Have you heard about Google Authorship? Released in June 2011, Authorship is the latest resource that ties your content back to your Google+ profile. Google designed the program “to help people find content from great authors in search results.”
But What Is It?
Google Authorship is a program that allows you to link any content that you and your employees create on the web, back to your Google+ profile. This is especially useful for companies that own a company site that is regularly updated (i.e. a blog). By utilizing Google Authorship you are ensuring that the content that you create gains visibility in both Google Authorship and Google+. In addition, it has been said that Google shows SEO love to those that are utilizing this new resource.
How Does It Actually Benefit My Company?
Over time, every author will earn a “rank”, officially called AgentRank (or AuthorRank). This ranking is qualified by the topics, quality and popularity of an author’s content to help Google determine relevance when displaying search results. Frequent and relevant content is critical for a business to achieve successful Google rankings.
Google also confirmed a hidden benefit to having authorship status. If a user returns to the search results after reading an author-tagged search result, Google will add three additional links from the same author, below the originally clicked link.
What Steps Should I Take To Ensure Success?
The first step to take is to make sure every author that contributes to your company page has a quality photo, byline, and provides only quality content. Quality content not only means well written, but current, trendy and informative as well. Furthermore, the goal of Authorship is to make sure that authentic and trustworthy sites are easier to find. Make sure that you keep up with web standards and never plagiarize.
So, take the next step to becoming a local marketing expert. Hold a meeting today with all your employees that publish content on behalf of your company and explain the importance of signing up with Google Authorship. It only takes a few minutes to do, and the SEO results are immeasurable.
For nearly three decades, Chris Marentis, Founder and CEO of Surefire Social, has been responsible for driving innovation and sales growth for large media and e-commerce brands as well as start-ups. With a long-history of counseling local businesses about their marketing efforts, Marentis provides insight on what it takes for small businesses to succeed and thrive in today’s evolving digital environment. His notable career includes creating the foundational blueprints for online marketing, e-commerce and content branding for AOL’s Interactive Marketing group, where he served as Senior Vice President. While CEO of Clearspring Technologies, Marentis developed one of the most widely adopted venture-backed Web 2.0 technology platforms. Marentis is a frequent speaker at local digital marketing conferences and a contributor to SMB and technology-focused publications.
