Is it wise for employees to be tied to a company's content with rel=author?
-
We're an e-commerce company that sells consumer goods. We are launching a blog that will have advice, tips, etc. on topics related to our industry. I'd like for us to implement rel=author on the content. If we rel=author the content to an employee, what are the possible repercussions if that employee leaves the company? I know the markup is pretty new and hasn't been widely implemented, but has anyone dealt with this?
-
You know it Brian!
-
Dana,
I'm looking forward to seeing that happen. Hope you're composing a blog piece on that topic now: when it's announced that publisher's brand images will appear in SERPS, you'll be able to publish that news and get the lion's share of news cycle traffic.
-
You are correct. No head shot. But I have it on good authority that very soon Google will begin using a thumbnail of the brand image that's been uploaded to the Google+ brand page. They have a vested interest in doing so. It makes the SERPs more attractive and it also makes Google+ more enticing.
-
I assume rel=publisher doesn't give you the pretty headshot on the SERP?
-
This is a great question. There is a lot of confusion about rel=author. It is my understanding that for e-commerce, if the "brand" is speaking, that rel=publisher is what would be most appropriate, not rel=author. I have the same scenario on our newly revived e-commerce blog. There are times when we will want to list someone specifically as rel=author, i.e. if they are an expert on a particular subject, but most of the time we will want to post as rel=publisher. This is done by creating a brand page in Google Plus as opposed to an author page. Still, Google+ has the problem that a brand page must be attached to a Google profile, which must be an individual person, not a company. I would be very interested to hear others address this whole issue.
Dana
-
It's really not about "lazy," in my opinion. It's about time and skill. When the boss is managing the company for 80 hours a week, and isn't a talented writer, the boss has someone else write. (I say this as the writer, not the boss.)
-
Brian, that's a really good point. When they leave, they can disown the authorship if they want to. Which could conceivably happen if they leave to start their own company or go work for a competitor.
-
What EGOL said. It's a given that almost any post author will eventually write elsewhere, and in all likelihood will leave your employ at some point while the post lives on.
"AuthoredRank" is going to be more important in some industry spaces than others. I can envision some "retainer" arrangement being necessary for continued company presence within an ex-employee's linked profile. That is, once the author leave said company, there's no reason they can't delete the reference/citation from their profile and remove the value of the rel="author" altogether, and of course the rich snippet disappears. If the author achieves enough of an audience or authority, and that helps with direct or search traffic, we may just see ex-employees needing some form of contract. It is their personal profile after all...
-
If you have an employee who is a kickass author think about the effect of saying.... "We don't want to give you credit for your work."..... or....
If you have an employee who does fairly good work what is the effect of saying.... "Your name and face are going to be on this."
The psychological effect can go to your advantage or not - depending upon how you play it and the mentality of the employee.
If an employee leaves your company how will you handle that. That kickass employee could become famous and you might enjoy their success through the rel=author association.... and it could go the other way.
So, if you are the type of place who hires top quality people and treats/pays them well enough to stay with you long term then give them credit for their work. Part of being a good place for your customers is having great employees who are good at their job.
If you can't keep employees very long then you should think carefully about how you handle this and other things too.
And... if you are askin' because the boss is to lazy to write his own blog posts then he needs a kick in the pants.
-
Well, if they are the ones writing it then I would be more willing to say go for it. If somebody else is and you just want a name associated then I would not. Your best bet would be to create a Plus page for the ceo or a owner of some sorts. And associate it with that account.
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
-
Getting Connections to Follow LinkedIn Company Page
I've just started a freelance contract with a client promoting their content over social media, primarily Twitter and LinkedIn. As I've started to manager their accounts, I noticed they have set up both a personal LinkedIn page under the company name as well as a Company Page. The "personal" account has 330 connections but the Company Page only has 17 followers. Has anyone had success with a good strategy for quickly and effectively promoting the Company Page to the personal connections? I'd like to actually migrate the connections over to the Company Page, which should be the primary focus. Thanks for any help.
Social Media | | Nobody15330770827560 -
Social media marketing strategy for an ERP company?
