the but and what if of authorship and author rank

The But and What If of Authorship &

Author RankPresented at SMX West 2013

By AJ KohnOwner, Blind Five Year Old

@ajkohn

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohn

Buts …

buts everywhere.

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohn

What if …

Can anyone be an author?

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohnYes. Fetch as Googlebot to speed things up.

Does old content qualify?

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohnAbsolutely!

Can any content be authored?

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohnNo.

What about ghostwriters?

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohnSure, but at what cost?

But do I have to?

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohnBut do I have to have a website?

Keep calm

and stop whining

Can you have co-authors?

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohnNot yet.

What happens if an author leaves?

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohn

You are all jerks.

Keep authorship intact when possible.

Can you change authors?

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohnSorta, kinda.

What does Authorship really

do exactly?

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohnAuthorship snippet is a CTR magnet.

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohnAuthorship bounce back bonus links!

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohnAuthor search.

How do I know if Authorship is

working?

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohnAuthor stats in Google Webmaster Tools

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohnYou might get a welcome letter.

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohnhttp://bit.ly/authorbookmarklet

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohnBe very, very careful.

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohnAuthorship is very brittle.

What about Bing?

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohnMeh.

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohnHand-picked by Bing (using Klout?)

What is Author Rank?

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohn

Authorship is not the same as Author Rank

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohnhttp://bit.ly/authorrank

What makes you think Author Rank

will happen?

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohn

Highlight Authors

Rank Search Results

http://bit.ly/authorshiplaunch

Seriously, it says it right here in the launch announcement!

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohn

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.” – Eric Schmidt

What about anonymity?

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohn

United URLs of Google

What about brands?

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohn

@ing someone from a brand page might have an impact

Whispers outside of rel=publisher

What if Author Rank never happens?

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohnPersonal branding and CTR alone are enough.

TL;DL

Blind Five Year Old | @ajkohn

If ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ were candy and nuts, we'd all have a merry Christmas

AJ KohnOwner, Blind Five Year Oldwww.blindfiveyearold.comaj@blindfiveyearold.com

@ajkohn