Build Your Authority With Blogs and Social Media, Don’t Obsess Over Author Rank

Author Rank: Taking a long time

Google announced the concept of ‘Authorship’ and ‘Author Rank’ back in late 2011 and early 2012. The concept is that individual authors can build up authority on subjects by being associated/linked to content across the web.

A good concept – and particularly in the wake of the storm that developed in the SERPS following the Panda and Penguin Updates in early 2012. The ranking signals seemed to be moving away from ‘links’ and ‘link text’ to ‘authorship’. Made sense.

We set about applying this principle and ensured all our client’s websites were appropriately marked up to ensure they were ready for this sea-change.

We posted a couple of blog posts to assist the whole situation:

Set up Google Authorship & Publishership – forget about the rest of Google+ for now

Google Authorship & Publishership – How to set up for your own business website

One of the surprising aspects though has been the relatively small amount of information given out by Google –

• firstly, on how to easily set it all up, and
• secondly, how exactly it would work

Well here we are in March 2013 and we are still not that much further forward.

Well AJ Kohn has done an interesting article here Build Your Authority, Not Your Author Rank where he pulls various points together. By all means take a close look at what he says, but my take on it for the average small business man is:

1. Don’t get obsessed with Author Rank, concentrate on building your own authority
2. Google is still a long way from understanding a great deal about the way in which social media operates and can influence ‘Author Rank’
3. Google+ is nowhere near as powerful to Google as it hoped – hence the company is missing out on more data it wanted to use in ‘Author Rank’
4. AJ Kohn added the slides of a recent presentation he made (see below) – adequately gets over the points surrounding the confusion on ‘Author Rank’

Small Business Person?

‘Author Rank’ is in the process of becoming a reality, but it is taking much more time. In the meantime, continue to build up your blog and demonstrate your authority in your chosen subject !!!

What do you think? Post your comments and own experiences below . . . . .

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Related posts:

1. Social Media Overload – Does it really work for Small Business?
2. Small Business Social Media – Where Do You Start?
3. How Much Time & Money Do Small Businesses Spend on Social Media Marketing? – Infographic
4. What is Google Authorship?
5. Google Authorship & Publishership – How to set up for your own business website