Claiming your identity: from authorship to authority
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Google is interested in author authority within search engine results pages (SERPs) because authoritative authors build trust with users. To be an authoritative author, one needs to be visible online, connected to other authors and content, prepared with high-quality content over time, and accessible as a real person rather than anonymous. Building authority comes from being a recognizable expert through one's online presence and relationships, not just keywords or tags.
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Claiming your identity: from authorship to authority
- 1. Why Claiming Your Identity Matters: From Authorship to Authority 1
- 2. Questions we’re going to answer. Why is Google interested in Author authority within the SERPs? What can you do to ensure you’re an authoritative author? 2
- 3. 3
- 4. They understand the “Cult of Personality” 4
- 5. In 1948, Harry Truman… Shook hands with 1 out of every 300 US Citizens. Travelled 31,000 miles 77% of the circumference of the globe. 5
- 6. 4 Years later… “Too dull, too stale and devoid of humanity” 6
- 7. “Eisenhower Answers America”, Produced by Rosser Reeves, creators of M&Ms “melt in your mouth, not in your hand” 7
- 8. "I think the American people will be shocked by such contempt for their intelligence, This isn’t Ivory Soap versus Palmolive." 8
- 9. That election was won because Eisenhower’s ads created authority. Rational Reality 9
- 10. 10
- 11. Google is encouraging this – why? 11
- 12. GIFT Online Disinhibition Effect
- 13. Children were 10 times as likely to steal when in an anonymous group. No mask and on their own? 8% took the money. Mask and crowd? 80% took the money. 13
- 14. The wit of YouTube… 14
- 15. Greater Internet F**kwad Theory. GIFT (Online Disinhibition Effect)
- 17. Brands are suffering from G.I.F.T Massive Market Manipulation, LIBOR Scandal Bribery Money Laundering for Drug Cartels Child Labour 17
- 18. Ethical companies make more money. 18 Standard and Poor 500 Index vs Ethisphere Institute WME 2011
- 19. Customers punish mistakes hard. Ethical: $9.71 Unethical: $5.89 Control Group: 17% 29% $8.31 Reward Punishment 19
- 20. SEO is suffering from G.I.F.T “If you plan on having a lot of money you pretty much have to be a crook to some degree. It is that simple.” “You need to throw your ethics out the window if you want to succeed. Play by the rules is all you need to do. If blog spamming is illegal then don't do it, it's not, then game on” 20
- 21. So, why is Google interested in author authority within the SERPs? 21
- 22. things you need to take action on to become an authoritative author. 22
- 23. Be Visible 23
- 24. Be a visible author. 24
- 25. Be Connected 25
- 26. Be a connected author. Authorship = Real people = relationships = links & shares. 26
- 27. Be Prepared 27
- 28. Be a prepared author. 28
- 29. Be Accessible 29
- 30. Be an accessible author. Love the company? Live the brand? Prove it. 30
- 31. • Authority comes from being a real person. • Real people have a past and a future and they don’t act like YouTube comments • This doesn’t end or start with rel=author. It comes from being… • Visible, Connected, Prepared, Accessible 31
- 32. Thank you! Ben Bale Director, Digital – Australia Weber Shandwick bbale@cmgrp.com @benbale 32
Editor's Notes
- Before weasnwer why Google is interested in authorship authority, we need to understand what gives an author authority. What do these 3 people have in common? Kim Jong Un, Kim Kardassian, Rand Fishkin.
- That your authority comes from how you as an individual are perceived.
- Historically, this meant meeting the people, pounding streets and showing everyone what a great guy you were.
- In 1952, there was no way Eisenhower could copy Truman, he wasn’t a “people person”. In fact one commentator at the time called him…
- So he went to marketeers. Madison Avenue hot shots Rosser Reeves, creators of M&Ms’ catch phrase “melt in your mouth, not in your hand”. He created the first political TV advert. (PLAY VIDEO) This allowed him to get his authority across, despite not being the best personality, or the best author.
- His opponent stood against this ‘marketing rubbish’ and claimed that people were rational and would see through it. “this isn’t Ivory Soap vs Palmolive”.He didn’t win.
- We’re not logical and rational. We treat who we vote for, which mortgage we buy and our brand of cola exactly the same way. We trust in authority. We don’t even know our own preferences. In 2004, 67 people had their brain scanned while doing the “Pepsi Challenge”, the blind taste test between coke and pepsi. Roughly 50% chose each brand and as they did the area of their brain processing feelings of reward lit up.However, when they were told the brand they had chosen, 75% changed their mind from Pepsi to Coke. As they did, their lateral prefrontal cortex and hippocampus started to go crazy. In effect – emotions and memories of the brand and switched their decision from the rational (X tasted better) to the emotional. All thanks to the brand authority of Coke.
- Fast forward 60 years and we need to be thinking like Eisenhower’s marketing agency. The internet has launched all brands into the age of conversation. FB/twitter = conversation, blog comments & blogs written by real people, not anonymous brands. People expected to be able to talk to brands, respond to them and they expected answers. Gabe Newell at Valve, Steve Jobs, Rand Fishkin. They understand the power that individual authority can have on a brand.We may not want votes, but we want links, we want relationships, shares, mentions. Author Authority is how we can get them.
