Author Rank - Using the brand as the author
-
Hi i'm building a new site and want to start building up author rank right from the start.
If you are building author rank for a brand, do you think its fine to use the brand as the actual author of the content, instead of a actual person?
Or using a stage name rather then a persons actual name, and have your writers write under that particular stage name?
Would love to hear peoples opinions.
Cheers,
Mark
-
I think that they could post article under your account/name... so when they leave.. it's yours... it is to build up your authorship, not theirs..
-
Thanks
From what i've read so far, if you do hire a writer/employee and have the articles posted under their name, but then they decide to leave the company, they take the author rank with them?
So how can brand, deal with this potential issue?
-
Why wouldn't you just implement rel=publisher? If it's a brand responsible for the content, my understanding is that that would be the appropriate thing to do.
-
If you are talking about creating authorship linking specifically (i.e. using rel=author markup) you can't do that using a brand, Mark. Google won't let you. Authorship can only be connected to a personal Google+ profile. Which makes sense when you think about it. A "brand" can't write an article. Only a person can.
Forget about trying to create a personal profile that is actually the brand name. Google is very specific that personal profiles must be real people, and quite regularly removes accounts that don't meet the criteria.
If you do want to connect your content to a brand, you'll need to use the rel=publisher markup instead, connected to a Google+ business page Unfortunately at this point that "publisher" connection doesn't yet lead to any kind of rich snippet advantage in the SERP (eg. an image next to the search result as in rel=author).
There is talk that Google will eventually start using a brand image or logo in SERPS associated with rel=publisher but it's anybody's guess exactly when, or if, this will actually occur.
As for creating a fake persona to represent all the contributors of content - since this is diametrically opposed to what rel=author is supposed to represent, I have to assume Google has (or will devise) methods for detecting that kind of manipulation and devaluing or penalising it.
The whole point of authorship is that is supposed to allow creation of a trust relationship with the writing of a particular person. If there's anything we've learned this year from all the algorithm updates, it's that trying to manipulate legitimate ranking/authority signals purely for marketing purposes is a fool's errand. You may get away with it for a while, but when it gets clobbered, all the effort you put into the manipulation will have been wasted. Or worse yet will get you penalised. Trying to represent the work of several writers under one "stage name" is just such a manipulation.
Best suggestion at this point? Use rel=publisher markup for "brand" content (like product descriptions etc) and connect individual authors' content (like how-to articles, blog posts etc) to each individual's personal G+ profile.
In other words - use the tool as it was intended, instead of trying to pervert it purely for marketing benefit.
Paul
-
Dear Mark,
The answer lies in your question and depends on your decision as whom you would like to promote or build reputation for. So, if you want to build the rank for your brand, you go ahead and do so and if you want to build the author rank for a person (he is your brand in this case), you go for it. Let us take a look at a scenario. Suppose, I own multiple brands, I would build author rank for my name so that I would be recognized as the one behind all these brands. I am the brand here. Coming to your case, if I were you, if this brand is going to be my biggest investment or a dream project, I would stick to building the author rank for my brand as going forward, I can leverage the brand name and use it to my advantage. Suppose, I am likely to come up with multiple web properties or brands in future, I would rather build the author rank for my name as I am the one standing behind all these brands or web properties and I want all the recognition and all my current and future brands can leverage my recognition.
Please note that the above opinion is personal.
Best,
Rafi
-
According to the https://plus.google.com/authorship page,
- Make sure that you have a profile photo with a recognisable headshot.
- Make sure that a byline containing your name appears on each page of your content (for example, "By Steven Levy").
- Make sure that your byline name matches the name on your Google+ profile.
- Verify that you have an email address (such as stevenlevy@wired.com) on the same domain as your content. (Don't have an email address on the same domain?
A brand is rarely an "author" - someone did the writing. Google wants that person tied to the work they created. Now, there may be ways "around" this but getting "around" stuff in SEO is why so many people scrambled so badly this year.
This page dissects it further: http://www.optimum7.com/internet-marketing/google-optimization/pros-and-cons-of-google-authorship-for-businesses.html
Most notably:
A company or brand’s Google+ page cannot be designated as the author of any web content. Therefore your company and brand name will not come up as the author in the web results.
**Warning:**If you’ve considered creating a company persona under the guise of a real person in order to have all authorship attributed to that particular Google+… Don’t do it! This really undermines AuthorRank and defeats the whole point of authorship. Google may also penalize you for trying to cheat their system… just as they’ve done for poor SEO practices through Google’s Panda-Penguin algorithm updates.
