Understanding Google Authorship October 2013

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What is Google Authorship?

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Google authorship is a feature created by Google to link content searched on Google to an Author. They have also developed an algorithm from this called ‘Author Rank’

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What is author rank?

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Author rank is derived from the HTML 5 standard: rel=“author”. HTML is a web development language used to write webpages. Author rank is made up of tags and rules to decide where an article and its author will rank in Google search.

Why link content to authors?

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Google understands the value of authors having authority and readers responding to experts in a chosen field with authority. This has led Google into championing the development of authors via Google authorship.

•  Higher Value •  Higher rank probability •  Higher click thru

Author rank & Google algorithm

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Google uses over 200 signals to determine general search ranking; they have suggested that author rank could be included in these signals, however with the advent of Google hummingbird, we believe it is already a part of the Google search algorithm.

Google authorship basics

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Landing Page Optimised Search Results Google Plus Profile 1 2 3

Photograph has psychological effects. It gives authority and invokes trust

Step by step process

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Set-up a Google plus profile List sites you contribute to

Link content to author profile Increase traffic potential

Create content in your specified niche

SEO

USABILITY

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Monitoring & Evaluation

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Google webmaster tools has a section dedicated to author reporting. This gives metrics on impressions, clicks and search queries on author content.

Valuable KPIs

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1.  Increase in impressions of search queries

2.  Increase in clicks of search queries

3.  Increase in organic click through rate

Additional Considerations

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1.  Google+ should not be implemented in a silo, it should support a wider content strategy

2.  Various brands/industries use Google plus authorship for the following objectives 1.  Brand awareness

2.  Drive relevant social traffic

3.  Improve authority in relevant industry

“Detecting/Boosting Authorities: not done by hand, but applies by topic areas. Webmasters can keep deepening their content on a topic to further their authoritativeness on a specific content area.” should

- Matt Cutts, Google Webspam Team

Final Words…

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Thank You!

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Questions or Comments?

Lauren Jones Senior Campaign Manager SEO & Social Media Make It Rain Twitter: @Lauren_Reports | @makeittweet Email: lauren@make-it-rain.co.uk Web: www.make-it-rain.co.uk