How to Get Your Articles to Rank High in the Google Top Stories Carousel
Google Top Stories carousel on mobile and desktop SERPs provides an ideal venue for breaking news to be displayed, featuring relevant articles from Google News that contain additional pertinent content.
To qualify as Top Stories, certain criteria must be fulfilled, including original news content that meets these standards and adhering to EAT guidelines.
Keywords
Google’s sophisticated algorithms use an immense number of pages in their search index to select articles for inclusion in their News tab and Top Stories carousel, making competition for placement highly fierce. There are numerous strategies for reaching News and Top Stories such as becoming an approved publisher with Google News, publishing timely news and high-quality visual content; among many others.
As well, it’s vitally important to assess the relevance of an article for any given query or search term. Content with more relevance will rank higher for that search term, and having relevant keywords in its headline is also key.
As SEO specialists with vast newsroom and publishing experience, we advise creating news content relevant to current events and trends. Use AMP format, optimize headlines using Google Trends and competitor analysis and optimize for SEO title tags – this will increase your odds of appearing in Top Stories carousels of trending news topics.
Authority
As a news publisher, your goal should be for your articles to rank as highly as possible in Google News’ Top Stories carousel – this will draw more traffic to your website and build brand authority. But how can this be accomplished?
An engaging headline is key for making your content accessible and attracting attention, not to mention Google’s algorithms and sitemap. A compelling headline can grab people’s attention and help get into their coveted Google News XML sitemap.
Additionally, your content should focus on quality over quantity. Google’s algorithms take note of your writing style and tone; if your story is poorly constructed or written it may go ignored.
Google gives preference to websites that regularly cover relevant topics like local news, schools, weather, shootings and elections – this allows you to build up topic authority over time while becoming a reliable source. Furthermore, make sure all articles published by you are original – don’t copy-paste others verbatim!
Timeliness
Top Stories results are selected automatically, unlike In the News box sites which were manually submitted and approved by Google, making timely content even more crucial for success. Publishers who want their articles featured will ensure they include appropriate NewsArticle structured data as well as an XML Sitemap along with fast loading articles to maximize results.
Making the Top Stories carousel can be an excellent way to increase brand recognition and visibility, yet is an increasingly competitive environment for fresh, breaking news. Therefore, optimizing for these features using effective SEO practices is paramount.
Google News Optimization requires keyword research, competitor analysis and AMP optimization – essential practices which provide authority and relevancy. A focus on Core Web Vitals also contributes significantly towards Google News optimization.
Labels
The Top Stories carousel in Google Search is one of the most coveted spots for breaking news to appear, so every newsroom works hard with their SEO desk or in-house expert to optimize for it using Google Trends, competitor analysis and A/B testing. Furthermore, pages are optimized with Natural Language Processing (NLP), since Google uses this technology to understand what a page is about and classify it correctly.
NLP can have a profound impact on local search results, while optimizing content for timeliness is also vital to its ranking and optimization. Articles covering recent events should be published soon after they take place to increase relevance. Timing also plays a part in getting articles featured in Top Stories carousels — an organic traffic source used by many news publishers – using tools such as SEMRush or RankRanger; for faster results consider paying for services such as RankLab.