Google Authorship and the "Fishkin" Outburst! Sorry Rand ;)

[GaryVictory]

Should companies now shift away from creating great content and invest the time and money into something else?

After Rand tweeted his frustration at @JohnMu in relation to "Authorship CTR's", it got me thinking - should we really be blogging as much as we should?

https://twitter.com/randfish/status/481948721031024641

I'm certain Google ditched author profile images to improve "mobile UX" and "CTR's" for "paid advertisers".

So what I would really like to know is - should small businesses continue to focus on developing great content? How has your marketing strategy changed?

[GaryVictory]

Thanks for the comment Rand.

When I asked the question "Should companies now shift away from creating great content..", this was a little tongue in cheek. I wanted to stir up some dialogue within our community. Sure, well written informative content is fantastic, we all know this is truly valuable as part of any sustainable marketing strategy, but has this now lost "some" value? I have my own opinion, what's yours?

I thought Joel Klettke wrote a fantastic piece http://www.iacquire.com/blog/authorship-photos-removed

[LesleyPaone]

I think it really is a one way street with Google. As SEO professionals they really don't care about us until we do something wrong, then they will penalize us or our assets. Kind of akin to how I have heard paypal is with the sellers. They have bad policies and support for the sellers, since they have a huge pool of buyers, sellers are pretty much roped into their terms and have to play their game.

[randfish]

Great discussion here already, and I agree with what's been posted - content marketing and content strategy continue to be incredibly valuable for SEO and for many other marketing channels. The shift away from author pics is no reason to change course.

On a sidenote, I thought Ammon Johns' reply to my tweet was a very smart one: https://twitter.com/Ammon_Johns/status/486854967165480960 I should have considered that before sending my tweet (though I do wish Google would just be transparent about this stuff - it would help us to build a lot more trust and less suspicion of them).

[EGOL]

Lots of guys have pretty faces too.

I think that Rand would get a pretty good CTR if he made some content about women's fashion.... putting his face in the SERPs where women are looking.   He should do A/B tests between the bearded manly look and the shaven young pup presentation. 

I think that Rand looks like Jeremy Piven in Mr. Selfridge.

[GPainter]

I found it interesting that "pretty face" more so women were getting a higher CTR

[EGOL]

I am actually glad that they took the photos down because I am not as pretty as my competitors.  

But, I hope that they are using it to determine who is producing a good mass of credible work and then allowing reputation to influence the rankings of "next item published".   Before this "authorship" I was not adding my name to any of my content.  I just wanted it to be viewed as property of the domain.  But I felt forced into using authorship because it became a potential part of the "arms race".

[GPainter]

"One does not simply have one SEO strategy!"

[David-Kley]

ONE SEO STRATEGY TO RULE THEM ALL

[GaryVictory]

Thanks for all your feedback. I'm certainly not questioning the value of creating content, or your approach to SEO. Ultimately authorship CTR's have taken a "drop" since Google kindly removed profile images., so it's great to hear your thoughts.

[EGOL]

So what I would really like to know is - should small businesses continue to focus on developing great content? How has your marketing strategy changed?

The last time I changed my SEO strategy was in 2005.

[David-Kley]

Content is and always will be king. If it doesnt exist, people cant search for it.

Google doing things to force people into adwords is nothing new. You don't get to be a $40 billion company by not playing smart. By removing the authorship images, it makes the links stand out less. Less easy ways to stand out in SERPs + less business for companies = more advertising dollars spent.

I think the larger area to focus on is LINKS. With panda 4.0 and hummingbird, it seems like Google is looking for ways to find out who the "true authority" is in any given market. What easier way to do that then to look at the links to a site? Yes buying links was easy. It was easy for the smaller guys to buy links and catch up to the "authority" sites that had been promoting content for a long time. When they started hammering paid links, they were able to see more clearly who had good links without paying for them.

The only way our focus has changed is that we spend less time on the smaller impact items, and dedicate more time and effort into the big ticket links (SEO roundtable, search engine land, moz, etc for our site). This is repeated for our clients for their industry. Makes more sense to spend more time up front on a few powerful links, then a lot of time spread out over smaller links. Content gets links though, and you have to always fall back to "good content gets linked to"

[LesleyPaone]

I don't see a reason to shift away from content personally. I would just do what drives traffic. I make content people want to read, it drives traffic. It might not drive up or down my author rank, but people search for it, find it, and I get traffic from it. So I keep on doing it.

[SamuelScott]

My marketing strategy has not changed, for several reasons.

1. "Content" is nothing new. "Content" has always been the "stuff" that you put in the hands of potential customers. Yesterday, it was product catalogues, sales brochures, and more. Today, it's blog posts, videos, and more. Both types of content target people at different points in the sales cycle. It's just that one of the bonuses today, among many, is that this "content" can also get found in search results.

Besides, here's how I personally describe communications theory (in the context of marketing or anything else):

Sender --> Message --> Content --> Channel --> Receiver

Basically, the content is what contains a message that is delivered via a channel to a receiver. So, yes, you should still produce content.

2. These essays here and here are great arguments for still keeping and using Google+ authorship.

3. When I was at SMX West, I heard a Google executive imply that Google was looking into some type of "Author Rank" in the future. I can't find a link, but you can Google it. Just because one's picture won't be in the search results anymore does not mean the markup will not help your content in the SERPs.

[GPainter]

What i never really got is why not just removed authorship for mobile results? As anyone who has had a penalty frustration and Google go hand in hand.

You have to look at this another way, Why should the user come to your website? If you've got great content then without the search engine you would find users come to your site regardless of Google. Google wants to bring up the best results for the user so make the best results for user which is normally blogs etc. I'll admit its a bit mundane and most blogs or content i see is far from good but in the current stat its very difficult to proactively do SEO which is still considered "white hat" and content is it.

I'll admit I've had to move some focus away from working on my authorship (with publishing) to focus on other things as there isn't as much of an obvious return for that but we'll see I'm sure something else will crop up sooner or later.