Google confirms hidden SEO benefit of authorship: bonus links after a clicking the back button

Digging into useful SEO information out there for you readers is one of my favorite things to do, and in doing so, I stumbled upon something that will benefit anyone who actively stays on top of Google trends.  Today, I stumbled upon an article that confirmed the hidden SEO benefits of Google Authorship.

What is this SEO benefit?

According to Search Engine Land’s Matt McGee:

If a user returns to the search results after reading an author-tagged search result for a certain period of time, Google will add three additional links to similar articles from the same author below the originally clicked link.

Really??!! What exactly does this mean and how does this happen?

If you do a Google search and pick a result that has an author rich snippet associated with the article, read the article for a short period of time and click the back button, Google will then include “More by (author)” along with three links to other articles.

You read that correctly, Google will build you back links! You can actually do this yourself by reading your own articles as well and add this to your daily SEO routine. Search for your posts, click and read, then hit the back button. Although, you can’t do this with haste as Google is measuring time-on-site to determine if a reader enjoys the content. There is no specific information out there on how much time a user needs to spend on a post, but tests out there on the Internet determined a minimum of 2 minutes.

Google has confirmed the following:

If a user visits an article by an author and it seems like they’d be interested in finding more articles by this author, when they click the “Back” button to return to the results page, we’ll show more results by that author.

This is all very good news for us bloggers and SEO professionals out there! Link building is a challenge since Google clamped down on this past year with algorithm updates. Too many links too quick will get you penalized! This is a safe and Orangehat way– it’s also Google approved!

To learn how to use Author Rich Snippets for SEO, read my article about how to set it up so you too can take advantage of this hidden SEO feature.

Example of Authorship Snippet

Read more SEO tips and tricks by Ryan Neal

All to many times through out my circles of  colleagues, potential customers and even my friends, I hear that social media is not a good tool for marketing.

That just could not be further from the truth… Here are some common objections that I have heard about social media and it’s place in business.

My Customers Don’t Use Social Media

Really? Have your customers heard of the Internet? This has got to be on of the most naive statements I have ever heard! Do a quick search on the Internet and you’ll find something like this:

Facebook: 955 million users; more than 42 million pages and 9 million apps
Youtube: 4 billion views per day
Google+: 250 million registered users

-Craig Smith on Social Media

Chances are, your customers are in that mix somewhere… also, that is a lot of prospects to go after and market to!

Social media is not for our business

If your business is not about marketing for dollars, then this could apply. I assume that it is a common misconception that social media is just a place for friends and that no one pays attention to marketers. Your brand has a story to tell, so be social and put a human face to your brand!  A successful social media campaign will bring in: AWARENESS, SALES, and LOYALTY 

Nobody tweets about us, so we don’t need social media

This statement is true to those that do not give people something to tweet about. This could also be true for businesses and people with boring concepts and marketing strategies. Look into viral marketing, these types of campaigns are successful because they are exciting and have the ability to generate buzz. Give people something to share and talk about and your idea could hit levels that were once unimaginable!

Social media is just marketing

Social media plays a role in marketing, sure! But it’s much deeper than that. Social media is a way to engage people and even manage your customers! These day, people are quick to turn to social media and either praise or trash, so why not give them the avenue to come straight to you? Social media could even limit the time spent on the phones talking to irate customers and show publicly how well you can handle a situation.

If you’re not using social media in this digital age, you are truly falling behind. Sure you may not see instant result, but you build the story and reputation of you brand. That is the most important part of the whole game.

Author Rank is Google’s new way to prove page quality and authority.

In the world of SEO, it just seems that we’re constantly bombarded with updates and new technologies from the search engines. In fact, it’s reported that Google updates their algorithm nearly 500 times a year! With all of this, it is tough to know what’s what, how to do it, as well as when to start. All one can really do is stay diligent and read SEO blogs like this everyday to get a clearer picture of what’s coming.

Author Rank is indeed on its way, and if you want to stay relevant, you need to learn what it is, why you need it and how to prepare.

Google wants to leverage authors as a factor in ranking pages and sites so that the experience for users  is easier to find the work of their favorite writers.  Getting a head start in the Author Rank process and staying proactive, you will have a great opportunity to rank higher as author profiles are not being practiced very widely yet.

