Many online business owners receives a large portion (and even most) of their site’s traffic from Google News. It is one of the most popular news sources on the web and only high quality sites are appearing there (learn how to appear in Google News). In this post, we’ll try to learn how to increase Google News traffic from a highly reliable website.

Besides “regular” SEO, many webmasters are also trying to optimize their sites for Google News as there are other set of values/factors for rankings. Search Engine Watch, one of the most authoritative SEO and SEM sources in Google News, has published a post this week, describing how to site manage to more than triple its Google News average monthly traffic compared to last year.

According to the post, Search Engine Watch average monthly Google News visits have grown in 2011 329% more than the monthly average in 2010 and also 994% more than 2008 (its second strongest traffic year). It took a lot of hard work and like stated in the post “There is no magic formula for getting more traffic”. Here’s a graph released by Search Engine Watch to illustrate the traffic differences:

Here’s a summary of Search Engine Watch optimization practices for Google News:

Website Structure
The site’s contents were located on the main domain (searchenginewatch.com) and on a subdomain (blog.searchenginewatch.com). The two content locations had a different linking structure and different sitemaps. Eventually, the subdomain content was merged into the main domain, inside the same platform.

Google News Sitemap
After the merger, all of the site’s content under the same platform could produce one optimized sitemap with proper categories and tags structure. Although Google requests to submit only the last two days URLs in the sitemap, Search Engine Watch submits the last three days URLs (probably because it was accepted to Google News before this rule implemented).

Different Story Angles/New Facts
The site’s writers were advised to develop the stories by seeking new unpublished facts or by describing the story from a unique angle. The news search algorithm rewards these kinds of things as it is trying to provide the readers a complete story cover.

High Profile Citations (Strong Backlinks)
Lots of efforts to create (whenever possible) links from reliable sources online back to Search Engine Watch articles. Google News algorithm grant these kind of links extra value, more than in the regular search results.