Asian Standard
The aim of this initiative was to improve visibility and traffic for content-rich websites by enabling their inclusion in Google News and Apple News. Despite valuable and frequent publishing, the content was not receiving organic traction due to platform-specific indexing issues.
Technology –
- WordPress
Challenge
The client operates a content-heavy website but struggles with low visibility across key distribution platforms like Google News and Apple News.
Primary issues identified:
- Previous attempts to integrate with Google News were unsuccessful
- Search Console flagged multiple indexing errors, including: Pages returning 404 errors, Pages marked with a ‘noindex’ tag, Redirected URLs not resolving cleanly.
- Canonical tag conflicts such as: “Duplicate, Google chose a different canonical than user” & “Alternative page with proper canonical tag”
These indexing issues were blocking eligibility for both Google News and Apple News, significantly reducing the site’s potential audience reach.
Solution
We proposed a targeted SEO and content infrastructure improvement plan to prepare the site for successful listing on both platforms.
TECHNICAL SEO & INDEXING CORRECTIONS
- Audited the entire site using Google Search Console and third-party SEO tools
- Identified and fixed: Broken internal links causing 404 errors
- Noindex tags that were unintentionally applied
- Canonical tag misconfigurations that confused Googlebot
- Redirect chains that prevented stable crawling
GOOGLE NEWS SETUP
- Cleaned and submitted a dedicated News Sitemap
- Ensured pages complied with Google News content guidelines
- Added structured data for article metadata (headline, publish date, author)
- Resubmitted the site for Google News Publisher Center review
APPLE NEWS PREPARATION
- Researched Apple News Publisher onboarding requirements
- Prepared article feeds in Apple News Format (or RSS with metadata, depending on support)
- Planned for News Publisher account setup and channel submission
Final Result
A stable, optimized infrastructure ready for re-submission to Google News and onboarding to Apple News. With SEO errors corrected and content feeds configured properly, the website is positioned to gain broader visibility, increase organic traffic, and distribute content across global news platforms.
