4. More importantly, Google+ is ...
A way to link content published to a Google+
profile. Search results include a head shot of
the author, a link to his/her Google+ profile,
the number of Google+ circles the author is in
and a link to more search results for the
author.
5. Why does it Matter
"Within search results, information
tied to verified online profiles will
be ranked higher than content
without such verification, which will
result in most users naturally
clicking on the top (verified) results.
The true cost of remaining
anonymous, then, might be ‘Twitter Can No More Produce
irrelevance." Analysis Than A Monkey Can
– Eric Schmidt Type Out A Work of Shakespeare’
c Schmidt
6. How long do I have to prepare?
When can we expect to see this
Impacting the SERPs?
7. It’s happening now
Google is piloting the
display of author
Google is piloting thein search
information display of author information in search results to help users discover great content
results now to help users
discover great content
11. It pays to test
Cyrus Shepherd did some fascinating research on the effects of profile pictures on click
through rates. In the end, he determined there was no magic formula for the perfect
picture, but after testing a series of images, he was able to improve CTR by 35%. That
is impressive
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-author-photos
12. You Look Where They Look
Ann Smarty used heat map testing in her quest for the perfect
profile picture. One surprising observation: “you look where they
look”.
http://bit.ly/WdGhM3
13. What are you looking at?
Rich Brooks’ profile picture is a great example
Of the Heat map Research could be deployed
14. Step 2: Link to your content
http://bit.ly/RZ7hbT
15. Step 3: Link your content to Google
You Have 3 Different Options Available
18. Option 3
If your CMS allows, Use a Plugin
3 easy steps:
1. Plugin Installation
2. Enter Google Profile URL
3. Post a link from your Google + Profile to Your
Website
http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/
19. Use the Structured Data Testing Tool to verify that it's
working
http://bit.ly/Pea703
20. Guest Blog Tip
When you guest blog, make sure that you give the host blog
the proper HTML with a link to your Google+ profile and
rel=author in the link. If they don’t add the markup, you
don’t get the rich snippet.
Next, add a link to the guest blog post itself in your
“Contributor to” links.
21. Pro Tip
Pro Tip
Claim Authorship for All of your
content on the Web - not just the
newly produced
22. Tip 1 for becoming Irrelevant
If you don't want your authorship information to
appear in search results, edit your profile.
Uncheck Profile discovery option “Help others
discover my profile in search results”
http://plus.google.com/me/about/edit
23. What about Persona’s & Ghost Writers?
This is a “Gray” Area
Pro: You maintain Full Ownership of written content –
no worries about an author embarrassing your brand at
some point
Con: This breaks with the intent of Authorship and
Author rank. Google's Matt Cutts has pointed to FTC
legislation against “sock puppet” accounts
26. Increased CTR on search results
Ranking #1 isn’t
enough - images
are now
influencing CTR
Which result
stands out? ---->
27. Authorship Benefits & Takeaways
The key benefit for an author is visibility within the SERPs, which helps with
branding.
For webmasters, higher CTR and increased traffic are the most important
benefit.
Higher CTRs will become a fleeting benefit. The more sites and authors that
implement authorship markup, the less distinguishing the authorship markup
will become.
Searchmetrics reported that search results with authorship already exceeds >
17%. As soon as authorship markup is a common practice the impact on CTR
will flatten
28. Can my company get authorship?
REL=”PUBLISHER” is for businesses
31. There are plug-ins to simplify the process.
The latest version of the Yoast WordPress
SEO Plugin has a section to add the URL of
your G+ business page
http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/
32. Benefits of using rel=”publisher”
Your Google+ page will be recognized as the "official" page for your brand, and give it search
preference over impostor pages.
Provides eligibility for Google Direct Connect, which takes searchers directly to a brand's
Google+ page when they search for the brand name with a "+" in front of it.
Provides increased +1s: all +1s done on the site, on the G+ page, in search results, and on
AdWords ads will be aggregated.
Begins to build a topical relevance and trust profile on that brand, it's web content, it's
Google+ activities, and other social media activity linked from its profile, that may influence
search results
33. Authorship is not the same as Author Rank
In 2005 Google first came out with an idea of tying a ‘rank’ to the authors of
articles on the internet, this idea was called ‘agent rank’. The problem Google had
was that they did not have enough data about social interactions to justify using it
to rank authors. That changed when Google created their own social network
called Google +. Now they can use the data from Google + to add a human element
to their rankings
34. Author Rank as a Quality Signal
Google is counting on AuthorRank to provide a reliable signal for
predicting the quality of new content. After all, past performance is
the best predictor of future performance. The ultimate goal is to have
content written by authoritative authors’ rank better than content
that is written by less authoritative authors.
“We know that great content comes from great authors, and we’re
looking closely at ways this markup could help us highlight authors
and rank search results.” - Google Webmaster Central Blog
http://bit.ly/l8k7eY
35. Possible Author Rank Metrics
Google+ Participation – Level and type of activity could impact Author Rank. Post original
work – not just re-shares. Like, comment & reply to comments. Do hangouts, Join
communities, create and populate circles
Influence — What’s the quality of your circles? Are you getting +1's, Likes and tweets?
Average PageRank of your published content
Citations: Mentions on authoritative websites could send a quality signal to Google
Links: Lots of links to your content from unique domains could be used to gauge quality
36. Benefits of Author Rank
Authors now get recognition & credit for being an authority in their field.
Whether you are a mechanic, doctor, lawyer, dentist or architect, you want to be
known as THE expert in your field. Author Rank builds this authority with every
great piece of content you create.
In the past, creating great content was a benefit for the website or blog that it
was published on – that's where it ended. With authorship, not only will that
website benefit, but you as an individual author will also benefit.
Authorship provides portability of your expertise. If you leave an employer, you
can take it with you!
37. Moving from authorship to authority
It's a gradual, organic process
There are NO shortcuts
39. Monitor your content’s performance
When you login to Google
webmaster tools with the
account associated with
your Google+ profile, you
will find search stats for all
of the pages for which you
are the verified author.
It’ll show you which pages
are shown in the search
results, how many times,
how many clicks they
received, which CTR the
result has and the average
position.
40. Identify Authors with Authority - Interact with opinion leaders
Give them a reason to follow you – Boost your own Authority
41. Trace your posts with Ripples - See who’s sharing
Why use Google+ Ripples?
Ripples visualizes sharing interaction data for
your posts over time. This makes it easy to
follow key influencers and learn what content
is most compelling to your audience.
How to use Google+ Ripples
Ripples provides a visual guide to who has publicly
shared a post or URL and the comments they’ve
made. Use it to spot trends and track the spread of
posts over time, or see how a post was shared and
in which languages
Try out Ripples: bit.ly/ZsqzKF
42. Author Rank Takeaway
Once you’ve established authorship, you need to start working on your authority. That starts with
publishing high quality, sharable content.
Other ways to increase authority include:
Getting published on authoritative websites
Stimulating conversation about your posts on Google+
Bringing your posts to the attention of other authoritative authors
Inviting authoritative authors to publish on your site
Increasing activity and connecting to authors on Google+
The key to building Author rank lies in usage of Google+ and interacting with other sites and
authors.
43. Chuck Price
Measurable SEO
Chuck@MeasurableSEO.com
http://www.measurableseo.com/smx-toronto-2013