Google+ Authorship for Multi-Author Company Blogs
-
- Can a company's Google+ page be designated as the author of web content (as can be done with individuals) so that the COMPANY comes up as the author in the web results?
- Is it preferable for company bloggers to create individual Google+ profiles and be listed as the author of the posts that they write?
- Or rather is it a smarter move to create a company persona (under the guise of a real person) and have all authorship be attributed to that personal Google+ profile.
- AuthorRank is going to become more and more important to Google's algorithm. As bloggers write for a company, if they are listed as the author of the work, they create trust for their own personal brand. If and when this employee leaves, this equity is presumably taken with them instead of remaining with the company. Is this assumption correct? How are companies dealing with this potential issue?
-
I've run into the same problem. As best as I can tell, it can't be done.
To link your personal Google+ profile to your content, you have to use the "Contributor to" section under the "About" page of your profile. Google+ Pages have no such section.
The only work-around I can think of is the "company persona" option you mention, but like you said, that defeats the point of authorship.
-
Anyone who is an author should want their personal Google+ page to be credited with their writing. Then if they leave Employer A they can carry any prestige that they have earned to Employer B.
Although I am an employer and would like to see the company hold credit for work that they have funded, I think that employers who try to block employees from getting personal credit for their work are operating in low form.
Employers who allow employees to receive this type of credit may gain enormously in the future if that former employee does outstanding work and wins honors.
Also employers who hire authors of stature can benefit from the past work and fans of those individuals.
If you have excellent authors on your staff, treat them well, pay them fairly, allow them to be honored for their work and you have a good chance of retaining them. For many authors the opportunity to earn recognition for their work is nearly as important to them as their rate of pay. So, if you cut that off, how do you think they will feel... and what will they think about you?
-
I think Google wants authors only. Based on the first of the two ways of implementing author information in search:
- Check that you have a email address (for example, levy@wired.com) on the same domain as your content (wired.com).
- Make sure that each article or post you publish on that domain has a clear byline identifying you as the author (for example, "By Steven Levy" or "Author: Steven Levy").
This suggests that Google wants authors, not brands. Google doesn't appear to scan for a company name in a by-line, but I guess it might be possible.
-
The white hat in me knows that the answer to this question is most likely that the company bloggers should write under their own names, else the very concept of AuthorRank is undermined. Yet, I've had these questions for a while now and I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on the issue. Hoping this sparks some good discussion.
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
-
Website dropped out from Google index
Howdy, fellow mozzers. I got approached by my friend - their website is https://www.hauteheadquarters.com She is saying that they dropped from google index over night - and, as you can see if you google their name, website url or even site: , most of the pages are not indexed. Home page is nowhere to be found - that's for sure. I know that they were indexed before. Google webmaster tools don't have any manual actions (at least yet). No sudden changes in content or backlink profile. robots.txt has some weird rule - disallow everything for EtaoSpider. I don't know if google would listen to that - robots checker in GWT says it's all good. Any ideas why that happen? Any ideas what I should check? P.S. Just noticed in GWT there was a huge drop in indexed pages within first week of August. Still no idea why though. P.P.S. Just noticed that there is noindex x-robots-tag in headers... Anyone knows where this can be set?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DmitriiK0 -
Delete page and tell it to Google
Hello everybody, i have a problem with some pages of my website. I have had to removed 5-10 pages because these pages linked to 404 pages and i removed it. Need i to tell to Google or Only removed? Thanks so much
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pompero990 -
Guest blogging??
Hi all! I heard that Google comes down on guest blogging. I did a search here on Moz with the terms "Guest Blogging" and not much comes up, as it relates to my question. So I'm asking: I have a website with specific content where I can implement a "team blog" (stackideas - easyblog), and have industry professionals submit a blog article (once a month on their respective industry focus), and add Google Authorship (link to/from their Google+ profile contributors section), but not allow ANY follow links back to their site. There will be about 10 different blog categories, and there will potentially be several different authors in each category who will be writing specific focused content per category. Any potential Panda (or any other animal 😉 problems with that? Thanks all! BB
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BBuck0 -
Blog home page and SEO
Why do most blog owners not put content that is unique to the home page above the fold before posts begin?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Google Places Listing Active In Two Seperate Google Places Accounts?
Hi is there any issues with having a google places listing in two seperate google places accounts. For example we have a client who cannot access their old google places account (ex-employee had their login details which they can't get) and want us to take control over the listing. If we click the "is this your listing" manage this page button - and claim the listing, will this transfer the listing to our control? Or will it create a duplicate? Are there any problems having the listing in different separate accounts. Is it a situation in which the last person who manages the listing takes control? And the listing automatically deactivates from the old account? Do all the images remain aswell? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MBASydney
Tom0 -
Does google penalize for banner ads?
client has banners on site 1 linking to site 2 and vice-versa but these links are auto generated with each blog post ( new post means new ad link) is this a problem? see, its not like he just has one banner on reach site pointing back to the other - his ads automatically appear on each page that a blog post is posted - im sure you know what i mean but im trying to to my best to make sense here everytime another blog post is created for site 1 then another banner is also created linking to site 2 client thinks it may be a big problem - is it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ezpro90 -
404 in google webmaster tool
I have redesigned my website with new web address over 6 months ago and in the google webmaster tools it still shows my old urls with a reponse code 404 and still crawls those pages. How do I make sure they don't appear anymore in the webmaster tool and don't get crawled anymore ? or should I do a re-direct ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Domain Authority / Page Authority
I manage a site that has home page authority of 69, and overall domain authority of 63. To improve domain authority, would it help to remove some of the pages that have 0 page authority? There are over 1,000 pages to this site, and I always thought that the more pages you have, the better (generally). But, does it actually hurt the site to have pages that Google perceives as having 0 page authority, or does this have no bearing? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DiscoverBoating0