Google Authorship builds my personal profile but not my brand?

[AshShep1]

Hi having read lots on this I am still not clear, so your help please?

I am about to set up author rel but am I correct in thinking that this will only build my personal profile and not by brand/business profile?

will building my personal profile help my linked brand page or do I need to build that separately using the publisher tag?

Any thoughts on the best way to achieving building my brand using google plus?

thanks

Ash

[JamesNorquay]

Well my advice is the following:

1. Make your personal brand highly related to your brand page, I am currently doing this for one brand where we have a key person from the brand who goes out and does guest posts with his rel author, he posts on the own site with the rel author but every thing is relate to the company in some way.

2. Use a Google+ business page and post daily updates about the brand, implement all the correct rel publisher tags.

Here is a good article on the difference here: http://www.virante.org/blog/2013/06/14/relauthor-or-relpublisher-which-should-i-use/

[danatanseo]

Ash, this is the big question right now. I will tell you, no one, not even the people who live online for a living (oh wait, that's us!) no one knows how to handle this. I have reached out to Google for clarification. there hasn't been any answer.

Here is the best explanation of "what to use when" that I have heard:

http://www.widerfunnel.com/events/google-and-search-engine-optimization-an-interview-with-janet-driscoll-miller

I can tell you after attending several events where this topic came up, that even the best, most experience SEOs in the world have no idea what to do with it. That doesn't say very much for Google does it? I mean really, what's the normal person who's a great blogger but doesn't know anything about authorship supposed to do?

[yeagerd]

Hello,

Do not feel alone in this friend, I think we are all in the same boat.  Some trial, some error and who knows...  you may be the first emerging authority on the actual efforts of authorship and SEO.  

Yes, authorship builds your profile not your businesses.

Technically, publisher tags should be on the domain root (or site root) only.  However, when it is a brand only like eCommerce shop etc. then it only seems right to use publisher.

Here is a great conversation about Google Authorship and Brand SEO.

For the final question I would say, find people who you want to be interested in you and explore for hints about dislikes or something they desire to be available but is not, search for good resources that fill that need (Sometimes a guide to available resources is more popular than any of the original resources themselves) and if you also cannot find anything, build it.  Reach out to others and offer ways to help them, connect with people and companies that are relevant to you and once you get some people following you, don't post and ghost.  Stick around and once you start getting responses be there to start building the relationship.

I could fill a day talking about how great my company is and how well I think we do certain things.  When you focus on yourself you will find limited company.  When you focus on helping others and being a service to them, you will indeed find an audience interested in hearing what you have to say.

[yeagerd]

You have to love a community where you start writing a post, get a quick call, finish it and then post and two others have also jumped to help where they can.

Love It!

[Ophelie]

Regardless of brand authority, a photo and author profile appearing in SERPs is more likely to receive clicks than other results. So building up your own author authority is indirectly benefitting your brand.

[WorldText]

If it's a blog post, people want to know they're dealing with a person.  Most people don't care who published the article, but do pay attention if it was written by someone they respect.  The mainstream media makes a horrible mess of technology reporting, often, but if I see a piece on security in the Guardian by Bruce Schneier I pay attention and read it - simply because I know he knows his topic.  So it is all about the people, rather than the brand - unless you're Coke or Cadbury etc where different rules can apply!

Your brand may publish good content, but it's actually the person who wrote it who is the authority and may be interesting to get to know - because they post funny stuff, have opinions on a range of topics etc, rather than be mono-dimensional banging on and on about the business.

People, in the main, want to connect on social networks to brands - Robert Scoble rather than Rackspace for example.  You'll have an easier time connecting with people as you than trying to represent your brand.  Now, you may not be an authority on any topic yet, but that's the background, and intent, of authorship.

The connection with your brand, and the fact you'll be sharing content from the page, and your blog etc, will promote your brand.  Do it too often and people will disconnect, so as ever, it's a fine art.

So where does that leave us, the nobodies who aren't world-reknowned for some topic?  It leaves us trying to create enough quality content, consistently enough, that both G+ and the serps start to see us as authorities on particular topics.  Reshares of overtly commercial messages seem to do especially badly on G+, perhaps because it's presently an advert-free zone.

The upshot of all this makes it very time-consuming, so if you're not putting in the xx hours daily on G+ connecting and interacting with as many as possible, no one will notice, and no one will care.  Which is the rather sad, and fundamental, flaw in authorship and G+: it's a popularity contest plain and simple and actually nothing to do with authority.  Perhaps a secondary indicator of, and there's certainly correlation...

So how to build that brand?  Be a social media maven, constantly interacting and connecting.  Do it as both you, and the page, along with other employees - they'll all have their own voice and style - which is ideal, they'll all connect to different people.  If you can't put several hours a day in, try and find a community or niche that you can join actively enough to get noticed and respected in, and build connections from there.

Do 20 minutes a day of resharing the latest daily blog post along with a tiny bit of interaction and you'll get precisely nowhere.

Good luck!

[danatanseo]

I really liked this bit of Matt's answer:

"So how to build that brand?  Be a social media maven, constantly interacting and connecting.  Do it as both you, and the page, along with other employees - they'll all have their own voice and style - which is ideal, they'll all connect to different people.  If you can't put several hours a day in, try and find a community or niche that you can join actively enough to get noticed and respected in, and build connections from there."

Well said.

[AshShep1]

HI Matt thanks for so much great insight!

We are just pulling our social plans together so this is going to help, big time!

Ash

[AshShep1]

Thanks for the info David and the link you provided had some really good stuff for us as we are just starting out into the social world, as we see this as the number 1 method of driving good quality traffic!

Ash

[AshShep1]

Hi Dana its kinda reassuring to hear that even the experienced guys are struggling with it, but also as equally worrying - what chance do we have!

Actually, i  think we have as much chance as anyone provided we keep testing and learning what works and what doesnt!

Ash

[AshShep1]

Hi James thanks for the insight!

The link info proved useful to, so much to learn!

I need a plan and in bite sized chunks!

Ash