- This behavior is being noticeably encouraged by Google. Not just with the usage of rel=author and rel=me, but in their focus on real names in Google+ and more recently, in YouTube. So why does Google want to turn us into politicans?
- Because of the online disinhibition effect. The fact that when we’re anonymous and part of a crowd, we tend to get a little bit less ethical.
- The best example of this is an American study on children at halloween.
- And you only have to go on to a YouTube comments section to see this in overdrive.
- And this behaviour has been colourfully documented by John Gabriel of Penny Arcade as G.I.F.T. The Greater Internet F**kwad Theory. You take a normal person, give them a mask and an audience and they turn into your average YouTuber.
- So why does this impact SEO? Why did I lump authorship snippets and Google+ into Google’s plan to clean up YouTube comments?
- It’s because the theory goes well beyond Justin Bieber fans. Brands suffer from it, I didn’t even have to go back more than a year to find the following massive scandals that have at their root – anonymous, part of a crowd, behaviour.
- This is despite the fact that ethical companies make more money (a trend that has massively increased since the global economic crisis).
- And that when you do get caught, you get hit hard by your customers. The Wall Street Journal wanted to see what impact ethical behaviour had on the implied value of goods and services, so they did a study to see the price people would pay for a cup of coffee. The control group who were given no extra information, put the value at $8.31. When people were told that it was organic ethically sourced coffee, that price went up to $9.71 – a 17% reward. However, when told that the company was under investigation for unethical treatment of employees, the price dropped by a whopping 29% to $5.89.
- So to a few of you, I imagine this is starting to sound familiar. Risk taking behaviour because you might not get caught, punishment if you do get caught. Knowing that there are so many people doing it, I’ll be safe in the crowd…Interflora, JC Penney, Demand Media… SEO as an industry is suffering from the results of G.I.F.T. Why do we hear so many people changing their titles to “Inbound Marketing Director”, “Head of Earned Media”? Because we’ve started to realise that we’re all getting tarred with this brush.
- Google is treating SEO like YouTube comments.Why?Because we’ve been acting the same way. Author rank, rel=author, real names, this is all part of a clean up effort in the same vein as Panda and Penguin.
- Anyone who is writing content for you should be set up on Google Plus. Get Rel=author & rel=me and ensure consistent branding across your profiles. Twitter, LinkedIn, everything. This isn’t just about CTR, which is the obvious impact, this about author recognition.Start using your authors in video content (Q&As, tutorials, debates, demos) – you’re using every chance to let the personality come through, to show that you’re the real, honest, transparent person you want your audience to think you are. Look like the you your audience wants you to be. Tone of voice, image, these are all important things. I mentioned Gabe Newell earlier, the CEO and Owner of Valve, as well as one of the most well known ‘geek celebrities’. He’s got at least 2 different memes, that have continued for years.Gabe looks like this:
- What else do your authors write? Can you use those relationships for SEO? If your CEO has a passion for snowboarding and you sell cameras, can you get him to write/talk/show how he uses your gear to film his runs? If you sell shoes are your head of content marketing is a sneaker head, blog about her collection! Use the passions of your authors to fuel the passions of your audience. (Eisenhower questions)Do you connect to your authors across all platforms? If you have a writer that runs your twitter feed, do you make reference to them (as a person) when you refer to twitter elsewhere? If it’s your community manager’s birthday, do you @ them a happy birthday? Authorship means real people. Real people have relationships and relationships mean links and shares.
- Act quickly. Real people have conversations, not 3 month legal team sign offs. If this is a struggle, create a response matrix & get tone of voice signed off with legal in advance. Try to agree rules with legal rather than having them sign off every facebook update, every blog post.Ensure you have transition plans in place. Authors are real people and real people move jobs. This means preparing for it. Your brand is forever connected to anyone that represents it. If they leave to go to a new job, but are still a great professional, DON’T try and sever all ties. Acknowledge the move, find an awesome replacement and wish them the best. Their future authority could end up reflecting well on you. Even though Bill Gates isn’t running the day to day operations at Microsoft, the brand benefits from his current image as a philanthropist.If they leave on bad terms, ensure that you focus on the difference between one person and the brand. Your audience will understand provided you are transparent and provide a clear plan for moving forward. The focus on “The Gillard Government” rather than “The Labour Party” has meant that if/when Julia Gillard is replaced as leader after the next election, the party brand will come out relatively unscathed.
- Integrate your senior staff at a local level – if I buy your product and sign up to a mailing list, have the CEO send me an email thanking me.Be part of the conversation. Gabe, Rand, Steve Jobs – another thing they have in common? Getting involved. Steve Jobs famously replied to emails from customers. Gabe Newell does the same.Show me how much you love the brand. RememberRemmington’s “The shave was so good I bought the company” – be accessible, LIVE your company values in the open.That cost $4,500 and they did it in a day. How’s that for personal, author-based authority?