Authorship without Google+ - Ideas and strategies

[Carla_Dawson]

Hi everyone,

I am currently coaching several companies on Content Marketing, Authorship etc and how to implement these techniques at an institutional level - more here.

My question is - Can an author reap the benefits of authorship in all search engines simultaneously without linking to Google + and becoming entangled in the Google Circles phenomena?

I know don't laugh.  I know it seems like an ignorant question, but there must be a way. Is there a possibility of doing this with Author Schema's http://schema.org/Article? Will Google treat them the same way as Google +?

My clients are not happy about getting so entangled with Google + and leaving out the other search engines.

Thanks

Carla

[Carla_Dawson]

Hi Takeshi,

Thanks so much for getting back to me on this one. I am aware of Bing's experiments with Klout and just signed up for it today to test it out. I will be your response to my client. I can see this is a very aggressive move on Google's behalf. I wonder if eventually they will get dinged as Microsoft did on monopolistic behaviors. hehe...time will tell.

Tks for your time! Have a good weekend

Carla

[TakeshiYoung]

The Author schema does not do anything in any search engine yet, as far as I know.

In order to take advantage of Google Authorship, you need a Google+ profile. Google+ is Google's identity platform that they are using identify individual authors. Without Google+, your image will not show up in the SERPs. Without Google+, your friends will not see your contact appearing higher in the SERPs. Without Google+, you will not be able to take advantage of any changes that Google makes to their algo with regards to Author Rank.

In short, no you cannot benefit from Google Authorship without a Google+ profile

Bing is also experimenting with a type of authorship which combines Facebook profiles and Klout scores, but again this has nothing to do with the schema.org markup.

[HealthLotteryMan]

Sure they can, it goes back to the days of articles where they would have an author box at the bottom. If you want to become known then I would try and link it to places where one can read more about the author such as a LinkedIn profile. It can become tedious listing all the authors credentials in the box of every article, it's best they give a snippet to sell them linking to a better source of information about them, be that a LinkedIn profile or their own website.

Google likes to dominate industries but the work around on this one is relatively easy compared to YouTube comments.