How Authorship can take your blog to the next level in 2013

Posted: 24 Dec 2012 10:43 AM PST

If you haven't heard of Google Plus, Google's new social network, then perhaps you've been living under a stone for the last year. Whilst it's certainly not yet a Facebook or Twitter, Google is doing everything it can to push and promote it. That's something that as a blog owner you should give serious consideration to. Taking on the might of Facebook is a huge challenge for Google and having learned many lessons from their previous attempt with social networking called Orkut, this time they're out to really push G+.

Of course I can hear you asking why should I care, I already share my content on Twitter and Facebook which has a far greater reach. The answer is quite simple. Google is giving out plenty of encouragement for you to be active with them. As a serious blogger, you should take advantage of it! So if you've gone through your SEO checklist and think you have everything covered, don't forget to markup your blog with rel=author!

Everyone likes a great picture

The first and most obvious advantage is the ability to have a pretty picture of yourself in the SERPS (search results). You've probably seen quite a few sites that have this when you search Google. Do you think you're more likely to click the result with the picture or the one without? The web is becoming more social because ultimately people are social animals. Your picture in the SERPS not only makes you stand out from your competition, but it can make you appear more trustworthy. As the vast majority of blogs aren't yet using Google authorship, then you really should be! Here's what it looks like when implemented correctly.

google-author

Not only this but click through rates within search results are often much higher with sites that have authorship enabled. Bottom line, this means more visitors to your blog. If you even got an easily achieved 10% increase in your CTR, this means an extra 10% of organic search visitors to your blog. Obviously that's clear value to you, no matter if or how your blog is monetised. A 10% boost in new traffic for 20 minutes of work to set it up is a clear and easy win for you. However, it gets much better.

The big picture, if you'll pardon the pun

The big picture goes far beyond the ability to have your picture in the search results. That's just a nice little carrot that's dangled in front of you. Google wants to stay at the top and to do that they continually need to find better ways to organise and understand the plethora of documents on the web. Pagerank and links which are the fabric of their understanding of the relatedness of the web are buckling under the pressure. To take things further they need to understand who is adding the content and how authoritative these people are within the realm of their topic areas.

Authorship is a great way to do this, and it really is a stroke of genius. If they can get webmasters like you to link their blogs and content written around the web to G+, then they can start to understand more about the context of who is building the great stuff on the web. If they can understand who the great authors are then they can use that to rank quality sites much more easily and give their users a much better experience. If you put out great content, then that means you!

What does this mean for you?

This means that you need to be giving the right signals to Google that your content is the kind of content that deserves to rank well and to be receiving the gift of the traffic Gods. Do you already get the kind of metrics and interactions that Google loves to see on your blog? Do you get great comments, links, and social shares because of the quality of your blog? Then you should be telling Google that you are the author of this great stuff!

Once they know that you are the author you can start to build your 'author rank' or agent rank as their patents describe it. Now I'll be honest, nobody knows if Google is currently using this as a signal for ranking. You have to realise that they've put so much effort into it this and it's likely to be so potent a ranking signal that it's obvious that it's coming soon. Delivering quality relevant results is at the heart of what Google wants to do, and you dear reader should see the opportunity to be at the very heart of it from the beginning. Of course we don't yet know what the full effects of this are likely to be, and this post is not the place for a discussion on correlation versus causation, but hopefully you can see that the potential is huge.

What you need to do set it up

Firstly you need to create a personal profile with Google Plus, fill out all the information required, and add a picture of yourself. Note, you need to use an actual real picture of you (a headshot is best). Company logos are not what was intended here. Then you need to add your site (or any others that you post on) as a site that you contribute to in your profile.

Finally you need to add the link to your G+ profile page on your blog posts and you're good to go. If you use WordPress as many are, you're probably using Yoast's SEO plugin (which I highly recommend). Yoast kindly has made it easy for you by providing fields to do this within the plugin. Alternatively many other SEO plugins provide this functionality. Once you've done this you can test the results with Google's Rich Snippets testing tool and if it all works you need to wait a couple of weeks.

The implications of doing this

Google already understands more about your site than you think. It knows about interactions and social sharing as well as other important metrics. Make sure that this great stuff is linked to you, the real life human being. Why? The answer is because as a 'known author' you can take this authority around the web with you. Think of it as a suitcase full of topic authority. If you contribute to other sites as well as your own, then your articles there should get a boost based on your authorship. Also if those other sites do the right things then your posts should further increase your author rank.

Finally one of the other obvious connotations of this that you don't often hear about is the impact of people guest authoring on your site. It clearly will benefit them but think about how it would impact you to have the highest quality authors on your site. Once you see that Google can understand who is authoring all this content you can see that attracting industry thought leaders and experts to post on your site (with verified G+ authorship) is going to massively help. Top experts aren't going to work with low quality sites, so in effect you can leverage the authority of others to help your own ranking. You should positively encourage expert authors on your site! However you need to make sure that these are quality authors, so your vetting process needs to be even stricter.

A semi advanced tip

If you've already shared content on other people's sites through the connections you have then you should contact those site owners. Not only is it likely to be good to get back in touch anyway, but you can explain the importance of authorship implementation. If you've contributed to sites all around the web in the past then you may be able to build up very quickly by implementing this on your past work. A head start is always a good thing, but just make sure that you only link quality work back to you.

