In some instances, not using unique

and unique <title>is a huge opportunity loss.</p> <p>Let's say you have a fantastic article about Widgets and you break it up over several pages.  The sections of your article are:</p> <ul> <li>wooden widgets</li> <li>metal widgets</li> <li>plastic widgets</li> <li>stone widgets</li> </ul> <p>... if you make custom <h1> and <title> tags for these pages (and post them on unique URLs) you are going to get your article into a lot more SERPs and haul in a lot more traffic.</p></title>

We use  a copyright mark and our domain name in a light gray font, positioned in the bottom corner of most images.  The copyright mark and domain are scaled to be readable after Google shrinks/crops them down to the large featured snippet image size.  These large featured snippet images are usually about 200x150, so we do some testing to be sure that the font size used and the placement will be legible and not cropped off.

If they are taking your original content it can be illegal if...

1. they do not have a case for fair use

2. you have not done something to make your content available for other use (such as make it public domain, creative commons, etc.)

Copyright infringement is covered by Federal statute in the United States.  If your content is registered you might have a case to sue, even if no financial damage is suffered.  It can be considered criminal if the infringer is knowing and willful.

I am not an attorney.  I recommend consulting with one if you have copyright problems.

I have done my due diligence and regularly file DMCA's, send informal take down notices, and have my attorney handle situations that might be complex or are against an infringer of note.

Verbatim articles on a website can often outrank the original source, especially if the original source website is not very strong.

If they do it with my content, I will probably file a DMCA with Google and perhaps with their host.

"Would having an author page for subject matter experts who legitimately write content (courses and/or blogs) be helpful to SEO/rankings? "

Maybe yes.   Maybe no.

The answer depends upon the strength of your authors' bios and their relevance to the content area of your website.

And, here is something to think about...  If your authors are using their real names, that is likely more valuable for SEO than if they are using a nickname.   Why?  Because Google can use a person's real name to confirm professional registrations, college degrees, work history, licenses, and many other signals that will be valuable for determining E-A-T.

If a person has a website about SEO and uses his/her real name on the articles there, then it is probably a good idea for that person to use their real name when posting in an SEO forum.    IF a person is posting in Moz Q&A and receiving lots of "good answers" and "endorsed answers" that might be valuable for a person's authorship credibility on the SEO site.      If your website is not about SEO then the reputation earned in this form is probably of much lower value.

We have been running multiple sites, all for over a decade and the authors have degrees that either exactly or closely match the topic areas of the websites.  Until two years ago we considered that all articles were written by "our staff".  However, we then added author bios with degrees, certifications, years of experience, Google scholar, relevant employment history spanning decades.  Within a few months after that these sites received a rankings boost that was surprising.

Now, you ask about "the importance of bios".   Adding bios for the sake of adding bios is probably not going to do much for you.  Instead, it is the quality of the authors that is important.

If you have authors who have substantive, long-term, quality education, experience, and work history, then that, I believe will do something for you.   If your authors have a publication history on important sites, with lots of links and citations for their work from government agencies, academic publications, professional societies - all of this that you can link to, then you have built a gold mine. Very hard to fake, easy for Google to confirm, will attract links like bugs to a Georgia porch light.

It will be really hard to fake a publication  history over three or four decades with links from loc.gov and important websites across your discipline and professional registrations on government websites.

For the past year, Google is having a very hard time forgetting pages.   You can use a 301 redirect, take the files off of the server, and Google will still list the old URL -  but click to the 301 destination.

This isn't an answer to your question.  It is just an old man's way of looking at tabbed content and other things that Google treats differently today than they treated it in the past....

When search engines treat something like tabbed content poorly, and then they treat it a little better, you never know if their current treatment is the same as it would  be if tabs were not used at all.

Also, if they treated something poorly in the past, you will never know if or when they will they will start treating it poorly in the future... even if they might degrade it by degrees.

Google does some stuff for good reason, some stuff because they have a mad hat on that day, and some stuff because they think it is cool that day.   All of that can change instantly and without notice if they wear a different hat or think something else is cooler, or if a different guy is put in charge.

The above is part of the reason that Google says that they make changes to their ranking methods every day.

I used to have a couple pages in tabbed content, they performed very poorly - even after a long wait.  So, now I am not using tabbed content.     And, honestly, when I took that content out of tabs my visitors engaged it more vigorously.   Two reasons not to use tabbed content in my book.

When you syndicate content, you give one of your articles to another website.  They publish it on a page and their page begins to rank in the SERPs for the keywords of the article.  If their website is more powerful than your website they are most likely going to rank above you in the SERPs for the root, short tail and long tail keywords.  Even if they give you a link in the article, their page is going to rank above your page in the SERPs.

If you give one of your articles to several other websites and they publish it, the result will be several pages in the SERPs with your article.  What happens then, is Google sees all of these identical articles.  They don't like that and they will filter most of those articles and send them to the supplemental index - where they will get almost no traffic.

Some people will argure....  "I published my copy of the article first and Google will rank me better or they will not filter my page."   From my experience, those people are wrong much of the time at best and most of the time at worst.   I know this for a fact because I have published articles given to me by other people and my site almost always outranks their site in the SERPs after I publish.  I warn them that this will happen, and let them know if I publish their article I will not remove it.  After that, they don't offer me any more articles.

