Do you think its ethical to use your personal google authorship for outsourced content?

[TShak]

I routinely outsource nicely written content but never use my google authorship for those articles. Should I be adding my google authorship to those articles? Or would that be unethical and violate googles TOS?

[RobertFisher]

TShak

I think  the issue is what part do you have in the creation of the content. You are in SEO as am I, if you outsource it to me without providing any of the background, information, etc., from an 'ethical' point of view, probably not something I would do. I do know that there are those who do use authorship and have others write the content. Frankly, our firm has copywriters who produce content for clients. The clients provide data, background, and oversight and we give them authorship on some occasions and on others our copywriters are the authors. We are the publisher for the content where it is not in conflict with the client. If we have a client we are producing content for and they are not taking authorship of the content, we will often make the client site the publisher.

As to Google's TOS, I am not sure there is going to be a definite answer. If you are a subject matter expert and you are providing the vast amount of the knowledge to a ghost writer, I personally, do not have issue with you. If you are having them create content around your subject without your input, I do have a problem with it. (that doesn't mean you are wrong, it means I would be if I did it.) Our copywriters do create SEO content, they take the authorship when they do. If something is not up to standard, myself or the content and media editor will redo it and then decide how it will be handled. It sounds more involved than it is. But, you ask for an opinion and I wanted to be as clear as possible.

Hope it helps,

Robert