5 Ways To Rank in Google Top Stories Carousel

Stories Carousel, presented as a Search feature in the Google Developers Guide requires the implementation of AMP. Your website, therefore, needs to reinforce AMP as a native or paired mode. RankRanger reports that AMP results, showing up in the U.S. Google News are about 70% of the time. To get AMP ready in the true sense there are some checkboxes that need to be marked:

Adhere to the AMP Logo Guidelines: Ensure that the logo is representing the publisher and is used in the structured data from AMP, fits in a rectangle of 60x600px with 6px minimal padding around the logo with a solid background. The logo cannot be of a larger or smaller size than the ideal one.

Google describes the carousel as “a container of articles, live blogs and videos”, so, this is where the required structured data makes Google perceive the content on the page. If your websites is supporting AMP in the paired mode, make sure that you have the same structured data on both the canonical and AMP pages.

Mueller has also simplified on organic rankings playing a vital role in content getting selected for the Top Stories. All this sums up to the research of keywords and incorporating them in your content, promoting your excerpts to secure as many authoritative backlinks as possible. In short, efforts must be taken to get the content on the first page of SERP. The moment content is on the first page, it is on high chances of getting pulled up in the Top Stories Carousel!

Staying updated with writing and publishing content of the forthcoming events should not in any way hamper the uniqueness of the content. Google obviously looks for the most newsworthy content from trustworthy sources to run its Top Stories carousel. So, look at everything from a different perspective to make your content stand out from others. That “everything” can be viral content or niche events that are possibly not covered by masses.

Since July 2018, page speed has become a ranking factor for all the mobile searches. Readers want to be able to grasp up things in a wink’s time, bringing in the need of the fast loading Web Stories. A top story is a SERP feature which is purely organic-driven. The requirement of content to load fast, indicates the necessity of your website to be lightning fast. Visual Stories is doing the needful by providing a ‘no-code’ solution to get Web Stories on your website!

Top Stories is undeniably, giving users an uncomplicated experience with reminding them of the everlasting importance of traditional SEO to get better rankings in the Google SERPs. Its not just about the viral or trending content that is getting ranked, it is also about getting ranked if your content is timely and optimized covering a niche subject to break into the Top Stories Box.