A Post Authorship World; 4 Takeaways
You may have missed the announcement last week that Google killed off Authorship. They did not make a big song and dance about it, just quietly took it out the back and choked the life out of it. As many viewers will know I have been a big advocate of the IDEA of authorship because it was a great way to eliminate link buyers influence on rankings. Alas, not enough people took it up. Where to from here?
Use a byline
One of the things that authorship forced us to do was use a byline. So many business blogs have been written by “admin” or the company brand. I’m a big believer in still using real names against your content. I have a few clients that are rebelling against this and don’t want an individual associated with the content. In my opinion this restricts the blog to fluff content with no personal voice thus making it harder to connect with an audience. My advice is to use a still use a human byline even if it is an amalgam of individuals and not a real person, although obviously a real person is better.
Keep Writing
Just because rel=author is dead doesn’t mean content production is. In this week’s video I reference Laurel Papworth & Trevor Young’s comments about content. Laurel sums up my position very well with her hashtag Be The Magazine Not The Ad. Not the most practical hashtag in a 140 character medium but you get the idea 🙂
What About Plagiarism?
One of the things Authorship purported to do was stop having your content ripped off by others rank higher than your own. Well Google brought out a scraper report tool earlier this year if you want to dob in a plagiarist.
Is It Really Really Dead?
Logically I don’t think so. With anything Google does I always apply the test “Is this good for the user?”. Is it good for the user to know that a well respected author in their field wrote the article they are reading? Absolutely! That’s why I believe at some level Google will want to send it’s users to content written by authorities in their field. Keep writing and keep using a byline. Here are a couple of other resources to read
http://searchengineland.com/goodbye-google-authorship-201975
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
