Author Rank - Using the brand as the author

[monster99]

Hi i'm building a new site and want to start building up author rank right from the start.

If you are building author rank for a brand, do you think its fine to use the brand as the actual author of the content, instead of a actual person?

Or using a stage name rather then a persons actual name, and have your writers write under that particular stage name?

Would love to hear peoples opinions.

Cheers,

Mark

[MarketingOfAmerica]

I guess this would depend on many instances.  What are you selling?  What is your site about?  Which will benefit you more?  If your selling a cd of yourself and your the author then I would say go with the author.  If your selling a 1 of a kind brand that no one else in the world has, then go with the brand name.

Eventually you may want to just do both, but since your starting, it's not a bad idea to go with brand, because it will be those are considered the most natural backlinks to your site that isn't your url.

Have a great night.

MB

[MattAntonino]

According to the https://plus.google.com/authorship page,

1. Make sure that you have a profile photo with a recognisable headshot.
2. Make sure that a byline containing your name appears on each page of your content (for example, "By Steven Levy").
3. Make sure that your byline name matches the name on your Google+ profile.
4. Verify that you have an email address (such as stevenlevy@wired.com) on the same domain as your content. (Don't have an email address on the same domain?

A brand is rarely an "author" - someone did the writing.  Google wants that person tied to the work they created. Now, there may be ways "around" this but getting "around" stuff in SEO is why so many people scrambled so badly this year.

This page dissects it further: http://www.optimum7.com/internet-marketing/google-optimization/pros-and-cons-of-google-authorship-for-businesses.html

Most notably:

A company or brand’s Google+ page cannot be designated as the author of any web content. Therefore your company and brand name will not come up as the author in the web results.

**Warning:**If you’ve considered creating a company persona under the guise of a real person in order to have all authorship attributed to that particular Google+… Don’t do it! This really undermines AuthorRank and defeats the whole point of authorship. Google may also penalize you for trying to cheat their system… just as they’ve done for poor SEO practices through Google’s Panda-Penguin algorithm updates.

That's what I would follow.  I would not suggest trying to game Authorship at all.

[Devanur-Rafi]

Dear Mark,

The answer lies in your question and depends on your decision as whom you would like to promote or build reputation for. So, if you want to build the rank for your brand, you go ahead and do so and if you want to build the author rank for a person (he is your brand in this case), you go for it. Let us take a look at a scenario. Suppose, I own multiple brands, I would build author rank for my name so that I would be recognized as the one behind all these brands. I am the brand here. Coming to your case, if I were you, if this brand is going to be my biggest investment or a dream project, I would stick to building the author rank for my brand as going forward, I can leverage the brand name and use it to my advantage.  Suppose, I am likely to come up with multiple web properties or brands in future, I would rather build the author rank for my name as I am the one standing behind all these brands or web properties and I want all the recognition and all my current and future brands can leverage my recognition.

Please note that the above opinion is personal.

Best,

Rafi

[ThompsonPaul]

If you are talking about creating authorship linking specifically (i.e. using rel=author markup) you can't do that using a brand, Mark. Google won't let you. Authorship can only be connected to a personal Google+ profile. Which makes sense when you think about it. A "brand" can't write an article. Only a person can.

Forget about trying to create a personal profile that is actually the brand name. Google is very specific that personal profiles must be real people, and quite regularly removes accounts that don't meet the criteria.

If you do want to connect your content to a brand, you'll need to use the rel=publisher markup instead, connected to a Google+ business page Unfortunately at this point that "publisher" connection doesn't yet lead to any kind of rich snippet advantage in the SERP (eg. an image next to the search result as in rel=author).

There is talk that Google will eventually start using a brand image or logo in SERPS associated with rel=publisher but it's anybody's guess exactly when, or if, this will actually occur.

As for creating a fake persona to represent all the contributors of content - since this is diametrically opposed to what rel=author is supposed to represent, I have to assume Google has (or will devise) methods for detecting that kind of manipulation and devaluing or penalising it.

The whole point of authorship is that is supposed to allow creation of a trust relationship with the writing of a particular person. If there's anything we've learned this year from all the algorithm updates, it's that trying to manipulate legitimate ranking/authority signals purely for marketing purposes is a fool's errand. You may get away with it for a while, but when it gets clobbered, all the effort you put into the manipulation will have been wasted. Or worse yet will get you penalised. Trying to represent the work of several writers under one "stage name" is just such a manipulation.

Best suggestion at this point? Use rel=publisher markup for "brand" content (like product descriptions etc) and connect individual authors' content (like how-to articles, blog posts etc) to each individual's personal G+ profile.

In other words - use the tool as it was intended, instead of trying to pervert it purely for marketing benefit.

Paul

[EricPratum30]

Why wouldn't you just implement rel=publisher? If it's a brand responsible for the content, my understanding is that that would be the appropriate thing to do.

[monster99]

Thanks

From what i've read so far, if you do hire a writer/employee and have the articles posted under their name, but then they decide to leave the company, they take the author rank with them?

So how can brand, deal with this potential issue?

[sandyallain]

I think that they could post article under your account/name... so when they leave.. it's yours... it is to build up your authorship, not theirs..