Top 10 Most Important Google News Ranking Factors

The following are the most important factors for gaining high rankings in Google News as judged by the respondents:

#	Factor	Description
1	Category Authority	The news source is known for its expertise on a particular topic (e.g. ESPN and Sports)
2	Keyword(s) in Headlines & Page Titles
3	Domain Authority	The news source has strong SEO presence including strong inbound link profile, social
4	Social Sharing of Article	Via Facebook & Twitter and maybe even Google+. Velocity is a factor.
5	First to Publish Story
6	Citation Rank	The number of other high value sites that cite your article in their stories.
7	Unique Articles	Original content with low/no use of other sites’ texts.
8	High CTR From Google News	From both news.Google.com and other various Google SERPs.
9	High Quality Content	As determined by Google News editorial evaluators.
10	Use of Google News XML Sitemaps