Getting client to spend the time writing article of authority
-
Hi, I've got an issue that I'm sure many of you are good at dealing with. I'm working with an authority in my client's industry. There is the president, who is definitely an authority. There is his wife, who has a name in the field, is an author in the field, but her name is not near as big as the president.
I found a really, really good topic for content that is attracting links in the industry - one of the best content topics possible which really needed to be addressed on my client's website.
I let them know that it needed to be an article of authority, but they had their assistant write it. It's good, she's talented - it's informative, interesting, has 2 embedded videos of the president talking, and is 1650 words. We haven't made the videos yet.
The thing is, doesn't this need to be written by the authority - president. He's a slow writer with zero time, but I think it needs to be his voice with his name on it to attract links.
He's super super busy though.
Should I:
1. Suggest that the president do a thorough editing of the article and put his name on it.
or
2. Have his wife (who has more time) do a thorough editing of the article and put her name on it.
or
3. Leave it as is
or
4. Have the president rewrite the entire article when he has time, which he would be resistant to.
or
5. Have the president's wife rewrite the entire article, which she would be resistant to?
What do you guys think with the little information I've given you?
-
EGOL,
I am once again surprised and thankful for your common sense and words of experience.
I will take all of your advice.
Thank you.
-
<grin>What Egol said is gospel.</grin>
Course....I live by the sword so I'd a just used the CEO 's byline....but yes, as he said, this is another way to go too!
-
First, you should give thanks that you got something.
You told the CEO and his accomplished wife that this was important content and they decided to delegate. That's their decision, not yours. They must trust this person to do a good enough job that they can post her work on the website and not be ashamed of it. If they have a great reputation in the industry they will be picky about what represents them on their website. She could be the next big author in this field. So, I think that you should read what she wrote and be happy with it and the only reason that you should make a fuss is if there are obvious problems with the article that you can recognize as a third party.
Second, you got the CEO to be a talkin' head in a couple of videos that will be posted on this page. So, slap that video above the fold, show the CEOs face in the video window annotated with his name and you got the next best thing to him writing the article. You can also make a separate page that includes these two videos and their transcripts and they might bring in traffic.
Getting it wrapped up.... I would call the CEO or his wife and thank them for the article. Tell them that you are getting ready to post it on the website and ask if they want to add anything else such as a photo or a graph or something.... then ask what they liked about the article to gauge how pleased they are with it.
What next? Get the article posted and once it starts pulling some traffic get back in touch with them and ask for another article... then another... then another. You might have opened a steady stream of content and this author will soon become the most widely read person in the industry. Maybe she will become the equivalent to the Whiteboard Friday of the industry if she produces a stead stream of good content.
-
I would at least try to get him to review it and say you want his name on it. If he won't or cannot review it then put it out there with his name on it anyway
-
Depending upon the channel - the 'name' on the content can count BIG time....so I get your slant on this.
Me? I'd just put the CEO's name on it, period. If his rep carries that much channel juice, then you should ALWAYS go for the most you can get...i.e. just put his name on it....the author obviously works for him so no problem...
-
I think that the most important piece is the content itself, not the author.
If you think that the author's name will be a main attraction (i.e. if the president has his name as the author it will be more attractive to link to) then it may be worth editing it to their liking and publish it under their name.
However, I don't think that is the advantage. The advantage is putting out quality content around the topic you've found. If you have it edited for the president, make sure they are willing and knowingly speaking as the subject originator. If there is something controversial in the article, it will be viewed as the president's opinion - which can have greater negative effect than positive.
