How should I handle author attribution for ghostwritten content?
-
I've been using Crowdcontent for article production, and always feel like I'm potentially missing out on some authority or social proof with visitors (and maybe Google?) by not attributing an author (Crowdcontent doesn't give you the name of the author, otherwise I would just use their name). Would I be doing myself any favors by attributing myself as the author and pointing it back to my Google+ profile? Thanks in advance for any guidance!
-
Yes, I believe google would give you a boost if you could acquire an influential writer in your field. Author rank is still new territory, so the only way to be certain is to test.
-
Thank you Thomas. Would there be a benefit in hiring writers with topical expertise or credentials directly, and asking to link their Google+ profiles in the author byline on articles they produce for my sites? In other words, would Google look more favorably on my site if it had content written by highly-referenced influencers In a particular field?
Thanks!
-
I've been pretty impressed with the service, and so far it's been worth the price in terms of ROI. I only publish high-quality content on my sites because obviously I also want to give visitors a reason to subscribe and link in, in addition to getting love from google.
With regards to paying freelance writers, look at it this way: NY Times pays a lot of writers across their sites to produce content--writers who are no more invested in NYTimes than the salary or payment they receive for their work. I could never put out enough content on my own to stay competitive. It's simply a division of labor.
I agree with your point about the risk in losing a clear and consistent author voice when using multiple writers. For that reason alone I might avoid it, coupled with Thomas' point about volume of content being low-value when it comes to author rank.
-
lol... "wait 'googs stolz my cheezburger??"
-
Well put Thomas. I very much agree with your ideas here, especially the part on Google's perception of this practice. He seems very certain that Google won't ever penalize this. We all know that Google is entirely unpredictable. Wait til they roll out their cat-penalties and start targeting the 'i can haz cheezburger' sites.
-
The answer to your question is no, imo. I don't think people care about the author unless it's a well-established source. Now perhaps you would like to make yourself a well-established source, but I feel like that would be hard to do with somebody else writing all of your articles... you'd never establish a clear voice.
As far as what you said... that's good. I guess. Better than the $5 per article sites. I still don't much care for the service, but to each their own. As I said, I can't see how somebody else who was not invested in my company could come up with better content than someone invested in said business. Again, just my opinion.
Yes, if the articles are spammy looking Google could possibly penalize you depending on submissions. Sounds like at that price they won't/shouldn't be.
How much traffic and visibility are you getting on all of these articles? Just curious about this model...
-
You pay a "ghost writer" to be invisible. Therefore you claim the content as your own. If the content is original quality content than it could and most like would boost your authority. But author rank is more than just having a lot of content published by you, it is about influence. So simply writing a lot of good content does not make you an influencer. Your influence and in turn author rank are based on the citations you receive and the traffic you command.
Back to your 'ghost writer" question. Ghost writers have been used on and offline for sometime now. It seems to be a generally acceptable practice. But this does not mean that Google does or will always accept this. So if you were to ask me if this were acceptable, then I would judge this by how much you are contributing to the content.
An alternative method would be to set up a "persona" as the writer. This is justified by saying authors use pen names. Indeed, Franklin once wrote newspaper columns under a pen name in his early years for fear his age would discredit his work. But this "persona" approach may also run a risk with google.
So pick one or the other, and stick with your story.
-
Hi Jesse, thanks.
To clarify, CrowdContent is not an article submission site. It's a platform like Contently where you're essentially just hiring freelance writers. Their writers are all professionals from the US or Canada, and I generally pay between $50-$100 per 500-750 word article. Quality of content isn't the issue. It's simply not feasible for me to write all my content across dozens of sites in-house; that wouldn't scale, and I don't see a problem hiring freelancers for that. Google isn't going to know or care whether I wrote the content or paid someone to.
My question is whether I am missing out on any favorability with visitors or the SEs by not adding an author line to these articles.
-
Yikes.
