Possible name for Author Rank update in 2013: Shakespeare Panda
Two years ago, after attending a much smaller BrightonSEO, we wrote a post about the death of journalism. Now in 2012, at a much bigger BrightonSEO, James Carson believes it is rising from the grave to take back the internet from anonymous personas.
The importance of authorship on the internet was a hot topic on Friday. As well as James Carson’s excellent 20×20 presentation ‘I Believe that Authors are The Future’, it also came up in a number of the other talks and prompted some follow up discussion on Twitter and on blogs. Coincidently a blog post on authorship appeared on SEOmoz two days later.
Make sure you’ve read our other write ups of BrightonSEO including the ‘Ask the Engines’ panel, morning session, afternoon session and 20×20 talks.
The meat of James’ talk was that authorship will be important for SEO in the future as search engines look to find a suitable replacement for link ranking factors that have become skewed thanks to paid link building, link spam and the ongoing pursuit of SEOs to gain more and higher authority links to boost their rankings. Even social ranking factors aren’t that reliable due to paid followers and shares.
James Carson believes that ‘Authors are The Future’ and quoted AJ Kohn’s claim that “Author Rank could be more disruptive than all of the Panda updates combined” (WOW!) That’s a bold statement, and one that Matthew Oxley was quick to contest with his blog post ‘Why I don’t believe authors are the future for SEO’. We will be working Matthew’s argument into this post to consider the pros and cons of authorship.
How Does Google Know Who the Author is?
If you are a regular reader of our blog you should already know how to mark up your site with rel=author and about Google’s new easy way to link your Google+ account to your blog.
Currently this results in a mug-shot and link to your profile appearing next to articles you have written in SERPs. This is likely to increase CTR (itself a ranking factor) as just the presence of a real person gives a bit of content authority. If an article is written by an authority figure (for example a blog post written by Matt Cutts) then it is going to get more clicks than one written by a marketing intern or a fake profile. Obviously any Google account – real or fake – can be linked as an author so it is still possible to trick Google into thinking a fake author is real. The harder part would be tricking real users.
Author Rank
Both James Carson and Tom Anthony (author of the SEOmoz post) believe that Authorship will soon start to have a strong effect on rankings. Author Rank puts the WHO into ranking.
Every time an author writes a piece of content attributed to their Google+ account, Google gets an indication that they are a prolific writer in certain niches. Combine that with other factors for the content such as links and social shares and Google can build an idea of the authority of writers on the web.
If a person writes a piece of content on a different subject to their niche, it won’t receive the same benefits because they are not an authority in that field. James gives a good example of a fashion expert writing a blog post about football – they are not an authority in that field so why should their content rank well?
Problems for SEO and Content Marketing Agencies
Currently, one of the best ways to gain links without penalisation is through writing guest posts. This can be done very well, and very badly.
Strategy 1 – Building relationships with high authority bloggers in a niche and approaching with an idea for a guest post written specifically for their blog.
Strategy 2 – Mass emailing webmasters with poorly written content under a false name. Here is a real example of this that we have received:
Hi,
We have a guest blog post that we would like to host on your blog. It relates to SEO on a current topic.
What are your costs and editorial guidelines on contextual links in posts?
No attempt to build rapport, explain who the author is or what they subject of the post it. They even offer payment for their post – to me that is a paid link.
Currently, the two tactics work about the same (you gain more links from the second strategy but they hold less authority). If AuthorRank becomes a factor, Strategy 1 becomes a whole lot more attractive. Not only are the links gained from higher authority sites but they gain even more authority if they are written by a reputable source.
Low quality content on low quality sites written using fake names just won’t have much benefit anymore.
Matthew Oxley rightly points out that SEOs will be able to game this by building up a fake persona so that it is seen as an expert, even if it doesn’t exist. It will be interesting to see if Google has a way of combating this.
One immediate problem is that almost all big names on the web have a big presence in person – they attend and talk at conferences and people are eager to chat to them. This could be a problem if that person doesn’t exist.
Combining Domain and Author for Super Links
It is possible that Author Rank will actually affect the Link Algorithm strongly as another factor search engines can use to decide how valid a backlink is.
Let’s take SEOmoz as an example of how Author Rank could make high authority domain links even better.
SEOmoz is a high authority SEO site. Rand Fishkin is a high authority SEO writer. A link from either would be good but a link from Rand on SEOmoz would be the icing on the cake. Why? Because Google would recognise both that SEOmoz is a reputable source (people are always linking to – as we have in this post) and Rand Fishkin is the highest authority author at SEOmoz as he has been writing proficiently for years now, and his posts get the most attention.
Combine this with the power of social shares – guaranteed for any content on the SEOmoz blog and you have one extremely powerful link headed at your site.
If any of the above comes true then link building isn’t dead, it just got a lot harder. Especially for content that doesn’t fit into a niche with high authority websites and bloggers.
How Can You Prepare for Author Rank?
Our advice is the same as James Carson’s, Tom Anthony’s and even Matthew Oxley’s. Whether you are an agency or in-house, get your team on Google+, make your website author tag friendly and start building up real relationships with other people online.
Author Limitations
Something not addressed at BrightonSEO is the use of authors for static content. Using real authors for blog posts is thoroughly recommended but what about product pages? Our course pages are not attributed to an author and it would be strange if they were.
Would this mean they would suffer in the rankings in the future? Already we have begun to notice that our blog posts are creeping into SERPs that previously just listed our course pages. In this case, Google’s reliance on social, freshness and authority is making results less relevant as somebody searching for a training course wants a static product page, not a blog post on the subject.
Do you think Author Rank will have a significant impact on rankings in the next 2 years? Will this come at a cost to static pages and force Webmasters to regularly update their content? Let us know in the comments below.
The post Author Rank: More Important than Panda? appeared first on Silicon Beach Training Blog.
