How news makes money: Part 3

As with so many things on the net – the answer lies with Google.

You might have noticed people in the press getting up in arms about GoogleNews and other news aggregators, but in my experience, this is mostly because they don’t know how it works.

Getting into a recognised news aggregator’s listings is great for your site, because aggregators work just like search engines. People search for terms they want to read about, and the aggregator will provide them with a list of the relevant stories available online.

Being part of that list gives your site wider exposure, and if you give visitors a story they want, they’ll come to your site to find out more. It’s a big step in bringing more traffic to your site, and also getting people familiarised with your brand and company.

Of course, big newspapers will usually get their stories at the top of the list, because they are recognised and respected as sources for news content, but if you have a relevant story (with a distinct, searchable headline) you can boost your site closer to the top.

This is the reason that some of the more established news providers are unhappy with aggregators, because they see them as giving equal status to stories from smaller news outlets.

In actual fact, if so much online content was not written from similar sources (a lot of news stories are not uncovered and written by reporters, but by copy and sub-editors who take information from the same organisations – such as the Associated Press), then they would not appear alongside smaller news sources.

So, to get to the top of GoogleNews, you need to combine relevance and originality with searchability. Standing out on top of those listings will help you improve your site and your company’s reputation, and bring you the traffic to boost your sales too.