That's what I would follow. I would not suggest trying to game Authorship at all.
-
I guess this would depend on many instances. What are you selling? What is your site about? Which will benefit you more? If your selling a cd of yourself and your the author then I would say go with the author. If your selling a 1 of a kind brand that no one else in the world has, then go with the brand name.
Eventually you may want to just do both, but since your starting, it's not a bad idea to go with brand, because it will be those are considered the most natural backlinks to your site that isn't your url.
Have a great night.
MB
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
-
Hi friends, I have a question. I want to know how Google detects the author of a content.
Hi friends, I have a question. I want to know how Google detects the author of a content.
Content Development | | Alopii0 -
Content Creation For Blog & Ranking Locally
Hey Everyone, I'm trying to rank for specific long tail key words such as: lower back pain treatment exercises lower back surgery options herniated disc exercises and etc. My question is: If I create a blog or article on these key words and integrate content and video within it and on youtube, will these blog posts come up locally when someone searches it within my area?
Content Development | | backinmotion1231 -
Help getting a Wordpress.com site to rank
Hi all, I have a blog for my site, but it hasn't been integrated into our site yet (that will happen in the next few months when we do some site changes). For now, it sits on a Wordpress.com site, and links from my website. I post a couple times a week, have social media linked to it, and feed posts to aggregators regularly. I also comment and like other Wordpress.com sites, but it just isn't ranking. Do I just need to stay persistent? It's been up for a month now, but still only getting a few hits a day. Any advice?
Content Development | | b4cab0 -
Use old content from Archive
Hello all, I just were looking on Archive.org and though what if i use the content from a really old website thats already been un-indexed. Could i just use this content on my new website and will it not be duplicate content? Thank you for your comment! Kind regards,
Content Development | | MennoO0 -
I allow authority sites to republish my blog articles, which then outrank me
Hey everyone. This is my first question here, I apologize if it has been covered before. I have a health and nutrition blog [authority nutrition] that has been up since December 1st, 2012. I've managed to write quite a few viral articles which have given me a bunch of natural links and a domain authority of 49, which I think is pretty great for such a new site. Haven't done any link building and everything is 100% white hat. Getting good rankings and good traffic already, so I can't complain. My only (1st world) problem is that sometimes major authority sites (DA of 70-95) republish my content. I always say yes if they ask me first, but some of them just republish without even asking. My articles are always indexed on my blog before they get republished, but it doesn't seem to make a difference. These sites always clearly link to the original URL, but they often tend to outrank me for the keywords I was targeting in the articles. They tend to rank in the top 5, but my original article is nowhere to be found. I plan on continuing to allow these sites to republish as I get powerful links and good traffic from them, but it's a bit frustrating that I don't seem to get the credit as the original source. I've already set up Google Authorship, but it doesn't seem to help. Is there anything I can do to make sure Google recognizes my article as the original and chooses to rank my site instead of the authority site that simply republished my article?
Content Development | | kriistjanm1 -
Getting an image to rank in blended search
Hi Mozzers, Has anyone got any good tips to get an image to rank in blended search when a user searches for a specific company name. I'm not talking about image search - I'm talking about the regular SERPs that sometimes contain images (normally logos) when you search for 'Coca Cola' for example - any ideas. Thanks Gareth
Content Development | | Bush_JSM0 -
Blogger Outreach - have you used this service before?
Hi, Has anyone used blogdash.com before? It says it has over 100,000 blog owners registered, which does sound good but when you look at the sites own social following its very poor and when you start to dig a little deeper you can find blog owner profiles like this: http://www.blogdash.com/blogger/ari-herzog First view, you think Ari Herzog has signed up to Blog Dash and you can pitch him content for blogs such as Huffington Post and Mashable, took about 10 seconds to realise he isn't actually part of the network as the yellow box is asking him to signup if he ever finds that page. Has anyone used this service? I can imagine 2% out of the 100,000 are actually members who have signed up.
Content Development | | activitysuper0 -
WordPress Rankings ?
It looks for me that WordPress sites get to rank better for some reason ... I dont know wil you will agree with this one with me or not. The question is... do they hold their rankings for the certain keyword with a time? or they lose them as fast as they get them? Shouldn't be content rank the same across all platforms? Content is a content and it dosent matter how it's presented? is it the case with google? For example: Create Wordpress site for only 3 products, provide good content for those 3 products... and sell them with some of shopping cart plugins (any recommendations on the plugin?) Will I get rankings faster and keep them?
Content Development | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0