John Shehata

2013

AUTHORSHIP 101

@JShehata #smx #23C

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What is Google Authorship?

Linking your content you publish on a specific domain to your Google+ profile

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How it is Done?

1. Verified Email– Create a Google+ Profile

– Remember to upload a high quality headshot and fill out some profile information such as hometown, etc.

– Go to plus.google.com/authorship, sign up with your email and click on the verification link we send you.

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Setup Your Published Content Pages For Authorship Markup

2. If you don’t want to verify your email address, you can also link your content to your Google profile.

Create a link to your Google+ profile from your webpage, like this: <a href="[profile_url]?rel=author">Google</a>

• 3-link Method

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• 2-link Method

Confirm Your Work

1. Go to the Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool(http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets ). Paste the URL of a content page in the text box and then click Preview. Hopefully you’ll see a line in green text stating that the authorship markup is verified.

2. Once everything is verified as working, let Google know you’re onboard with the process by submitting your data to their Authorship request (https://plus.google.com/authorship )form.

3. Author Stats, the tool shows analytics-style search traffic statistics on your authorship marked up pages.

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Why it is Important for Google?

Too Much Data!!!

• 40 M photos uploaded to instagram every day

• 300 M photos uploaded to facebook every day

• 72 HRS of video uploaded to youtube every minute

• 144 B emails sent every day

• 822K new websites created every day

• 499K new wordpress posts published every day

• 500 M Tweets per day

• 4 B shares on facebook every day@JShehata | John Shehata #smx #23C

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Why it is Important for Google?

Defeats Spam

• Highlight Quality Authors and Rank Quality Content Better = defeats spam

“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

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Improving Search Quality

In the Webmaster Help Video, Matt said that while he continues to support anonymity,

“if we know who the real world people are who are actually writing content, that could be really useful as well and might be able to improve search quality.“ … Matt Cutts

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Why it is Important for Google?

• Enhances search results

Social Endorsement = more clicks

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Why it is Important for You?

• Google Says So!

Eric Schmidt

Executive Chairman, Google

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“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 irrelevance.”

Your reputation online (Author Rank) as a content creator will influence the ranking of

your content in search results.

@JShehata | John Shehata #smx #23C

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Why it is Important for You?

Higher Visibility

= Higher CTR

= higher Pageviews

Studies show 150% Increase in CTR

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The annotation is pulling the user far down the page

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Why it is Important for You?

• Highlighting Authors (More Content Consumption)

Google Web

Google News

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Why it is Important for You?

• More and more writers are on Google+

Almost 90% of Tech Writers Now Have a Google+ Account

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Google +

• More Google+ Results in Search

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Authorship Hacking

Sites claim some of their pages lost indexing, rankings and traffic after being copied on other low quality sites that have implemented authorship!!!!

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AuthorRank

http://moz.com/blog/how-to-prepare-for-authorrank-and-get-the-jump-on-google

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Agent Rank

Who links to you might become more important than where the link from

http://www.seobythesea.com/2013/03/googles-agent-rank-author-rank-patent-filing/

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Calculating Author Rank*

• The average PageRank of an author’s content.

• The average number of +1s and Google+ shares the author’s content receives.

• The number of Google+ circles an author is in.

• Reciprocal connections to other high Author Rank authors.

• The number and authority of sites an author’s content has been published to.

• The engagement level of an author’s native Google+ content (i.e., posts to Google+).

• The level of on-site engagement for an author’s content (i.e., comments and author’s responses to comments)

• Outside authority indicators (e.g., the presence of a Wikipedia page).

• Any number of importance/authority metrics on social networks that Google deems trustworthy enough (Twitter, Quora, LinkedIn, SlideShare, etc.).

• Real world authority indicators like published works on Google Books or Google Scholar.

*via @mike_arnesen@JShehata | John Shehata #smx #23C

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How to Boost your Author Rank

1. Claim Authorship immediately– Update author form

– Fill in the about section in Google+

2. Use Google+– Post multiple updates a day on Google +

– Engage with users commenting on your content on Google+

– Reply to comments on sites (Use G+ Sign-in)

3. Spend time building your circles– Add high quality authors to your

circles (Build relationships)

– Connect with fellow authors

– Discover and join communities

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How to Boost your Author Rank

4. Generate more engagement (Post Photos, Ask Questions, etc)

5. Link to your Google + page

6. Specialize (More content on the same topic)– earn a different Author Rank in different topic areas

7. Notify your fans on other social networks

8. Try different profile images and see which one stands out

9. Use the same profile image on all social platforms

10. Produce Great Content that entices users to share it

More tips: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2253968/How-to-Start-Building-Your-Author-Rank-6-Best-Practices

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Google + Status

• Include the main keywords in the beginning of your status

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• Use Clear Profile Image

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• Optimize your profile image

• http://moz.com/blog/google-author-photos

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• Current vs Past “Contributor To:”

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Make Sure …

• to have a by line “by John Shehata”

• Your name on G+ and site(s) match

• Get your team active on G+

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Your Stats – Great Tool http://www.allmyplus.com

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Building identity around top content is now an integral part of a strong digital marketing strategy.

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