It is highly likely your competitors haven’t looked into Author Rank markup yet.

How Author Rank Works

In Google’s words (Author rank was originally Agent Rank)

The name of the writer can be used to influence the ranking of web search results by indicating the writer responsible for a particular content piece … Assuming that a given writer has a high reputational score, representing an established reputation for authoring valuable content, then additional content authored and signed by that writer will be promoted relative to unsigned content or content from less reputable writers in search results.

Here is a nice graphic from Mike Arnesen’s Author Rank post on SEOMOZ that paints a picture of the concept:

As you can see here, the left side is before and the right is after. What is happening in this example is the authors that have setup the Author Rich Snippets are being rewarded. They have author rich snippets integrated into their page or post and this allows them to show a photo, give the name of the author, how many people are following this author and more content from the author. Author Rank adds a lot of credibility to the content and Google will reward that.

Which ones in the example look like a credible source? Which would you choose to view?

How to prepare for Author Rank.

There’s only one way to make sure you’re ready, and I wrote about it in my post about author rich snippets as they help will help with Author Rank. Follow the steps in that post, and you will be ready!

As I mentioned above, SEO, search engines, content marketing is not the easiest subject to tackle. GuruBloggers is here to help you learn or assist! So subscribe to our blog and newsletters to stay on top of the trends or give us a call if you need our assistance with your business marketing needs. We are here to help you!

I have been on the search for advice on monetizing my blog designs and web templates.

I don’t just mean the most elegant looking of blog designs, but a template that is designed to get the most out of the traffic that my website and blog may get. So, in the nature of GuruBloggers, I thought I would share with you some of my findings…

Study on blog designs and websites

This is a screen shot of a study done on blog designs and website layouts with eye tracking software. The colors represent areas of where random people’s eyes concentrate on while viewing different blog designs and website layouts. The red area represents where eyes view the blog designs content, and where blog designs get the most attention. The yellow comes in next, with blue being last and rarely viewed with any attention at all.

On the far left, we have one example of many blog designs that is a text rich piece of content. We can see where the content has nearly all the web surfer’s attention. Notice the where the red is concentrated the most, this is how much focus the article actually received. Keep your content short but keep it interesting and do a soft sale in the last 100 words!

In the middle we have a website that has banners, a large image placed on top, an ad on the top far right and the content in the middle. Notice how the most concentrated on part of the content only shows red at the beginning of the lines— this means the content is barely looked at the further right and down as the text in the article continues…

On the far right, we have a search result screen shot from Google. This shot is probably the most important reason we blog, work and play on social media, as well as spend time and money on enhancing the SEO on websites. This shows where people pay most attention to in the search engines, and it’s not the ads on the far right. It is the organic search results. It seems to be a familiar result, I too often look to the first 3 results in Google!

15 tips to know about websites and blog designs.

• Text actually captivates an audience more than pictures.
• People begin viewing websites from the top left, much like a book!
• Banners often get ignored.
• Don’t use fancy fonts in blog designs, people tend to ignore those too.
• Lower parts websites are usually just scanned, so keep the good stuff at the top.
• Short paragraphs will keep your audience’s attention, keep it around 300 words.
• Blog design and websites with the ads on the top or left part of the content to get the most views.
• Place ads in your content or right below and get more views.
• Big pictures catch more eyes than smaller ones.
• Headlines draw attention and make your pieces more credible and convincing. Choosing the right CSS for blog designs can make a headline really stand out.
• Web users spend more time navigating menus of blog designs and looking at the buttons of a website.
• Bullet points are better at keeping readers’ attention compared to large paragraphs the also.
• Some will skip large chunks of text.
• Nothing wrong with white space! It helps blog designs stay neat and organized.
• Place menus on the top part of a website, web-surfers are used to looking up for navigation.

While we may not implement some of these tips here on GuruBloggers, it is nice to know for our clients’ blog designs and we like to share information that we find even more! So when you in the creating process, keep all of this in mind to make the most out of layout!

Be on the look out for blog designs and web templates from GuruBloggers for you to download!

Sources: BBC News | GoogleBlog | DreamGrow