AuthorRank Makes SEO News

The world of SEO is a fast changing one and new developments come down the line at a staggering rate. Some of the most significant SEO news revolves around the AuthorRank, which could have a significant effect on SEO as we know it in 2013 and beyond.

Although already in use since the filing of its related patent by Google in 2011, AuthorRank will come into its own as an integral part of many SEO campaigns in the coming years. The usage of AuthorRank is actually undergoing a shift of sorts, with a move away from its use as a high-level metric that gauges the quality of a particular Web page, toward implementation along with quality metrics such as domain and page authority, among others.

Here's how AuthorRank will impact on SEO in 2013.

Beginning next year, less priority will be given to the basing the quality of content on domain or Web page authority. Instead, more focus will be given to the reputation and authority of the content's author. It sounds simple enough–and it is–but this shift has the potential to significantly change the way websites are ranked. With this system, authors with content published on the Internet are given a “reputational score”. This score will then be considered when making a relevant search on Google.

There are quite a few specific methods by which AuthorRank can be established. The simplest and easiest way to do it is by establishing a link between any content that you have already published online and your Google+ profile with the use of rich snippets. The ranks of specific authors will then be gauged according to the engagement factor of their content. The entire multitude of social networking endorsements will also come into play when determining the quality of a site, with re-tweets, shares, likes playing important roles in deciding on page ranking.

AuthorRank goes beyond just the reputation of the author in question, and includes the relevance of commenters as well. Also considered are the relevance and quality of inbound links that direct readers to the content in question. An author can therefore boost his or her online reputation considerably by writing quality content that has a good chance of encouraging engagement. The more that the author does this, the more engagement he or she can muster up from this content, the higher the chances are of being ranked highly for certain topics.

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