How to Get Featured on News Sites

When someone Googles your business and finds nothing beyond your own website, trust drops immediately. But when they see articles about you on Yahoo Finance, Business Insider, or AP News, the perception shifts completely. You go from unknown to credible in seconds.

Media features on high-authority news sites deliver three things that are extremely difficult to get any other way:

• Authority backlinks from DA 80–94 sites that directly boost your domain rating and Google rankings
• Third-party credibility that converts website visitors at a higher rate than any testimonial or case study
• AI discoverability — ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini recommend businesses they find on authoritative sources

The compounding effect is significant. A single media campaign can produce hundreds of backlinks, push your brand to page one of Google for branded searches, and make your business visible to AI assistants — all from one effort. And unlike paid ads, the articles stay live permanently.

There are several paths to getting your business covered by news publications. Each has different cost, effort, and reliability trade-offs.

Understanding what makes content publishable dramatically increases your chances of getting featured. Here's what editors at major news sites evaluate:

Newsworthiness: The story needs a genuine news angle. Product launches, company milestones, funding rounds, original research, trend commentary, and partnerships all qualify. What doesn't work is a thinly veiled advertisement — editors reject these immediately.

Relevance & Timeliness: Stories connected to current trends, industry shifts, or seasonal events get prioritized. If your announcement aligns with something already in the news cycle, it's significantly more likely to get picked up. Tie your story to what's happening now whenever possible.

Professional Presentation: Your press release or pitch needs to follow journalistic standards. Clean writing, proper structure (headline, lead, body, boilerplate), factual accuracy, and a professional tone are non-negotiable. Typos, exaggerated claims, or sloppy formatting get your submission rejected before the editor reads past the headline.

Credible Source: Editors check your website and online presence before publishing. Your site needs to be professional, operational, and include standard legal pages (privacy policy, terms of service). A business with zero online presence or a half-built website won't pass editorial review on quality outlets.

Value to Readers: Every published article needs to provide value to the outlet's audience. Frame your story around what readers gain — insights, solutions, trends, or information — not just what your company has done. The most successful press releases position the business story within a larger industry context.

Not all news sites deliver equal value. Focus your efforts on publications that combine high domain authority with real readership and brand recognition.

PublicationDomain AuthorityMonthly ReachBest For

Yahoo FinanceDA 9470M+ visitorsBusiness, finance, tech

Business InsiderDA 9460M+ visitorsBusiness, startups, tech

Associated PressDA 9350M+ visitorsAll industries

MarketWatchDA 9240M+ visitorsFinance, markets, business

MSNDA 93100M+ visitorsGeneral business, lifestyle

Digital JournalDA 888M+ visitorsTech, digital, startups

Getting featured on even one DA 90+ publication can have a measurable impact on your domain rating and search rankings. A campaign that places your article across multiple Tier 1 publications delivers compounding SEO value that accumulates over months and years.

News features are one of the most powerful SEO strategies available. Here's exactly how they impact your search performance:

Domain Authority Boost: Each published article on a high-DA news site creates a backlink to your website. Backlinks from DA 80–94 sites are the highest value links on the internet. A single campaign distributing to 200–500+ outlets can generate enough high-quality backlinks to move your domain rating by several points, which improves rankings across your entire site.

Brand SERP Domination: When someone searches your brand name on Google, news features from authoritative sites fill the first page. Instead of seeing random directory listings or competitor pages, potential customers see articles about your business from Yahoo Finance, Business Insider, and AP News. This dramatically increases trust and click-through rates.

Keyword Rankings: Press articles on high-DA sites can rank for competitive keywords that your own website struggles with. Since news sites have massive authority, their pages often rank faster and higher than smaller sites. This means your business appears in search results through both your own website and third-party news articles.

Google News Visibility: Articles on Google News-indexed outlets appear in Google News results and the News tab in search. This is a separate traffic channel that standard SEO content cannot access, giving your business additional visibility for relevant search queries.

E-E-A-T Signals: Google evaluates Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness when ranking websites. Being covered by reputable news publications is one of the strongest authority signals you can generate. It demonstrates to Google that your business is recognized and validated by trusted third parties.

AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Grok are quickly becoming how people discover businesses. These tools generate recommendations by pulling information from authoritative sources across the web.

When your business is featured on high-authority news sites, AI tools have multiple authoritative data points to reference. This means when someone asks an AI assistant for a recommendation in your industry, your business is far more likely to be mentioned.

This is fundamentally different from traditional SEO. With Google, you optimize for specific keywords and hope to rank on page one. With AI visibility, you need to be present across authoritative sources so AI tools can find, verify, and confidently recommend your business.

News features are uniquely effective for AI visibility because:

• AI tools prioritize information from high-authority domains (news sites have the highest authority scores on the web)
• Multiple articles across different outlets provide corroborating information that AI tools use to increase confidence in their recommendations
• News articles include structured, factual information about your business that AI tools can easily parse and reference
• As AI search grows, businesses without authoritative third-party coverage will become increasingly invisible

Pitching Without a Story: "We exist and we're great" is not a story. Editors need a news hook — something new, interesting, or valuable to their readers. Before reaching out to any outlet, define the specific angle that makes your business newsworthy right now.

Targeting the Wrong Outlets: Pitching a local bakery to a fintech publication wastes everyone's time. Research which outlets cover your industry and match your story to their editorial focus. Relevance matters more than prestige — a feature on a niche industry publication can drive more qualified traffic than a mention on a general news site.

Neglecting Your Website: Editors will check your website before publishing. If your site looks unprofessional, loads slowly, or lacks basic legal pages (privacy policy, terms of service), your submission will be rejected. Make sure your website is polished before seeking media coverage.

Expecting Instant Results: While press release distribution delivers articles within days, the full SEO impact takes weeks to months as search engines index the articles and factor the backlinks into their ranking algorithms. Domain authority improvements from news backlinks are cumulative — each campaign builds on the last.

Only Doing It Once: One media campaign helps, but consistent coverage is what builds lasting authority. Businesses that get featured regularly (every quarter) build compounding domain authority, maintain ongoing search visibility, and keep their brand relevant in AI recommendations.

Choosing Cheap, Low-Quality Services: Budget distribution services that publish to hundreds of no-name sites with DA 10–20 deliver almost no SEO value. The backlinks from these sites are essentially worthless. Always verify the domain authority and legitimacy of outlets in the distribution network before paying for a service.