Many factors can prevent a news article from appearing in Google’s Top Stories, even if it meets SEO requirements. Since Top Stories are highly time-sensitive—typically lasting only 24-48 hours—rapid action is crucial. Ensuring proper indexing, optimizing headlines and meta titles, strengthening internal linking, and, in some cases, republishing with a new URL can significantly improve visibility. Acting fast increases the chances of appearing before public interest fades.

The Process: Ensuring Your Article Appears in Top Stories

To get your article featured in Top Stories, you need to follow a few essential steps. Here’s what we learned works best:

1. Ensuring the Article is Indexed by Google

The first step is to ensure your article is indexed by Google. If it’s not indexed, it won’t show up in search results—let alone Top Stories.

• How to Verify Indexing:
  • If you have access to Google Search Console (GSC), use the “URL Inspection” tool to check if the article is indexed.
  • If you don’t have GSC, you can do a manual check by entering the following into Google’s search bar:
    site:yourdomain.com/article-url
  • If the article is indexed, it will appear in the search results. If not, no results will show up.
• Key Checks:
  • Ensure your article has a self-referring canonical tag.
  • Verify that the article doesn’t have a “no-index” tag.
  • Confirm the article isn’t blocked by robots.txt.

If the article is indexed, proceed to optimize it further.

2. Ensuring On-Page Optimization

Proper optimization should be done in advance, not just when issues arise. Once your article is indexed, ensuring strong SEO fundamentals increases its chances of appearing in Top Stories.

• Meta Title:
  Ensure that the meta title contains the main keywords you’re targeting and answers basic questions (who, what, where, when, why).
  • Include names of people involved.
  • Specify the location of the event.
  • Mention dates and relevant numerical data.
• Main Headline:
  Just like the meta title, the headline should contain main keywords, provide context, and answer key questions, making it both informative and attention-grabbing.

3. Ensuring Proper Internal Linking

Internal linking improves both SEO and user experience, and should be established early. Here’s what we learned:

• Internal Links Within the Article:
  • Include links to other related articles on your website.
  • Add links to category pages or tags relevant to the article’s topic.
• Inlinks to the New Article:
  • Check for internal links from older articles covering the same or related topics.
  • Ensure there are links from key pages such as the homepage and category pages.

By implementing these best practices from the start, rather than as a reactionary fix, you improve the likelihood of Top Stories visibility when it matters most.

4. Pro-Tip: Republish the Article with a New URL

If your article still isn’t appearing in Top Stories after optimizing the content, you might consider republishing the article with a new URL. This tactic can work because Google’s algorithms tend to treat a new URL as fresh content, which can boost its ranking, especially for time-sensitive topics.

Caution:

While this can be effective, there are risks. Google may view this as an attempt to manipulate rankings, potentially leading to penalties or decreased visibility. It’s also important to set up proper redirects to avoid losing link equity or causing confusion with search engines.

Key Takeaways

• Ensure your article is indexed using Google Search Console or manual checks.
• Optimize the article’s meta title and headline with relevant keywords.
• Use internal links to connect your article to related content and vice versa.
• Consider republishing with a new URL if optimization doesn’t yield results—but do so cautiously to avoid penalties.

By following these best practices, we found that articles stand a better chance of appearing in Top Stories, boosting visibility, and generating significant organic traffic. Proper on-page and internal linking optimization, along with attention to indexing, can greatly improve your chances of success.