Google effectively euthanised its Authorship experiment last August. But content marketing expert Eric Enge has come up with eight rock-solid reasons why author authority still matters, even if Google isn’t formally measuring it.
Writing in SearchEngineLand.com. Enge kicks off with the indissoluble link between building reputation through authoritative content and visibility. Basically, your authorship of original content makes your brand personal, which makes people want to connect with it (people like connecting with other people).
Secondly, your own brand of content will attract more links and (thirdly) more social shares. Higher profile people are also more inclined to read well-crafted, personally-branded content that’s growing in reputation.
Fourthly, if you ensure your content marketing programs are of high-end quality, they stand a much better chance of getting exposure in the right places. Which leads to the fifth point: bloggers and the media more broadly are more likely to accept pitches from known authors. As soon as a content creator is in a position to point them to articles published on prominent sites, or that have accrued high volumes of legitimate shares, his or her credibility will grow like Alice in Wonderland after downing that bite of cake.
A virtuous circle starts to spin: the more your following grows, the faster your fan base is likely to accelerate (Enge’s sixth point). As Enge puts it, “People with larger social followings tend to add more new followers per day (provided they are active).” Basically, people become more inclined to share their stuff and get themselves exposure to new people.
The seventh reason to keep author reputation alive is that it opens new doors – you’re more likely to be invited to speak at conferences, get interviewed by media/bloggers or news journalists, and get your speaking pitches accepted.
Finally, if you’re connected with anyone on Google+, your content stands a good chance of getting higher rankings in Google SERPs.
Authorship may be dead in a formal Google sense. But it’s alive and well in every other.
