Are You The Author Of Your Own Work?

What a ridiculous question. Of course you’re the author of your own work, who else could the author be? Well, online the author could be anyone. You might produce an original work of brilliance but there is nothing (aside from a good moral compass) stopping anyone else from copying and pasting it and publishing it under their own name.

To add insult to injury, if the blatant copier-and-paster has a better standing on Google or has published the work on a site that ranks highly, they will come up before you in search results. The Googling public could well assume that you are the baddie in the scenario.

At least, that was the case before Google introduced Google Authorship.

Google Authorship gives writers a way to claim their content – and improve their search engine visibility. And, as you know, if you’re visible in the search engines (easily visible) you’re like a god, everything that you say must be true and thousands will be swayed by your wisdom.

The catch is …
The catch is that you have to use it properly. It’s the properly bit that catches people out; people who really ought to know better. According to a study by Conductor (conductor.com), very few tech companies, the guys with the know-how and the inside scoop on industry trends, use Google Authorship; of those who do use it, relatively few use it properly.

In real numbers: nearly 90% of tech blogs don’t use Authorship, and 3% of sites that thought they’d implemented the tag had, in fact, failed to do so properly.

Image Licensed Under Attribution

Embarrassing and costly
The study also found that by simply adding the rel=author tag, sites could increase their click-through rates by up to 150%. That kind of carelessness is unforgivable when you work in an industry where every per cent counts.

What’s more
Google favours those who use its tools. It may claim that it doesn’t pick favourites, but we all know that it does (big brands, anyone?). So it should come as no surprise that Google gives writers who use the rel=author tag a bit of a boost.

Matt McGee (Search Engine Land) says that Google gives ‘its’ authors three extra links if it appears that readers really, really like their content. To be more specific: if a reader spends a decent amount of time reading your article, which they landed from the SERPs, and then returns to the search results, Google blesses you with links to three more of your articles.

A decent amount of time is more or less the time it takes to properly read an article of decent length. If you’re written a quick 200-word piece then the chances are that you won’t make the cut. But if you’ve produced something of substance that captivates readers, well, you’re laughing in link land.
How can you still doubt that Google Authorship is worth the little bit of time it takes to implement it properly?

  Sandy Cosser

About the Guest Author:

Sandy Cosser writes for a South African-based search engine optimisation specialist, which offers a comprehensive array of SEO-related services, such as PPC, online PR and copywriting.