Hi Guys,
It’s been a couple of weeks now since my last blog post, so I’ve had a look at some of the latest developments in the digital marketing industry over the past few weeks and picked out the most important which I think you would benefit from knowing about.
Google Authorship has changed!
This year it has become increasingly important to link content with an author, by linking your client’s blog posts with a personal Google+ account you can help the ranking in the search engines significantly. Although Google hasn’t officially confirmed whether they rank content associated with a Google+ profile higher but many professionals have found that their rankings have gotten a lot better since using Google Authorship. Recently however, Google Authorship has changed..
What’s changed?
Google has recently announced that they are changing the layout of authorship results. They have removed the author image on the left hand side of the snippet and the Google+ circles data.
Google’s John Mueller said that the “click-through behaviour on this new less-cluttered design is similar to the previous one.” However, this is quite unlikely and we are sure to see a decrease in click through rate in authorship posts displayed without an author image.
What hasn’t changed?
- Google Authorship is still here
- Author’s names still appear in the search results
- Your rankings do not change
- Setting up authorship remains the same
What does this mean for my clients?
Google authorship is still important as it associates content with a real person which people can relate to, so people are more likely to read the article. Authorship has also been shown to help raise rankings in the search engine results pages. However, as Google is no longer showing an image next to the author in the search engine results it may decrease the click through rate as many studies have shown that images improve CTR from users.
Google Author Rank could pay off in the future!
If Google begins to incorporate more “Author Rank” signals into its search algorithm, establishing yourself as a trusted authority now could pay off big down the road. (Moz, 2014)
So in summary, even though Google isn’t showing an image next to posts anymore, assigning authorship is still important! We need to ensure that all blogs for clients are linked to a Google+ profile.
References
http://moz.com/blog/your-brand-shouldnt-fear-assigning-authorship
http://moz.com/blog/bye-bye-author-pics
Have a good weekend everybody!
Seo Jo 