Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How important are author bios to SEO?
-
I'm trying to understand the importance of author bios to Google and its latest algorithms. Some say author bios affect rankings, but others say that has not been specifically stated by Google — but it does affect the user experience. Anyone have input on this? Thanks!
-
Yes, our subject matter experts who write content have multiple degrees and belong to professional associations. The author bios were originally kept short, so I may have to fill them out a bit, but they're definitely the "real deal" when it comes to their expertise and credentials. Thank you for your insights!
-
"Would having an author page for subject matter experts who legitimately write content (courses and/or blogs) be helpful to SEO/rankings? "
Maybe yes. Maybe no.
The answer depends upon the strength of your authors' bios and their relevance to the content area of your website.
And, here is something to think about... If your authors are using their real names, that is likely more valuable for SEO than if they are using a nickname. Why? Because Google can use a person's real name to confirm professional registrations, college degrees, work history, licenses, and many other signals that will be valuable for determining E-A-T.
If a person has a website about SEO and uses his/her real name on the articles there, then it is probably a good idea for that person to use their real name when posting in an SEO forum. IF a person is posting in Moz Q&A and receiving lots of "good answers" and "endorsed answers" that might be valuable for a person's authorship credibility on the SEO site. If your website is not about SEO then the reputation earned in this form is probably of much lower value.
-
This is very interesting information
-
We have been running multiple sites, all for over a decade and the authors have degrees that either exactly or closely match the topic areas of the websites. Until two years ago we considered that all articles were written by "our staff". However, we then added author bios with degrees, certifications, years of experience, Google scholar, relevant employment history spanning decades. Within a few months after that these sites received a rankings boost that was surprising.
Now, you ask about "the importance of bios". Adding bios for the sake of adding bios is probably not going to do much for you. Instead, it is the quality of the authors that is important.
If you have authors who have substantive, long-term, quality education, experience, and work history, then that, I believe will do something for you. If your authors have a publication history on important sites, with lots of links and citations for their work from government agencies, academic publications, professional societies - all of this that you can link to, then you have built a gold mine. Very hard to fake, easy for Google to confirm, will attract links like bugs to a Georgia porch light.
It will be really hard to fake a publication history over three or four decades with links from loc.gov and important websites across your discipline and professional registrations on government websites.
-
Thank you for your response! I have a follow-up question, if that's OK. Would having an author page for subject matter experts who legitimately write content (courses and/or blogs) be helpful to SEO/rankings?
-
At this point it's more about how Google defines and records search entities. If Google sees an author bio on a post that looks legitimate, they might link the post to that author's personal search entity (if they are big enough for search data to form one) and that could create some beneficial piggyback traffic for the publisher. But they're not really considered a distinct, separate thing in the way that people often reference them. It's no different to writing a news post about Coca Cola and then the post temporarily appears for Coca Cola's main brand term for a bit (in universal-search news results). We as human see one as an author and the other as a company / brand, but to Google they're mostly all just interrelated 'search entities' which have meaning only insofar as they are a 'thing' that 'recent search data' shows 'people care about it'
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
-
Are Meta-descriptions important for blogs?
I am tasked with optimizing an existing sites SEO. I have added meta's to all the menu pages, however they have blog section with over 700 posts. How important are meta descriptions when it comes to a websites blog? Do I need to take the time to go through 700+ blog posts and create unique meta descriptions for each one?
Algorithm Updates | | rburnett0 -
Why my Domain Authority (DA) is Decreased
Hello, I would like to know how the changes in domain authority is considered by MOZ? Domain Authority for my this domain https://factohr.com was 14 and it is decreased to 13 in this week. Though i have a very decent and good links going over to all my pages howcome my DA is affected and decreased. As its regularly being updated and has a high quality traffic! i would like to know the reason behind decrement in DA and is there any connection with redirection of .com domain? How can i increase DA for my website?
Algorithm Updates | | MyMoz710 -
Do the sub domain backlinks count for main domain and increase authority?
Hi all, I just wonder if the back links for different sub domains will be counted and considered to rank the main domain better or they are just limit to sub domain pages? There are many websites which has got multiple sub domains which receive backlinks? So the backlinks to main domain and sub domain weigh same at Google? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Old school SEO tools / software / websites
Hey Mozzers, I am doing some research and wonder if you can help me out? Before Moz, Hubspot, Majestic, Screaming Frog and all the other awesome SEO tools we use today what were the SEO tools / software / websites that were used for aiding SEO? I guess we can add the recently closed Yahoo! Directory for starters! Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | RikkiD220 -
With regards to SEO is it good or bad to remove all the old events from our website?
Our website sells tickets for various events across the UK, we do have a LOT of old event pages on our website which simply say SOLD OUT. What is the best practice? Should these event pages be removed and a 301 redirect added to redirect to the home page? Or should these pages remain in tact with simply SOLD OUT on the page?
Algorithm Updates | | Alexogilvie0 -
Will Parked Domain hurt My SEO as Duplicate Content?
Hello, I have one website (Migration Lawyers) and I have an extra 8 domains Parked so they are basically cloning the content of the site. so if the main site is: migrationlawyers.co.za and I have an addon domain migration-lawyers.com is that good or bad? is there a proper way to redirect the sites, will redirecting (301) subdomains be more effective? Thanks for your Input 🙂 0i8VXqr.png
Algorithm Updates | | thealika0 -
Server Location & SEO
So I just read an interesting Tweet: #SEO Tip: #Google takes into account the location of the server (the IP) when projecting the search results #web This is something I had not thought of. I suppose my question then is HOW does it factor this information into it's results? For some reason, one of our sites is hosted on a Canadian server. We are a cloud hosting company and we serve all of NA with data centers in the US and Canada... For whatever reason we've used the Canadian server farm for our web server. Could this possibly be hurting our NA google SERPs? Anyone have any thoughts on this?
Algorithm Updates | | jesse-landry0 -
Does the use of an underscore in filenames adversely affect SEO
We have had a page which until recently was ranked first or second by Google UK and also worldwide for the term "Snowbee". It is now no longer in the top 50. I ran a page optimization report on the url and had a very good score. The only criticism was that I had used an atypical character in the url. The only unusual character was an underscore "_" We use the underscore in most file names without apparent problems with search engines. In fact they are automatically created in html files by our ecommerce software, and other pages do not seem to have been so adversely affected. Should we discontinue this practice? It will be difficult but I'm sure we can overcome this if this is the reason why Google has marked us down. I attach images of the SEO Report pages 8fDPi.jpg AdLIn.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | FFTCOUK0