News SEO differs from ordinary SEO in three ways. Articles go stale within hours. The volume is high. And Google has separate surfaces for news: Google News, Top Stories and Discover. We work on the technical base that all three depend on.
Be aware of one thing. We have not worked with a news publisher, and we do not claim to have. This page describes what we know, how we would approach it, and what we can check on your site.
How do Google News, Top Stories and Discover differ?
| Surface | How it works | What you can influence |
|---|---|---|
| Google News | Collects articles from many publishers into a news feed and app | Crawlable pages, clear dates and authors, policy compliance |
| Top Stories | A news block inside the normal search results | Speed, freshness, page experience, clear article pages |
| Discover | A personalised feed on phones, without a search query | Large images, strong headlines that are not misleading, a consistent topic focus |
Google decides what appears on all three. None of them can be bought or guaranteed.
What should the article data look like?
Each article should carry NewsArticle structured data that matches the visible page: headline, image, publication date, modified date and author. Two points matter most.
- Dates are honest. Change the modified date only when the content changes in a way a reader would notice.
- Authors are real. An author page with a name and a short bio is better than a byline reading ‘Editorial team’ on every story.
Google’s documentation treats this data as recommended rather than required, because it helps Google understand the page. Errors are worse than no data, so we validate the markup against the page.
How do you stay fast at volume?
A news site is rarely slow because of its text. It is slow because of ads, tracking scripts, consent banners and heavy templates. These also move the page while it loads, which hurts layout stability.
We look at the article template first, because it carries most of the traffic. We check which scripts block the first paint, whether ad slots have reserved space, and whether images are properly sized. We then test on a mid-range phone, which is where most readers are.
What about archives, pagination and tags?
Old articles keep earning traffic, and they cost crawl attention. Common problems:
- Paginated lists that crawlers cannot follow, because they need JavaScript or have no real links.
- Thousands of thin tag pages with one or two articles, competing with each other.
- Date archives and filters that create endless URL combinations.
- Missing canonical tags on pages that can be reached in several ways.
The fix is usually a plan: which archive pages deserve to be indexed, which should be kept out of the index, and how every article is reachable through ordinary links.
Do you need a news sitemap?
For a publisher, usually yes, alongside the normal sitemap. A news sitemap lists only recent articles and lets Google find new ones quickly. The regular sitemap covers the rest of the site, with accurate last-modified dates.
What about Greek publishers?
The Greek search results for news SEO are mostly general agency blog posts, not specialist services. So a Greek publisher has few places to look for focused help. Greek text brings its own small technical points, such as URL slugs with Greek letters, accents in headlines and queries typed without accents.
Where to go next
News SEO is one of the two audiences in our SEO and AI search service. Publishers that want assistants to cite them can read about AI search (GEO). To discuss your site, contact us.