Okay don't take this the wrong way, but I don't know why you're using an article provision service and I would flat-out advise against it entirely. These article submission sites are a perfect way to grab an unnatural link penalty. Granted, I don't have any experience with this particular company, but I'm willing to be the articles sound spammy and aren't going to help you at all.
I guess what I'm saying is, write your own content in-house. That's the only way to have complete control and avoid unnecessary penalties. Not to mention you will care more about it and spend more time writing content that people will actually want to read.
---my two cents.
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
-
Some Content The Same
Hello. I am about to publish some landing pages that target different industries that we are trying to market to. X for Accountants
On-Page Optimization | | smithandco
X for Financial Advisors
X for Fitness Trainers
X for X While a good portion of the content is unique on each page "the benefits of using X for accountants" some of the content on the page is duplicate which explains more about how our software works (the features), this will be the same content on every page. Is this considered duplicate content? What should I be aware of in term of Google rankings and penalties? Thanks,
David0 -
Does hover over content index well
i notice increasing cases of portfolio style boxes on site designs (especially wordpress templates) where you have an image and text appears after hover over (sorry for my basic terminology). does this text which appears after hover over have much search engine value or as it doesnt immediately appear on pageload does it carry slightly less weight like tabbed content? any advice appreciated thanks neil
On-Page Optimization | | neilhenderson0 -
Yoast WP Plugin - Social - G+ Author
Hi The author for homepage box/dropdown menu is ony showing 'dont show' or the G+ company page name (which i presume is publsiher not author) as options. The G+ personal page profile does link to the website in links section so wandering what might be going wrong here that i'm not being giving the option of selecting the author ? any help here appreciated ? all best dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Duplicate Content Again
Hello Good People. I know that this is another duplicate post about duplicate content (boring) but i am going crazy with this.. SeoMoz crawl and other tools tells me that i have a duplicate content between site root and index.html. The site is www.sisic-product.com i am going crazy with this... the server is IIS so cannot use htaccess please help... thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Makumbala0 -
Using a lightbox - possible duplicate content issues
Redesigning website in Wordpress and going to use the following lightbox plug-in http://www.pedrolamas.pt/projectos/jquery-lightbox/ Naming the original images that appear on screen as say 'sweets.jpg'
On-Page Optimization | | Jon-C
and the bigger version of the images as 'sweets-large.jpg' Alt text wise I would give both versions of the images slightly different descriptions. Do you think there would be any duplicate content issues with this? Anything I should do differently? I'm very wary of doing anything that Google is likely to think is naughty, so want to stay on their good side! Cheers
T0 -
Product category content!? what should it include?
Hello everyone!, I consider myself a rookie... so... please, excuse me if this is super basic or dumb!. I'm working on a ecommerce web (family business!)... and i've got this doubt. Say you've got architected your site this way...: site.com/category
On-Page Optimization | | jleandroperez
site.com/category/model_1
site.com/category/model_2 I'm mainly interested in getting the category webpages to rank high. The problem i've got is... what to put in the CATEGORY webpage!. Suppose you sale office furniture... and the category is 'chairs'... if you add content there, it won't be useful. What do you suggest me to add there?. ====== NOTE: My 'categories' webpage is split vertically, so you've got an image gallery on the left, and the product description on the right. So all of my product pages look a bit alike... and the 'category' itself has a placeholder on the right. I suspect that's why i'm not getting good rankings! THANKS in advance.0 -
Duplicate content
Hello, I have two pages showing dulicate content. They are: http://www.cedaradirondackchairs.net/ http://www.cedaradirondackchairs.net/index Not sure how to resolve this issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Ronb10230 -
Checking Duplicate Content
Hi there, We are migrating to a new website, which we are writing lots of new content for the new website. The new website is hosted on a development site which is password protected and so on so that it cannot be indexed. What i would like to know is, how do i check for duplicate content issues out there on the world wide web with the dev site being password protected? Hope this makes sense. Kind Regards,
On-Page Optimization | | Paul780