Syndication should be done for one reason.   You have a message and you want to get it out everywhere.   For that purpose you can give your article to a lot of other websites and they will display it to their audience.

However, if you are trying to monetize a website, syndicating articles will most likely be damaging to your rankings for these reasons.  1) your articles on other websites will outrank you, 2) sometimes your article on your website will be filtered,  3) if Google sees that you are trying to build links from article syndication they might turn off the value of those links or even use them as part of a penalty, and 4) if you give lots of the articles on your website to other websites Google might see your site as "having nothing unique" and demote your entire site in the rankings.

All of that syndicated content is putting competition in your SERPs and wasting your time.  Stop it and build your own website.

On a lot of my pages, I have an

title at the top, often with

below it.   Below them, spanning the entire width of the page, I will have a wide format image with a relevant caption.  I think that it is important for the visitors to have an interesting image at the top.  If I don't have one spanning the entire width of the page, then I have my best image at top of the right column.  We often spend good amounts of money on these article-opening images.  We also use these images on category pages and recommended readings lists to advertise the articles to all visitors of the site.

I would not use an image as a replacement for a title line on any of my websites.

I want the

at the top in text rather than in the alt attribute of an image.

If I had a designer who insisted on this, that designer would not be working for me for another minute.  In my opinion, the

text is that important.

how come when I do a site search(site:mydomain) the number of links are less than on my site map?

There are many causes of poor indexing....

-- if your site does not have very many links, it is possible that Google does not crawl it deeply and completely, and might even forget many of your pages between crawls

-- poor indexing can  be caused by a poor site structure, where you have category pages that link to subcategory pages which link to deep pages.... AND, you have lots of internal and external links hitting these category pages to force crawlers deep into your site - where they must chew their way out through a lot of pages

-- also, consider your content... is it unique, substantive, not copy-pasted from other websites... with such problems, Google can choose to ignore your pages

is it recommended to have so many links

That is a lot of links.  I would consider two site maps, each with half of our pages, that will get more crawling deep into your site.

I believe that Google uses information about the expertise, authority and trustworthyness of a website's authors.  To make this happen, you must display it obviously.  One way is to have author pages that present information about the author such as education, work experience, publishing history and more.  Link to these from each article on the website that the author writes.

We were not doing this well, but then we spent time on it.   Shortly thereafter, a Google update occurred and our pages rose nicely in the SERPs.   Not a little increase, it was a surprising increase.

Are there sites with lesser credentials and lower quality content ranking above us.   Yes, in many places, but we are also above them in many places.  These things are not silver bullets.  There are still many factors used in the rankings - and it can take time  for Google to find and appreciate all elements of a website.

But, we spend zero time looking at our links, zero time looking at the links of our competitors, zero time looking at DA.  I can't tell you the last time I looked at DA and have no intentions of looking at it anytime soon.   I am too busy working on new content, improving old content, and trying to make the site operate better.   I am spending my energy where it makes an impact that my visitors can see and use and share and link to.

You are the igniterman.  Get busy.

Hi John,

You are placing way too much importance on DA.  Google does not use DA in its rankings.  Google most likely has never looked at the DA of the websites you are talking about.    Your post uses "DA" or "Domain Authority" in almost every sentence, sometimes two or three times.

I suggest stop looking at DA and work to make the best website possible.    Don't allow DA to be a decoy that takes you away from doing the work needed to win on the web.

So, get some coffee, and make a map of what it will take for you to have the best possible website in your niche.  Then start working on it every day.  Make sure you have the credentials needed to be taken seriously and valued by both your visitors and Google.  If you don't have them, get them.  Education is the key to writing the credible content that is needed to win on the web.

E

If a thorough job of using 301s to redirect the site is done, as Joe Viveiros suggested, and those 301s remain in place forever, then all content can be safely moved and all link equity should follow.  It will take a while for Google to figure this out, and possibly a lot longer for Google to appreciate the original author credit, but everything should be fine in a few to several months.

For a retail site, fewer things are more killer than.... "help the visitor learn about the product, decide what to buy, learn how to use the product, learn how to fix the product, and how to enjoy".

Questions received from customers by email and phone are the most important driver of the content plan.   At the same time, you must know the products well enough that you can identify the things that the customer needs to know, but is not asking.

We pay no attention to content length, other than telling enough to convey the information.  I bet we don't have a single 3000 word article on our retail sites.

I would step away from the idea of blogs and blog posts and 3k articles.

Instead decide how you can build a website designed to help the visitor learn about the product, decide what to buy, learn how to use the product, learn how to fix the product, and how to enjoy.  This requires authors who have deep product knowledge and experience, and who also understand the customer.   Targeting keywords is natural if you have the knowledge and experience to do the above.

An effective way for a small business to succeed in search is to build an ecommerce site with an extensive content library or build a large information site with a store.  This should be done without concern for which type of page gets the top ranking, and with a plan to direct content-consuming visitors to sales pages.  Most businesses do not take this route because they  fear of paying two rain-makers for each order-packer.