Google+ Authorship for Multi-Author Company Blogs
-
- Can a company's Google+ page be designated as the author of web content (as can be done with individuals) so that the COMPANY comes up as the author in the web results?
- Is it preferable for company bloggers to create individual Google+ profiles and be listed as the author of the posts that they write?
- Or rather is it a smarter move to create a company persona (under the guise of a real person) and have all authorship be attributed to that personal Google+ profile.
- AuthorRank is going to become more and more important to Google's algorithm. As bloggers write for a company, if they are listed as the author of the work, they create trust for their own personal brand. If and when this employee leaves, this equity is presumably taken with them instead of remaining with the company. Is this assumption correct? How are companies dealing with this potential issue?
-
I've run into the same problem. As best as I can tell, it can't be done.
To link your personal Google+ profile to your content, you have to use the "Contributor to" section under the "About" page of your profile. Google+ Pages have no such section.
The only work-around I can think of is the "company persona" option you mention, but like you said, that defeats the point of authorship.
-
Anyone who is an author should want their personal Google+ page to be credited with their writing. Then if they leave Employer A they can carry any prestige that they have earned to Employer B.
Although I am an employer and would like to see the company hold credit for work that they have funded, I think that employers who try to block employees from getting personal credit for their work are operating in low form.
Employers who allow employees to receive this type of credit may gain enormously in the future if that former employee does outstanding work and wins honors.
Also employers who hire authors of stature can benefit from the past work and fans of those individuals.
If you have excellent authors on your staff, treat them well, pay them fairly, allow them to be honored for their work and you have a good chance of retaining them. For many authors the opportunity to earn recognition for their work is nearly as important to them as their rate of pay. So, if you cut that off, how do you think they will feel... and what will they think about you?
-
I think Google wants authors only. Based on the first of the two ways of implementing author information in search:
- Check that you have a email address (for example, [email protected]) on the same domain as your content (wired.com).
- Make sure that each article or post you publish on that domain has a clear byline identifying you as the author (for example, "By Steven Levy" or "Author: Steven Levy").
This suggests that Google wants authors, not brands. Google doesn't appear to scan for a company name in a by-line, but I guess it might be possible.
-
The white hat in me knows that the answer to this question is most likely that the company bloggers should write under their own names, else the very concept of AuthorRank is undermined. Yet, I've had these questions for a while now and I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on the issue. Hoping this sparks some good discussion.
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
-
Organic Listings showing Google Tag Manager + Google Page Title...?
I'm a bit stumped with this. I optimise all my titles etc for Australia - and now the organic liatings are showing something strange. For example ( we sell health supplements ) Meta title = "My Product , Buy Online Australia" If I type "My Product" - the title in the organic listings says "My Product - My Company Limited" - and the only place I can see it getting that from is a combination of Meta Data used in Google Tag Manager + the Name on my Google places page. This is much more obvious for categories.. but it's a pain in the butt. If I type "My Product Australia" Then the original "My Product , Buy Online Australia" comes up. Any ideas on policy etc? I have taken the "Limited" off the Google business page - so hopefully this will change over time - but I can't find any information on why google would do something like this. If you had shed any light on this - would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s_EOgi_Bear0 -
Blog subdomain not redirecting
Over the last few weeks I have been focused on fixing high and medium priority issues, as reported by the Moz crawler, after a recent transition to WordPress. I've made great progress, getting the high priority issues down from several hundred (various reasons, but many duplicates for things like non-www and www versions) to just five last week. And then there's this weeks report. For reasons I can't fathom, I am suddenly getting hundreds of duplicate content pages of the form http://blog.<domain>.com</domain> (being duplicates with the http://www.<domain>.com</domain> versions). I'm really unclear on why these suddenly appeared. I host my own WordPress site ie WordPress.org stuff. In Options / General everything refers to http://www.<domain>.com</domain> and has done for a number of weeks. I have no idea why the blog versions of the pages have suddenly appeared. FWIW, the non-www version of my pages still redirect to the www version, as I would expect. I'm obviously pretty concerned by this so any pointers greatly appreciated. Thanks. Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarkWill0 -
Google local pointing to Google plus page not homepage
Today my clients homepage dropped off the search results page (was #1 for months, in the top for years). I noticed in the places account everything is suddenly pointing at the Google plus page? The interior pages are still ranking. Any insight would be very helpful! Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stevenob0 -
Domain authority imrpovement
Hi all, I'm trying to increase the domain authority of the www.gpmsummit.com. Is there any advice to improve it efficiently? Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WTGEvents0 -
404 in google webmaster tool
I have redesigned my website with new web address over 6 months ago and in the google webmaster tools it still shows my old urls with a reponse code 404 and still crawls those pages. How do I make sure they don't appear anymore in the webmaster tool and don't get crawled anymore ? or should I do a re-direct ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Will authorship for a reviewer, not an author work?
I'm working with a client that owns a medical site. All content is reviewed by someone from their medical board (doctors or nurses), but the content is written by a variety of authors. I'm wondering if we could create authorship profiles for the doctors and nurses. Would there be any problem with that? (even though they didn't write the content, they just reviewed it for medical accuracy). The name of the reviewer is included on every article. Any thoughts / feedback / similar experiences would be helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Adding Millions of Products to Google
What is the best way to submit all of your product pages, millions, to Google for serps? XML, RSS, Google Product Search, etc. These are products that are updated on a daily basis, and change often.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Copstead0 -
How to position in local Google
Hello, It's been easy for me to jump in .com - English only results. But, regional google is making me problems. How to position there? What are the top 3 key elements for ranking locally that don't matter much internationally? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DaBomb110