Hello Everybody, We are an ERP company and want to get into social media marketing. We have decided to use Google+ over Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. Any ideas what we can do besides regular updates and getting our clients link to us? Regards
Social Media | | IM_Learner0 -
Question on RyanKent's Identifying Link Penalties 2012 Article
I have a question about this article: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012 Specifically the Section Titled: Other Google Link Penalties _"Google often manually penalizes sites and does not inform site owners of the penalty. Furthermore, Google makes many algorithm changes each year. Most people are aware of the major algorithm changes, but you should also know Google makes about 50 algorithmic changes each month which could lead to ranking changes or an "algorithmic penalty". With the Penguin update specifically, we are unsure if there will be further refinements and rollouts as has happened with Panda. On May 25th Google rolled out what Search Engine Land calls Penguin 1.1. _ What advice is available for a site owner who wants to know if they have received a link penalty or at risk in the future? Check your anchor text distribution to see if it appears natural. You can perform a fast check in Open Site Explorer of your top 20 links as follows: Go to http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ Enter in the URL of your site and press <enter>or the SEARCH button</enter> Change your drop down box settings as follows: Show [followed + 301] links from [only external] pages to [pages on this root domain]…..then press the FILTER button. These settings will remove the “nofollow” and internal links which are not evaluated by Google as part of link penalties. You will now see a list of all links to your site which may cause you to incur a penalty. For now, focus only on the Link Anchor Text column. If 50%+ of your top 10 links show the same or very similar anchor text, that is a warning sign of a very unnatural link profile. Of course, a deeper analysis is desirable but this method offers you some idea of the problem in just a few seconds. Hopefully your anchor text distribution looks more natural than the below example. Notice how all the links show anchor text? A natural distribution would show a high percentage of links with simply the site URL. When anchor text is naturally used, it is often far less than ideal." Anyway, with anchor text looking the same - would this have a negative impact if i was syndicating content to 10-15 blogs, or if i used onlyshare and did it to 50 or something. Would this impact me eventaully in a long term sense. I tend to write articles at least weekly for these sites so that i make sure i have fresh content, if me syndicating them/sharing the excerpt to my blog pages w/ anchor pages back to my main article is hurting me by having multiple pages linking back w/ the same exact anchor text, that would be a good thing to know. Any input on this would be much appreciated. Keep in mind i'm not creating 10k blogs and having one blog post on them. They are actively posted to. With my established site they seem to work great- but with a new site, would popping 10-15 links real quick like that set off any alarms? thank you, -Travis Gross
Social Media | | choiceenergy0 -
Setting Up Author Tags on Wordpress Blog
Hi, I am trying to set up author tags on my Wordpress blog (http://www.bradkrussell.com.au) so that my author profile shows in Google SERPs. I'm following Yoast's article - http://yoast.com/wordpress-rel-author-rel-me/ - and I did everything up to the "How to allow authors to add rel="me" to links in their bio's" section. Basically, in Wordpress under Appearance -> Menus for the About Me page I set 'link relationship' = author. Then on my Google + page (https://plus.google.com/u/0/110649694696756559049/posts) under the 'Contributor To' section on the About tab I linked back to the About Me page on my blog. Upon checking on Google Australia it appears that this was done correctly - https://www.google.com.au/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=site%3Abradkrussell.com.au. My questions are: Do I need to link back to my About Me page from every post I do? E.g. 'Written by Brad Russell' - linking to About Me. It appears I don't but does it help? Some of the results on Google Australia show 'By Brad Russell' but some don't. I'm just not sure if this is because the site hasn't been reindexed properly yet. What happens if in the future I have multiple authors on my blog? I give them a new username in Wordpress but how do I specify that they are the author of the post? Do I need to create an 'Authors' section on my site? If I then specify an Authors page as link relationship = author, how do I link each post to the necessary author page? I still don't really understand the rel=me tag and how I implement it on Wordpress. I'm not sure how to edit the functions.php and author.php files on Wordpress (ie the second half of Yoast's article). Many thanks!
Social Media | | bradkrussell0 -
Rel=author?? google auth?
Hi everyone, i need some help with this rel=author and google auth which has come into place. Some questions: 1., I write a blog on our e-commerce site, do i need rel=authort? 2., i write on other sites do i need rel=author If so is there an easy way to implement this, i know it links in with the Google+ profile but i am confussed as i keep seeing different ways to do it. I've also been told to do good auth, what is this? ive been given a piece of code to use in my site to auth it? is this worth it? Any help really appreciated 🙂
Social Media | | pauledwards0 -
Google+ Business Profile, Places, Company, or Brand
We have a company with 2 offices, 1 on each coast. I was wondering what would be the best way to create a google+ business page for this to maximize them? We'd like to show a nationwide presence with 2 offices. Are there any downsides to picking any 1 of these? To clarify, there are 3 choices: local business, brand, and company. Which of the 3 would you recommend for a company with a nationwide presence and 2 offices?
Social Media | | ilyaelbert0 -
What's affect more SEO between number of Facebook "Recommend" of number of fans of the facebook fan page?
I'm wondering what's the most important number in facebook that affect more the SEO of a site: It is the number of "Recommend" that your site have received or It is the number of fans the facebook fan page of the site have? Also does this really affect SEO or not? If you can provide some data, statistics, link to post or whatever it would be very nice. Thanks for your help
Social Media | | nuroa-2467120