A final word of caution

I'll finally say that if you do any kind of black hat SEO promotion, then you should stay far away from this. Of course most don't do that stuff, but I thought I'd mention it. By creating authorship and taking it around the web with you, you are linking all of your work. You need to be sure that you're 'whiter than white', otherwise the past might come back to haunt you.

Why not tell me what you think in the comments. Have you used rel=author markup and have you noticed a CTR or other improvement on your blog?

Harvey Pearce is the owner of SEO Derby a digital marketing company focusing on Search, PPC, CRO, and Social, based in the UK. He has a passion for all things digital and a little boy who is the centre of his world.

Original Post: How Authorship can take your blog to the next level in 2013

ProBlogger: 6 Warning Signs That Your Blog Is Deflating

6 Warning Signs That Your Blog Is Deflating

Posted: 23 Dec 2012 06:08 AM PST

This guest post is by Ashkan of fanappic.com.

Looking at your analytics and seeing that your blog traffic is going down is not a pretty sight.

For those of us who have been blogging for a while, the chances are that we all have experienced periods of downturn and are used to such stormy weather. But what if, heaven forbid, the situation is even more serious, and the downturn looks as if it is here to stay?

Nothing is more painful than seeing the demise of your labour of love; if you make your living from your blog, even worse!

The question is, "How do I spot the end of a growth period?"

How can we spot the warning signs that the decrease of visitor numbers is the start of a long downturn, and requires drastic action?

I have owned a couple of blogs, including fanappic.com. This multi-contributor blog grew really fast last year, but then reached a peak before entering a period of deflating visitor numbers.

Thankfully, we managed to turn that around, but you can imagine the panic that I went through during that awful period!

Having analysed all the factors on my blog, I can pinpoint six key warning signs that you’ll need to pay close attention to if you want to spot the downturn early on.

Warning sign 1: Declining pages per visit

You should be able to get this figure from any analytics tool. What it reflects is the average number of pages a visitor views every time they visit your blog. Generally, if a visitor likes your blog then they want to click on other links to find out more.

If you look at this figure over the past three or six months and notice the Pages per visit figure is decreasing, then the chances are that your website appeal is also decreasing.

Warning sign 2: Declining average visit duration

This one normally goes hand in hand with the first point. If the reader doesn't find the content they are looking for, or they’re not happy with the quality of your content, then they will spend less time on your website and abandon the page even before they reach the end of the post.

Warning sign 3: Traffic increasing without much effort

You put all that hard labour and those long hours in at the beginning and you managed to grow your blog traffic dramatically.

Now you have entered a period where it all looks too good to be true! You are not doing anything new and not promoting the blog actively, but still the traffic just keeps growing!

Well you know what they say: if it's too good to be true, then it probably is. Nothing in the real world comes easily, and sooner or later either your competition or the Google algorithm is going to catch up with you. There is no room for complacency.

Warning sign 4: The majority of traffic comes from one source

I think that this one is a well-known point but it's still worth reminding ourselves of it. Do not put all of your eggs in one basket!

If 90% of your blog traffic comes from Google, you run the risk of being hit by algorithm updates. I know from personal experience that doing something about this can be very challenging, seeing as most people find the content they’re looking for by using search engines. So, if your ranking is decreasing what can you do?

There are many other ways to get traffic, such as: social networks, links from other websites, videos, banner advertising, and more. A good article to get you thinking about these options is, How to Build a Traffic-siphoning Marketing Funnel.

Two sources that I successfully generate good traffic from are my email newsletter, and creating viral content that gets shared in social media.

Warning sign 5: You are losing passion and dedication

Is it getting harder and harder for you to dedicate time to your blog? Are you suffering from the dreaded writer's block?

The challenge here is to maintain the level of passion and energy that you had for your blog in the beginning. If you are a creative person, then like many creative people you may love to start things but then struggle to do the same thing year after year.

I must say that I don't have a definitive answer here, except to say that you should focus on a bigger goal: the purpose of your blog and your writing. Think about how much your readers are benefiting from your blog, and stay in close touch with your biggest fans.

At iPhoneAppCafe, we constantly get together and brainstorm ideas or think of ways to attract new writers to our blog so that the passion for the topic remains strong—and is clearly communicated through every post.

Warning sign 6: Your blog's topic is losing freshness and urgency

If the initial traffic arrived because your blog’s topic was trending, it is possible that, with time, your topic of focus will lose its popularity.

When iPhoneAppCafe launched in 2010, the iPhone was more of a hot topic than it is now. We considered covering Android apps as well, but we decided that there was too big a risk of losing focus on our original goal if we covered that too.

Instead, we diversified the breadth of our coverage by doing more accessory reviews, video reviews, news, and insights.

Watching for the warning signs

These are the six warning signs I’ve noticed usually indicate my blog traffic will plateau or fall. What signs have you noticed? Share them with us in the comments, so we can all watch for them, and take action before it’s too late.

Ashkan (@AshkanTalk) is the founder of iPhoneAppCafe.com, a community blog dedicated to reviewing and sharing the best iPhone apps. He started the blog in 2010 and got it to 5000 visitors a day within 9 months. For his day job, Ashkan manages e-commerce projects.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger