Why It's Time to Embrace Google Authorship

The Internet now gives brands access to more potential leads than ever before.  Now, while this is a great problem for businesses to have, it also means that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to stand out online.

We all are aware that there is a frantic drive for brands and companies to gain that prime real estate spot on the first page of Google, so it is understandable when these companies feel reluctant or hesitant to remove any sense of brand identity.  However, contrary to popular belief, assigning an authorship has proven itself to be an excellent way to gain brand awareness.  Yet time and time again, when I explain this concept to a potential lead, I tend to become faced with a few of the same questions:

“Isn't it a better idea for our content to be branded with our company logo?” 

People are actually much more willing to listen and identify themselves with a person over a faceless brand or logo.  Google understands this, so they created Google Authorship in order for individual writers to post their original content across the Internet, leading to search results that display their photo next to the result:

This practice is used to calculate an "Author Rank", which determines the content’s quality based on whether the author is considered a credible source; allowing Google to have a sense author identity when it comes to SEO and getting a site ranked.  In short, your personal brand authority will most definitely build up your corporate brand as well.

“What if the employee leaves the company?” 

Let’s say you've assigned one of your employees to be an author for your brand.  This employee gained an awesome reputation online both personally and for your business, and then they resign – Now what?  The answer is simple, due to the power of an online reputation campaign and Google’s understanding of these situations; you will most certainly not lose any credibility over the departure.  Once an employee is gone, their reputable content will still appear under your brand name, and therefore it will continue to only help your reputation in a positive way.

“Can I just assign authorship to a fake person?” 

You can, but it’s a lose-lose situation.  This typically stems from the previous question; companies feeling worrisome that an employee chosen as the author will eventually leave the business – but realistically, pouring all of your hard work into epic pieces of content only to gain a reputation for a fictional character just doesn't work in the end.  Plus, Google loves real people – They try to steer companies away from using fake personas.  Remember, when you make Google happy, your site has a much better chance of ranking higher!

To conclude, the consensus of this blog - Well, according me to anyway, is that there is nothing to fear when assigning an authorship to your brand!  This not only lets your employees have some time in the limelight with their awesome content, but it keeps them happy; therefore keeping your business happy (and Google happy, of course).  We here at Utah SEO Pros see this practice as an essential piece of your online digital marketing campaign, because in even the "coldest" of markets, this creates the highest amount of personal connections to your audience.