Quite a few people seem to be getting twitchy about how much influence author rank is going to have in 2013. I'm not convinced by the arguments that it is going sweep in making panda scale changes (let alone the "it'll stop spam", "it'll bring justice to the SERPs", " It's the people's algo", "It'll patch the ozone layer, cure cancer and make Justin Beiber's balls drop" and all the other crackpot statements around).
However, it's here, seems be affecting more SERPs and, from the effort Google are putting in the G+ is presumably not only here to stay but likely to increase.
We've been holding fire and just dabbling in authorship. As a small agency covering a wide number of small projects across unrelated niches it's tricky. I see us having a few main options:
- Develop a couple of profiles covering broad topics - lots of authorship authority generally, but not much in terms of topic specificity. plus a footprint of monster proportions
- Author personas - Niche interest, but probably not going to have much authority. Might make some more risk-adverse clients uncomfortable
- Coach Clients to author - or at least set up profiles then write on their behalf. Probably easier on paper than in practice in some cases
- Ignore it!
- Find Specialists writers - piggy back on their authorship. Clean, but likely to be more expensive
I know that it is meant to difficult - that is the point. However I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts on this. I always get a different perspective here.
I'm looking at dabbling with the 5th point - hiring in specialist writers to cover their area of specialism for us - though to be honest, I don't have a clear expectation of what this will do for us. Directionally, it feels the right way to go though.
Your 3rd point also sounds sensible - coaching your clients or doing it for them in their name.
If anyone wants an intro to someone offering the fifth point, let me know. I don't use them (hear that Google?!!) but I have seen what look to be some good results from their service.
I thought only the spammers and media whores had author pages set up?
Seem to be quite a few Google+ votes being bought at the moment regardless. :D