Changing the author of a post
-
Hi,
I've a number of wordpress posts that were written by different authors, and I want to merge them into a single author. If Google sees that originally the post was rel authored to person A and later we change the author reference to person B, will Google see this as suspicious in any way?
Or does it not matter, as long as it's only attributed to a single author at any one time?
Thanks,
Leigh
-
Thanks Dan. I use Yoast's Wordpress SEO. It's a great plugin. I have the author archive disabled.
-
Leigh
Just making sure you're all set. As far as I know, this will not raise a flag in terms of authorship.
What Williams is talking about is the "author archive" and if you're using an SEO plugin (I recommend Yoast) you'll want to noindex author archives and I even disable them for a single author blog. They end up looking like a duplicate of the main blog page if its a single author blog.
-Dan
-
We don't actually link the author's name to an author page, so I think we're ok there. Thanks for the clarification.
-
Meaning the link to the Author's page where ALL of his articles are available for view. I don't remember what the wordpress link was but basically something like www.wordpress.com/authors_name/
Where it shows all the author's posts, just redirect www.wordpress.com/authors_name/ to www.wordpress.com/new_authors_name/
-
Thanks Willny. Can you clarify what you mean by "Unless the links are going to the author's list of posts"?
-
Won't matter from what I know. Unless the links are going to the author's list of posts(don't forget to redirect to the merged author), it won't really matter.
Changing the author won't give any real affect unless the author is really that authoritative in your niche(very unlikely).
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Hi Moz, Asking on how to put the canonical header manually onto old blog posts?
Hi Moz, Can you help me on how to put canonical header manually onto old blog posts? Thanks
Content Development | | Jeanie040 -
Why did Moz remove thumbs down from blog posts?
You may have already noticed one of the decisions we made when we redesigned the Moz Blog:
Content Development | | Trevor-Klein
We removed thumbs down from the posts. And it was largely in the name of transparency. Wait, HUH? You took away a method of critique, and you're calling that transparent? Yes. Here's the scoop: Thumbs down are one of the most cryptic, uninformative, and often passive-aggressive forms of feedback on the Internet today. By removing the mud from the water, we make the entire picture clearer. It's so easy to see a handful of thumbs down on a post (we would almost always get 1-2), and begin hypothesizing what went wrong. We shouldn't have published that one. The topic was too tangentially relevant; it was too long or too hard to follow. There wasn't enough evidence to support the claims. We could dive into analytics, attempting to glean clues about what happened, but in reality, any one of the following are reasons someone might thumb a post down: The title is confusing The topic is one that I'd like to deny exists (algo update, e.g.) The milk I poured on my cereal this morning had gone bad, and I need to take out this frustration somehow I once had a falling-out with the author of this post I still have a bad taste in my mouth about yesterday's post, which is skewing my thoughts about this one I found one of the comments offensive My finger slipped on my phone while I was trying to thumb this post up (we've confirmed this happens) I didn't like the author's self-promotion in this post I saw the new Star Wars trailer, and am terrified that Disney might think including Jar Jar's long-lost brother in the new film is a good idea. I hate everything right now. Okay, the last one might be a stretch. But you get the idea. Sometimes a post would receive a disproportionate amount of thumbs down simply because the author was proposing an idea that wasn't popular, no matter its importance. One great example: Carson Ward wrote a fabulous post in 2012 titled "Guest Blogging – Enough is Enough," divining what Matt Cutts would write about nearly 17 months later. The response? 45 thumbs down – one of the most maligned posts in the history of the Moz Blog. Authors have emailed us in a tizzy, asking if their thumbs down meant they weren't quite right for the Moz audience, and in replying to them we came to this overarching realization: We didn't know why they got thumbs down, and we couldn't find out with any certainty, but more often than not it just didn't really matter. We were confident in their points and their presentation, and real criticism would nearly always show up in the comments. All that said, we love it when people offer up constructive criticism. We always take it to heart, and hearing directly from you all is the best way we can improve. For that reason among many others, we'll always have the comments below the post. If you feel like a post wasn't up to snuff, please take a moment and tell us why in those threads (please keep it TAGFEE). One last note: Thumbs down remain available on comments, though that's a temporary stop-gap while we work on a more informative system for flagging comments that are offensive, or facepalm-worthy attempts at links (they're nofollowed anyway!), or otherwise inappropriate for our community. We'd love your questions or comments on this change, and hope you're enjoying the new look of the Moz and YouMoz blogs!11 -
Evergreen content: Dedicated section or blog posts?
As part of our content strategy we are creating an ongoing series of articles to help both our potential buyers and our users learn about our product and improve their knowledge of industry best practices in general. Internally, we've had some debate as to where we should host this content within our site. We've identified two approaches: Series of blog posts Dedicated knowledge section of the website If we go with the first approach, we would created a dedicated section that indexed all the blog posts. If we went with the second, we'd create blog posts for each of the articles announcing their addition. Is there any difference, SEO wise with the two approaches? What would you recommend? Thanks, Darren.
Content Development | | dgibbons0 -
Does it do any damage to post my blogs for marketing community websites on my own website too?
I'm blogging quite often for one of the biggest marketing community's in the Netherlands and I want to post these blogs on our own company's weblog too. Our own blog is meant for sharing professional know how and boosting our identity as professional web agency. But off course, we also benefit from it SEO wise. If I post these blogs on our own weblog, I have to add a link to the original article on the marketing community website. So, my question is: will that cause any damage for our own website?
Content Development | | ThijsLeydens0 -
Can I delete an old blog post and be ok?
I wrote some blog posts on my wordpress blog a few years ago that I no longer want on my site. I have them "no index" and "no follow" but everytime I run a report on my site they still seem to pop up. If I just delete the posts will it result in a broken link for my site? Or is there another way I can go about it? Thanks guys
Content Development | | Caseman0 -
Should I delete old or unrelevant posts in my blog? (Panda Update question)
I have a website where I post articles every few weeks.. Should I remove the outdated and unrevelant posts? I fear that google might punish my website in the Panda update.
Content Development | | wellnesswooz0 -
What's the best way to include a pdf in your post?
I have some posts where I'd like to include a downloadable pdf....what is the best way seo wise to do this? I was thinking of just putting the file on my server and than just including a link to download it, but I'm thinking there's probably a better way. Any thoughts?
Content Development | | NoahsDad0 -
Leap of Faith - Damm the consequences - Title Tag Change
the crazy things we do mid week. But after reading Cyrus' post on beating Panda I went back to my website design site http://www.grangewebdesign.com which I had set up a plugin which had all my posts setup as Website Design - %%title%% So basically every Title tag had Website Design in front of it. REadingthis post now it suggests that this is bad practice so I just changed it to %%title%% which now of course means that I should perhaps look more closely at the titees I have been using. Was embedding the Website Design in front of the post overkill? thoughts appreciated...
Content Development | | kdaly1000