Publisher resources
Better foundations. Better stories.
Practical reference notes for editors and site owners who care about discoverability without compromising the reporting.
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Editors, independent publishers and content operations teams
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Improve story quality, discovery signals, authorship, images and archive habits together.
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Practical publishing decisions that compound without inflated promises.
News SEO: serve the reader first
A useful article makes its subject, evidence and context easy to understand. Name the author, show relevant dates and distinguish reporting from opinion. Update stories when the underlying facts change, not merely to make a timestamp look recent.
Technical SEO supports that work by making the intended URL, metadata and content relationships clear. It cannot substitute for original reporting or editorial trust.
Google Discover: readiness, not a promise
Use descriptive headlines that reflect the article rather than withholding essential context. Choose relevant, high-quality images you are authorized to use and make sure the page is readable and reliable on a phone.
Review Google’s current Discover policies and image guidance directly. No plugin, schema type or sitemap can guarantee that a story appears in Discover.
Structured data is a description
Markup should describe what visitors can see. Choose the article type that fits the story and connect accurate author and publisher details. Validate output after changes to templates or SEO settings.
Do not add invented reviews, credentials, dates or entities for search visibility. Eligibility for a supported rich result is not a promise that it will be shown.
Build an archive maintenance rhythm
Review high-value evergreen stories for stale facts, missing context and relevant internal links. Keep a moved article’s URL working with an appropriate redirect, and explain substantive corrections to readers.
Inspect broken destinations before choosing a replacement. A genuinely removed story may need a Gone response instead of an unrelated redirect. Keep excluded or private material out of public discovery outputs.
Prepare for Google News and Top Stories
Publish original, timely reporting with clear headlines, visible publication and update dates, named authors, an accurate About page, contact details and transparent corrections. Review Google’s current News content policies and make sure the public article matches its byline, dates and structured data.
The optional /news-sitemap.xml endpoint lists only genuinely recent articles from the preceding 48 hours and can be empty when none qualify. Sitemaps help discovery; they do not guarantee indexing, Top Stories, Google News or Discover placement. Editorial quality and policy compliance remain essential.
Write headlines and summaries that earn the click
A strong headline names the subject and the news. A strong meta description summarizes what the reader will learn without promising more than the story delivers.
Use per-post overrides for important stories, and keep the template-based defaults for everything else.
Choose images for search, Discover and social
Use relevant, high-quality original images that are at least 1200 pixels wide for important stories. Keep max-image-preview:large enabled and set each story’s representative image in its Open Graph metadata and article structured data. These are recommendations, not a way to force a Discover feature.
Use accurate alternative text and a mobile-friendly crop. Keep the original file and create delivery-size copies rather than overwriting it. Avoid substituting a generic logo or text-heavy graphic for the article image.
- Describe the image’s purpose, not just its subject
- Use one clear hero image for important stories
- Check crop, contrast and loading on mobile
Build a trustworthy author and publisher graph
Readers and crawlers should be able to connect an article to a real author and a real publication. Use consistent author names, profile pages, bylines and publisher details across templates. If an article has multiple contributors, reflect the actual editorial relationship rather than assigning a generic byline.
Review the visible byline and the JSON-LD together. Structured data should reinforce the page, not introduce credentials or relationships the reader cannot verify.
Turn corrections into durable trust
A correction is part of the article’s lifecycle. Keep the original URL when the story remains relevant, make material changes visible, and update the modified date only when the content has substantively changed.
When a story is withdrawn, choose the response based on the reader’s next best destination. A useful redirect is specific; an unrelated homepage redirect often creates a poor experience and weakens the archive.
A monthly publisher health check
Once a month, sample a new article, an evergreen article, a topic archive and a recently updated page. Check the title, canonical, robots directives, author, dates, image, internal links, structured data and sitemap membership.
Keep a short log of what changed and what needs follow-up. The goal is not a perfect score; it is a publishing system that remains understandable as the archive grows.
- One fresh story
- One evergreen story
- One archive or taxonomy page
- One recently changed template
A stronger publishing workflow.
Start with the guide. Build a better foundation for every story.