Galley · guide
The news story SEO checklist (Discover, News & Search)
A practical, surface-by-surface checklist to make a published news story rank — across Google Discover, Google News and Search.
A news story is read by three different machines — Google Discover, Google News and Search — and each wants something slightly different. This checklist covers all three.
Discover
- Lead image ≥1200px,
max-image-preview:largeenabled. - Published in the last few hours; accurate timestamp.
- Named author + primary sources (E-E-A-T).
Google News
NewsArticleJSON-LD with author, dates, publisher, image.- Listed in your news sitemap with
news:title+ publication date. - Original reporting credited — wire-only copy is demoted.
Search
- Title 50–65 characters; one clear
<h1>, real<h2>subheads. - Meta description ~150 characters.
- 800+ words where the story warrants it; strong internal links in the same section with descriptive anchor text.
The one that decides it
Most stories fail on one specific thing — a missing schema field, an under-sized image, a stale date. Find yours: paste the URL into Galley and it returns a grade, the surface-by-surface diagnostics, and the single top fix.
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