Ever wonder how some writers or bloggers get loads of traffic to their sites while others don’t? Being at the top of Google News is a good place to start. Andrew Shotland of LocalSEOGuide.com, a BIA/Kelsey partner, along with Tim Ruder and Neil Pharazyn, consulted with SEOs at some of the world’s top news sites including CNN, Huffington Post and The New York Times to find out how to get there.

The No. 1 most important Google News ranking factor is category authority, meaning the news source is known for its expertise on a particular topic.

Other important factors for gaining high rankings in Google News as judged by the respondents include the following:

Posting duplicated content that is plagiarized or scraped from somewhere else is the top negative Google News ranking factor. The following chart lists other negative factors:

Go here to see a complete list of other ranking factors broken down into several categories.