Google Authorship and the "Fishkin" Outburst! Sorry Rand ;)

[David-Kley]

Content is and always will be king. If it doesnt exist, people cant search for it.

Google doing things to force people into adwords is nothing new. You don't get to be a $40 billion company by not playing smart. By removing the authorship images, it makes the links stand out less. Less easy ways to stand out in SERPs + less business for companies = more advertising dollars spent.

I think the larger area to focus on is LINKS. With panda 4.0 and hummingbird, it seems like Google is looking for ways to find out who the "true authority" is in any given market. What easier way to do that then to look at the links to a site? Yes buying links was easy. It was easy for the smaller guys to buy links and catch up to the "authority" sites that had been promoting content for a long time. When they started hammering paid links, they were able to see more clearly who had good links without paying for them.

The only way our focus has changed is that we spend less time on the smaller impact items, and dedicate more time and effort into the big ticket links (SEO roundtable, search engine land, moz, etc for our site). This is repeated for our clients for their industry. Makes more sense to spend more time up front on a few powerful links, then a lot of time spread out over smaller links. Content gets links though, and you have to always fall back to "good content gets linked to"

[EGOL]

So what I would really like to know is - should small businesses continue to focus on developing great content? How has your marketing strategy changed?

The last time I changed my SEO strategy was in 2005.

[GaryVictory]

Thanks for all your feedback. I'm certainly not questioning the value of creating content, or your approach to SEO. Ultimately authorship CTR's have taken a "drop" since Google kindly removed profile images., so it's great to hear your thoughts.

[David-Kley]

ONE SEO STRATEGY TO RULE THEM ALL

[GPainter]

"One does not simply have one SEO strategy!"

[EGOL]

I am actually glad that they took the photos down because I am not as pretty as my competitors.  

But, I hope that they are using it to determine who is producing a good mass of credible work and then allowing reputation to influence the rankings of "next item published".   Before this "authorship" I was not adding my name to any of my content.  I just wanted it to be viewed as property of the domain.  But I felt forced into using authorship because it became a potential part of the "arms race".

[GPainter]

I found it interesting that "pretty face" more so women were getting a higher CTR

[EGOL]

Lots of guys have pretty faces too.

I think that Rand would get a pretty good CTR if he made some content about women's fashion.... putting his face in the SERPs where women are looking.   He should do A/B tests between the bearded manly look and the shaven young pup presentation. 

I think that Rand looks like Jeremy Piven in Mr. Selfridge.

[randfish]

Great discussion here already, and I agree with what's been posted - content marketing and content strategy continue to be incredibly valuable for SEO and for many other marketing channels. The shift away from author pics is no reason to change course.

On a sidenote, I thought Ammon Johns' reply to my tweet was a very smart one: https://twitter.com/Ammon_Johns/status/486854967165480960 I should have considered that before sending my tweet (though I do wish Google would just be transparent about this stuff - it would help us to build a lot more trust and less suspicion of them).

[LesleyPaone]

I think it really is a one way street with Google. As SEO professionals they really don't care about us until we do something wrong, then they will penalize us or our assets. Kind of akin to how I have heard paypal is with the sellers. They have bad policies and support for the sellers, since they have a huge pool of buyers, sellers are pretty much roped into their terms and have to play their game.

[GaryVictory]

Thanks for the comment Rand.

When I asked the question "Should companies now shift away from creating great content..", this was a little tongue in cheek. I wanted to stir up some dialogue within our community. Sure, well written informative content is fantastic, we all know this is truly valuable as part of any sustainable marketing strategy, but has this now lost "some" value? I have my own opinion, what's yours?

I thought Joel Klettke wrote a fantastic piece http://www.iacquire.com/blog/authorship-photos-removed