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
-
Google spending majority of time on NAV bar vs. most important pages
Google is spending 37% of its time crawling the NAV bar which is on every page. Google is spending very little time 1% on the most important pages -- product pages (https://www.skinsafeproducts.com/tatcha-violet-c-brightening-serum-20-vitamin-c-10-aha) on www.skinsafeproducts.com . Does anyone know what is going on and how I can change the behavior?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | akih0 -
How to Get Rid of Dates Shown In Google Search Results
When I enter "Site: URL" to check what a search how Google displays search result, a date appears at the very front. This takes away several characters, really valuable real estate. How can I stop Google from displaying these dates? There are certain Wordpress plugins like "WP Date Remover" however the seem to only apply to blog posts. Dates are appearing on results on all my Wordpress pages. Is there an internal setting in Wordpress that will allow me to remove dates for these non blogpost pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan11 -
Redirecting to a new domain... a second time
Hi all, I help run a website for a history-themed podcast and we just moved it to its second domain in 7 years. We've had very good SEO up until last week, and I'm wondering if I screwed up the way I redirected the domains. It's like this: Originally the site was hosted at "first.com", and it acquired inbound links. However, we then started to host the site on blogger, so we... Redirected the site to "second.blogspot.com". (Thus, 1 --> 2) It stayed here for about 7 years and got lots of traffic. Two weeks ago we moved it off of blogger and into Wordpress, so we 301 redirected everything to... third.com. (Thus, 1 --> 2 --> 3) The redirects worked, and when we Google individual posts, we are now seeing them in Google's index at the new URL. My question: What about the 1--> 2 redirect? There are still lots of links pointing to "first.com". Last week I went into my GoDaddy settings and changed the first redirect, so that first.com now points to third.com. (Thus 1 --> 3, and 2-->3) I was correct in doing that, right? The drop in Google traffic I've seen this past week makes me think that maybe I screwed something up. Should we have kept 1 --> 2 --> 3? (Again, now we have 1-->3 and 2-->3) Thanks for any insights on this! Tom
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomNYC1 -
Best tips for getting a video page to rank?
We have a video for our company, located here: http://www.imageworkscreative.com/imageworks-creative-video It's an overview of our company and the services we offer. We'd like to get this page ranking, but we haven't had much luck so far. Our Youtube account does better, but I'm looking for some things we can do on or offsite to get this page to rank. Any tips would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ScottImageWorks0 -
Best to Spend Marketing Budget on High Quality Articles OR Link Building Services?
Greeting MOZ Community: My site has 400 domains linking to it of which about 180 are toxic and 180 are suspicious according to a site audit from a reputable SEO firm. The SEO firm is offering link removal and link building services to remedy the situation. My question is this: if I can create and post high quality blog articles on a very regular basis, will this in and of itself create high quality links to my site? If the articles are of exceptional quality can I post them elsewhere to earn quality links? Does it make more sense to use my budget on paying a PR agency to create high quality articles and posting them on my blog or elsewhere rather than spending on an SEO link building campaign? Should I do both? I plan on having the SEO firm remove toxic links and optimize content using Yoast. But I want to be careful about not wasting my budget if the links will develop naturally if I post the content online myself. I am more inclined to have an SEO pro work on creating links but why pay if I can do it myself. Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
MozRank of 0.0 for a long time
I have a very small client/personal friend of mine who is in a very niche market. They rank pretty well for all their keywords mainly because it is so niche and the competitor websites are no good. I was wanting to begin adding a few blog posts and tips here and there about industry, but was wanting to first know why have a 0.0 mozRank. Their campaign has been set up on Moz for over 6 months and there are 0 errors and warnings for their site... I thought they would eventually warrant something. I have read the posts explaining mozRank and have came to the conclusion that it is a 0.0 still because no one is linking to their site.. am I right? Other than that, are there other ways to raise this score? Site is http://bit.ly/18nPE3W
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BWrightTLM0 -
Is this a Correct Time to Use 302 Redirects?
Hi Mozzers! We are going through a rebranding process, and as of this morning we have 3 domains, all with identical content. For example (not real domain names): www.fantastic.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
www.fantasticfireworks.com
www.fireworks.com We are using 3 domains to ease the rebranding transition. We currently only want people to visit 'www.fantastic.com,' and if they visit the other 2 domains we want them redirected. Since we will be using these other domains eventually, should we use 302 redirects instead of 301s? The other domains are new and do not have any domain authority or sites linking in, so we do not need to worry about link juice. Does it really matter what type of redirect we use? Thanks!0 -
"Jump to" Links in Google, how do you get them?
I have just seen yoast.com results in Google and noticed that nearly all the indexed pages show a "Jump to" link So instead of showing the full URL under the title tag, it shows these type of links yoast.com › SEO
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters
yoast.com › Social Media
yoast.com › Analytics With the SEO, Social Media and Analytics all being clickable. How has he achieved this? And is it something to try and incorporate in my sites?0