Authorship on Pages
-
Hi there - I have just been told that it is a big "no no" to add authorship to a standard page and that it should only be used on blog posts. Is this true?
What are the negative effects of using authorship on a page?
I added the rel="author" tag to a page that talks about a member of our team and a few weeks ago his picture started showing next to the search results entry on Google - great for click through rate, however is this improper usage?
Any help welcome!
-
Right now there is not penalization for using the rel="author" markup in pages that are not posts, articles, white-papers... tl;dr all kind of authored content with a visible by line.
But I confirm you that using authorship other than those kind of contents is deprecated by Google, and I won't be surprised that will be penalized or simply not shown.
In those pages, if you really need to use structured data, and it may be useful for Entity Recognition, I suggest you to use the Schema.org Person.
-
My take on it is this; on pages use Publisher, because it is company content. No one really inquires to who wrote your about page on your site, it is trivial, but it is not trivial what company the about page is about. On blog or opinion posts, I use Author.
-
Did you set up the rel=author correctly as Google would pick it up like that unless you specify in the article ( a good way is to link back to the G+ profile at the end of each leaving no doubt). You can also put some code on your page that links to a singular person though its a bit more effort but good if its nor a word press site etc.
Agree that Google does have its own rules! (and they are not always fair!)
Thanks
-
It might not matter what you do.
We had been using rel=author on pages that were articles written by specific people, but not on information pages such as contributor biographies. However Google started showing the contributors' pictures in the results when the bio pages came up in search.
After some head-scratching, I noticed that in the bios that were affected, the phrase "by [Author Name]" was in the body of the text. That is to say, the sentence, "A number of wonderful articles have been written on various subjects by John Doe, a really great guy," would cause John Doe's picture to appear in the serps next to his bio result, even without rel=author being on the page or "by [Author Name]" being an actual byline.
Google plays by its own rules.
-
Jarno has some great points as he mentioned its for if you author the page simple as really.
I can't say there are negative effects associated that I can think of (doesn't mean there are none) I have however heard of people saying that it can help with rankings (Sorry I don't have link to back this up at the moment).
My advice is If its good content (like a blog or a relevant article in the niche) that is good to associate your self with (as a authority) if not you can get by without it. But as you seem to be finding it has a high click through keep with it.
Best of luck.
-
DH,
how important is it to show a picture of his page next to the result? The page is about him therefor the subject of the page is this person in the photo. So i don't see a problem with that but did he actually write the page? Author is the person that writes the page. In that case I for sure wouldn't use it.
I also wouldn't use it if i would write a general page about for instance vacuum cleaners. Why would I want my picture next to a vacuum cleaner even if I created the page? It's not that relevant is it? So in general I wouldn't advice on using the author tag other then for blog posts with useful information.
hope this helps
Regards
Jarno
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
-
Will SEO Blogs Divert Traffic from Main Web pages using same keywords?
Our company has drafted several SEO blogs using certain keywords. If we post these SEO blogs to our website and social media channels , and the blog keywords are also used on our main website pages, will the blogs divert or dilute traffic to our main web pages? Thank you for your expertise and insights in advance.
Content Development | | Johnenchroma0 -
Web page or blog ? Which one is preferable
Hello, For one of our sites, 19 keywords are ranking on Home page. But, the home page doesn't have content with those keywords. I am afraid that with Google updates, we will eventually lose all the ranking position for these keywords. Should we ask the client to create blog around those keywords or create separate pages ? Thanks
Content Development | | Johnroger0 -
Shortened page titles and changed urls to match, will this effect my page rankings?
In my recent crawl, I was given a bunch of 200 errors for having titles too long, i rewrote the titles and changed the URLs to match (using wordpress). I was then informed by my boss that changing the URLs like I did (www.website.com/abc ->www.website.com/xyz) may have changed our page rank for those pages and if so i should revert them to the old urls. There are about 14 titles in total that I made these changes to. Would it be quicker to change the URL's to their old names, or better for me to use 301 redirects to point the old urls to the new ones? Will either renaming the urls of the new titled blogs with their old titles or using 301 redirects have better SEO results? Does wordpress automatically make these redirects for me? When I click a link of the old urls I kept saved in a document it still goes to the page.
Content Development | | dclauser0 -
What is the easiest and most scalable way to add links from one page to a related page entry?
We have a Spanish language reference site, and want to link related entries to each other. For example, the entry for "home" can link to the page with the entry for "home away from home." What is the best and most efficient way to do this at scale?
Content Development | | CuriosityMedia0 -
Single page verses multiple pages
I am working on a client website that has a Services section. Each service could have its own page. The problem is that some of the sections only have a 3 sentence paragraph. I am not sure if this is enough content to be considered quality. I am of course going to recommend that they revisit their copy and expand on what they do, but the question remains. Is it better to have one lengthy page of services or individual services/page even though the content is light? I know it would benefit from multiple if there was substantial content, but that is not the case in this instance. Thank you!
Content Development | | thinkseo0 -
2 blogs and authorship
Hi all, I run a blog from my WP site, and also a seperate one on blogger.com which has authorship linked to it. I'm noticing that if I put up a WP blog (from my site) on my G+, this will pop up on listings presented the same as the authorship (image shown). My question is, although I make sure that I do not duplicate content between the two blogs, will this kind of mixing up of things (incorporating G+) actually be counter-productive? Thanks in advance.... tom
Content Development | | T-J-I0 -
Is the Page Authority/Rank of my corporate site affected by my blog's PA/PR and vice versa?
If I host my blog on my corporate site (it is a wordpress blog) will the page authority and page rank of my site translate to the blog? And does this also go the other way around? My gut says this would make sense, and I think I have seen it in action with other corporate sites that host their wordpress blogs, but I want to be completely sure. Even better, if someone can explain to me how this works, that would be super helpful!
Content Development | | Kendi0 -
Is it advisable to have unique pages for different cities/states though there wouldnt be any actual differentiation in the actual content.
Is it advisable to have unique pages for different cities/states though there wouldnt be any actual differentiation in the content. For example should we have separate pages for "hammers in california" & "hammers in new york". The product is same and content more or less the same. The search volume for individual queries is low but collectively makes a large number. The unique title tag automatically will generate traffic. So does it make sense to make 50 such pages. Else is there any way to uniquely target 50 such queries/month/city
Content Development | | DYo0