Why Authorship Still Matters (#socialmedia info) Googles put a nail in Authorship’s coffin and you’re probably left wondering if authorship -- and author authority-- still matter.Google once displayed author headshots, name, and the number of Google+ circles the author had been added to -- linking the content creator with the content appearing within search results. But, on August 28th, it all went away. Google’s link between writers and content through Google Authorship markup, rel=author or rel=publisher, is no longer used.Marketers have a love/hate relationship with Google. We’re left dangling and downright confused at some of the tweaks Google decides to make, yet we know that it’s all for the greater good of the search experience. Anyone tried a Yahoo! search lately and realized the challenge of a non-Google world?First off, yes, as marketers we should not turn a cheek to Google. But, at the same time we have to take their changes in stride. Pam Aungst said it best in a recent Business2Community article:, “The key is to look at the specifics of what they say and to take them very literally. The wrong way to go about it would be to jump to broad, sweeping conclusions, which is exactly what those people are doing who are declaring the death of Google Authorship.”First: Why the Removal?Google speculatively did away with Google Authorship because adoption was low. Google+ gurus Eric Enge and Mark Traphagen reported on the adoption of the rel=author tag in a recent post on published on Search Engine Land and found that within a pool of 500 authors across 150 different platforms, they found that a staggering 70% of authors werent even trying to implement authorship. A similar study was conducted by the content marketing platform ClearVoice, who indicated that Twitter is used as a digital signature about 2.5 times that of Google.Supporting studies found less than 3.5 percent of the Fortune 100 used rel-author, 20 percent of American news publications had marked their content up, and only 7 percent of Google’s own blogs used Author markup.Does Authorship Still Matter?Regardless of Google Authorship, building authority continues to be critical for garnering search engine results, improving the social reach of your content, and creating a good user experience for your readers. Experts from the search engine optimization industry agree. In fact, Search Engine Land noted, So is authorship gone forever? Our guess is that it probably is not. The concept is a good one. We buy into the notion that some people are smarter about certain topics than others.If you don’t take the Google removal so literally and get to the core of why Google implemented this markup, you can see that authorship at its core is still important.Here are a Few Reasons Why Authorship -- Not to Be Confused with Google Authorship -- Is Still ImportantAuthoritative authors are subject matter experts and are the Holy Grail of semantic search. Subject matter experts are not found on a content marketing farm in the Philippines - they have street cred: a long history of authoring studies and producing non-generic content. As Google moves towards semantic search, or search queries with intent and contextual meaning of the words a searcher seeks, these subject matter experts who are able to craft content that matches detailed search queries will be important moving forward. “As Google moves forward in its commitment to semantic search it has to develop ways to identify entities such as authors with a high degree of confidence apart from human actions such as markup. Recent announcements about Google’s Knowledge Vault project would seem to reinforce that Google is moving steadily in that direction,” noted Eric Enge and Mark Traphagen in a Search Engine Land article. Semantic search is the beginning of the convergence of traditional online with offline - the two will become one and the same, characterised by different bandwidth and available functionality.There’s evidence that an author’s reputation will still be used to influence search results. It was reported that Google was granted a patent, just a few days after this authorship news broke, that involves determining an author’s authority on a subject. The patent outlines how Google will show a search result from an author if that author is connected to the searcher on Google+. The author also has to be identified by Google as an authoritative source for the query used by the searcher. View the full patent information here.The Author Rank patent still exists. Statements from Google indicate that connecting authors to content is still its goal. Iterations of authorship may appear in the future.Authorship goes beyond Google’s definition. Smart content creators already understand the value socially influential authors contribute. It goes beyond just creating strong content. Influential authors contribute readership trust and in many cases, even provide syndication to their social following. While influence does not directly impact search engine results through any type of Author Rank algorithm (although authorship markup does provide many benefits), it is expected that Author Rank will eventually come into play in a different way than Google Authorship in the future.Influence = more visibility through social media. Influential content producers often boast a strong follower base in social media, and have fans that follow their work. When influencers share content, it resonates with more people and in more relevant circles, and readers are more likely to share their content in social channels as well. In fact, Nielsen reports that 92 percent of consumers trust word-of-mouth recommendations from family and friends over all other media formats. Since your prospects actively seek and trust peer perspectives, it’s critical to spotlight the positive experiences and feedback of satisfied customers.Influence leads to more links. Because authoritative authors works are trusted, a higher likelihood exists that third parties will link to these works as an authoritative source, and readers may stay on the page longer, both important factors search engines use to rank content. When works are digitally signed search engines take note. In fact, the 2013 MOZ Search Engine Ranking Factors cites external links as one of the highest signals of search position.Rel=author was just one of Google’s attempts at bridging the real world with the internet. They will continue to value both content creators and content that provide value to searchers. In summary, authoritative authors are still critical to the content economy, and are being a recognized authority in real life is still a huge win that translates into online success.So what can you do to? Keep building authority through sourcing authoritative writers using tools like ClearVoice, look inward within your organization for subject matter experts, or start a influencer marketing campaign with the top influencers in your niche to create content for you.I’ll leave with this quote from this quote from Pam Aungst:“I am going to proceed as if nothing has changed unless I see some good evidence that working on an author’s presence on Google+ is no longer beneficial from an SEO standpoint, which, according to this now-granted patent about “authoritative users”, doesn’t seem will be the case. It may not be called “Authorship” anymore, so sure – go ahead and call that *word* dead, but author influence is very much alive.”
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 13:09:02 +0000
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