Develop Original Reporting

This update to their algorithm has massive implications for ranking news articles. If an article is deemed to be an original or comprehensive source for the topic, Google will reward that page with a higher position in the search engine result pages (SERPs).

The update came in response to a mushrooming of tech platforms and news aggregators that gathered news from different sources and republished them, cornering the bulk of the news traffic in the process.

This meant that small news publishers pushing out original news reports struggled to rank well on Google despite being the original source of a news item because they lacked the resources of large news aggregators.

A 2019 study found that more than 80% of all Apple News content came from just 20 large publishers who were republishing original reporting from smaller publishers and cornering the resulting traffic bump.

3.3.2 Does Original Reporting Matter for SEO?

As already discussed, Google wants to prioritize original sources of news, even if they are small local publishers, over tech-enabled aggregators and large outlets that simply republish news.

However, there are additional benefits beyond Google’s desire to surface the original story tellers.

Helps Build Backlinks

Original reporting helps build backlinks. If your content is the original source of a particular news item or statistic, it is very likely that other websites will cite your content as part of their coverage.

This can help you to improve your ranking in the SERPs and attract more visitors from other sources.