How should I handle author attribution for ghostwritten content?

[spking]

I've been using Crowdcontent for article production, and always feel like I'm potentially missing out on some authority or social proof with visitors (and maybe Google?) by not attributing an author (Crowdcontent doesn't give you the name of the author, otherwise I would just use their name).  Would I be doing myself any favors by attributing myself as the author and pointing it back to my Google+ profile?  Thanks in advance for any guidance!

[jesse-landry]

Yikes.

Okay don't take this the wrong way, but I don't know why you're using an article provision service and I would flat-out advise against it entirely. These article submission sites are a perfect way to grab an unnatural link penalty. Granted, I don't have any experience with this particular company, but I'm willing to be the articles sound spammy and aren't going to help you at all.

I guess what I'm saying is, write your own content in-house. That's the only way to have complete control and avoid unnecessary penalties. Not to mention you will care more about it and spend more time writing content that people will actually want to read.

---my two cents.

[spking]

Hi Jesse, thanks.

To clarify, CrowdContent is not an article submission site.  It's a platform like Contently where you're essentially just hiring freelance writers.  Their writers are all professionals from the US or Canada, and I generally pay between $50-$100 per 500-750 word article.  Quality of content isn't the issue.  It's simply not feasible for me to write all my content across dozens of sites in-house; that wouldn't scale, and I don't see a problem hiring freelancers for that.  Google isn't going to know or care whether I wrote the content or paid someone to.

My question is whether I am missing out on any favorability with visitors or the SEs by not adding an author line to these articles.

[Thos003]

You pay a "ghost writer" to be invisible. Therefore you claim the content as your own. If the content is original quality content than it could and most like would boost your authority. But author rank is more than just having a lot of content published by you, it is about influence. So simply writing a lot of good content does not make you an influencer. Your influence and in turn author rank are based on the citations you receive and the traffic you command.

Back to your 'ghost writer" question. Ghost writers have been used on and offline for sometime now. It seems to be a generally acceptable practice. But this does not mean that Google does or will always accept this. So if you were to ask me if this were acceptable, then I would judge this by how much you are contributing to the content.

An alternative method would be to set up a "persona" as the writer. This is justified by saying authors use pen names. Indeed, Franklin once wrote newspaper columns under a pen name in his early years for fear his age would discredit his work. But this "persona" approach may also run a risk with google.

So pick one or the other, and stick with your story.

[jesse-landry]

The answer to your question is no, imo. I don't think people care about the author unless it's a well-established source. Now perhaps you would like to make yourself a well-established source, but I feel like that would be hard to do with somebody else writing all of your articles... you'd never establish a clear voice.

As far as what you said... that's good. I guess. Better than the $5 per article sites. I still don't much care for the service, but to each their own. As I said, I can't see how somebody else who was not invested in my company could come up with better content than someone invested in said business. Again, just my opinion.

Yes, if the articles are spammy looking Google could possibly penalize you depending on submissions. Sounds like at that price they won't/shouldn't be.

How much traffic and visibility are you getting on all of these articles? Just curious about this model...

[jesse-landry]

Well put Thomas. I very much agree with your ideas here, especially the part on Google's perception of this practice. He seems very certain that Google won't ever penalize this. We all know that Google is entirely unpredictable. Wait til they roll out their cat-penalties and start targeting the 'i can haz cheezburger' sites.

[Thos003]

lol... "wait 'googs stolz my cheezburger??"

[spking]

I've been pretty impressed with the service, and so far it's been worth the price in terms of ROI.  I only publish high-quality content on my sites because obviously I also want to give visitors a reason to subscribe and link in, in addition to getting love from google.

With regards to paying freelance writers, look at it this way: NY Times pays a lot of writers across their sites to produce content--writers who are no more invested in NYTimes than the salary or payment they receive for their work.  I could never put out enough content on my own to stay competitive.  It's simply a division of labor.

I agree with your point about the risk in losing a clear and consistent author voice when using multiple writers.  For that reason alone I might avoid it, coupled with Thomas' point about volume of content being low-value when it comes to author rank.

[spking]

Thank you Thomas.  Would there be a benefit in hiring writers with topical expertise or credentials directly, and asking to link their Google+ profiles in the author byline on articles they produce for my sites?  In other words, would Google look more favorably on my site if it had content written by highly-referenced influencers In a particular field?

Thanks!

[Thos003]

Yes, I believe google would give you a boost if you could acquire an influential writer in your field. Author rank is still new territory, so the only way to be certain is to test.