Author Rank is one of the biggest changes in the algorithms after Panda and Penguin updates. The search engines uses the human attributes like the qualifications and expertise of authors as ranking factors, other than looking at the stats of the website. The first patent filed by the search engine was in 2005 and called the Agent Rank. This patent described Google’s paradigm of the parameters that would determine the popularity of the agent and how much authority does they have on the subject.
Other than looking into the statistics for the website optimization, it became important to consider the social interactions with the human factors. Since Google didn’t have access to qualitative data that could justify their using the social interactions as the ranking factor. The problem became more evident when Google finally launched its social network, and this presented them the platform to activate the Agent Rank or the Author Rank. The purpose behind this is to identify the personalities and their knowledge on the subjects. It would also judge on what others thought on the content that they published. The factors that would influence the rank is the number of followers that the author has, number of shares and the frequency by which the content is acknowledged in the social media platforms. The Author Rank would tie these metrics to the author who produces the content along with the website that would host the content.
So, the next question is how does author rank actually affect the content marketing? Let’s begin with an example. Say a website exists for more than a decade, and the content produced is proven as a reliable source within the field. There was inbound links and innumerable shares on the social media. However, the entrepreneur decides to sell the website, and the next owner fails to produce the same quality content. The editorial quality of SEO Copywriting fails; however, the website continues to perform well in the rankings. It could be years before this is tracked as the search engine can identify the change with the metrics based on the influx of links and decreased level of interactions. The author is severely affected with the loss of credibility and reliability.
With Author Rank, the search engine remembers the credibility of the author. He or she will continue to have the acknowledgements and the signals that would be identify the quality of the content. This would ease the starting process. The author would be able to uplift the level of the website and ensure increased traffic. This is what Author Rank helps in achieving.
The first step to this process is to claim authorship of the content. This can be achieved with the simple verification step on a Google+ profile. In the profile, there should be links that redirect to pages that hosts the content and vice versa. These resources should be linked to the profile. The authorship can also be claimed with the help of SEO plug-ins available at the WordPress. In case of several authors, each of them needs to be tagged to their content. If the author is into guest posts, the tags can be added in the author bio. The search engine just needs to search for the tag across individual piece of content. The side affect of adding this tag in the author bio is that in the author’s profile picture will be added to the snippet when the post shows in the ranking.
