Those who are not engaged in professional writing or online presentation probably do not care about how Google search engine is presenting them in search results. For others, it’s of utmost importance that they are presented in Google SERP’s accordingly.

 

How to start? There are two important things that you should understand: Google Author Rank and Google Authorship, and in this post will be focused on:

 

• Google Author Agent and website Authorship theory
• How to set-up and verify Google Authorship
• Should you avoid Google Authorship?
• My Opinion

 

What is Author Rank/Author Agent?

 

 

Author Rank – now Author Agent is an old Google project from 2005. It never managed to reach market due to early problems until recently.  You are probably asking yourself: How does it work, how do we benefit from it?

 

Google constantly insist on reliable high quality content and Author Rank is the next big step. Author Rank, according to many experts, is a much bigger and more serious than the Panda itself. All signs indicate that it’s true: Google’s attempt to be more sociable, Google Authorship, enormous efforts to measure the web of trust and their progressive devaluation of links as a factor in ranking.

 

People want to read content written by credible and respectable author, and by using Author Rank’s position as a major factor in the Google algorithm, it will be soon available.

 

Author Rank aim is to sort search results based on reputation of content authors. Reputation will be measured by various signals. Social Media signals are one of them, and this is quite an interesting.  I would suggest reading my previous article about that: “Social Signals in Search Engine Ranking”

 

Signals that will be Taken into Account for Calculating the Author’s Rank?

 

Google takes into account more than 200 ranking factors when determining the rank of your website in organic search results. So you are sure to have enough signals to calculate Author Rank. According to most SEO experts, Google will likely use these factors in calculations:

 

• Number of shares and +1 that author content draws.
• The level of connectivity to Google+with number of circles in which the author resides.
• Average PageRank of the author’s content.
• Reciprocal links with other authors who have high AuthorRank
• The author’s engagement around the content on the site, or comments – interactions on posts
• Indicators outside authoritative pages (e.g. Presence on Wikipedia)
• YouTube subscribers,
• Major social network signals

 

How to Prepare for Author Rank? Google Authorship First!

 

First you need to do is setting your Google Authorship by linking your authorial identity and with content, which will allow Google to grant you starting AuthorRank. For this,  you will need a Google+ account. Full guide about Google website Authorship can be found here in this post.

 

Once you have a Google Authorship, include all the quality content you’ve already published on the Internet in order for Google to determine your Author Rank. Your initial Author Rank won’t be too shiny, but it can improve by publishing content that shows your expertise, improving reputation and expanding knowledge.

 

Content that you create needs to be good, so people want to share it with your friends. High-quality content will not only help you get better AuthorRank but also PageRank. Guest blogging, posting blogs, submitting articles to directories and the frequent use of Google+ will help you to succeed.

 

How to Verify Google Authorship?

 

Not everyone is a professional webmaster, or do not have access to the website HTML in the way to change the code, Google has recently allowed two simpler methods.  Both are explained here.

 

What If I Avoid Google Authorship?

 

You will not get Author Rank at all! Internet does not tolerate those who are living in the past. If you are professional blog-writer or famous person, it’s must have.

 

Now, let’s have a look at the situation where a movie star’s marketing team  “has never heard of” or did not care about Google Authorship Verification, opening official Google+ profile and verifying them by connecting with the official website. Instead, they left Google and “fans” to do it.

 

I did a search on Google.com, and the requested word was: “Michael Dudikoff”. Search was performed on fresh browser, without any private settings. The Google search engine, whether manually or by algorithm, chose an image from a popular movie site and featured it in the SERP.

 

 

While Dudikoff’s official website ranked #3 in search results, it had no Google Authorship markup. Chances are that if Michael Dudikoff had verified his Google+ profile or page and connected it to his official website, Google would have given priority to his official website.

 

Conclusion

 

As I said earlier, Google Authoring is major new SEO feature for Google. If you are a serious writer or famous star, your marketing team will have to be focused on Authoring as well on your Author Rank. Google is using everything at his disposal to increase Google+ reputation and overall usage. As you have probably seen in Google Authoring guide, Google+ account is a must have.  All in all, Google Authorship will be welcomed by professionals because it will decrease spam and increase accuracy of everything in SERP’s.