Has anyone had success with product page rel=author? Can I protect the content but dump the face on the SERPS?
-
Hi,
Is there a way to get the benefits of rel=author for protecting site content but to disconnect that from the face photo on the SERPS?
We added rel=author to our unique and individually written product descriptions and reviews. This has led to a decrease in click thru thus far. I suspect this is because when searching for a product to buy the user sees the face and thinks "review" or at least "not corporate".
I don't nec. want to dump rel=author in the sea yet for our ecom pages, has anyone had success with product page rel=author?
Four our keywords, we are the only company of 10 well known travel sites that have the face in the SERPS, far from improving our CTR, it has trashed it.
Any ideas?
-
I think the company logo or even a picture of the product could improve click through
but this would be going against google rules as they ask for a head shot.
I agree that you may be better of with http://schema.org. But it woulkd be great if you could find a way to protwct your unique contwnt with rel=author and not lose ctr.
-
Hi Xoffie,
This is a really good question, in part because we don't yet know the benefits of adding rel=author to your content, beyond the sometimes rise in CTR.
We assume that Google wants to someday incorporate authorship metrics into it's ranking algorithms and knowledge graph. (if they do this now, I suspect it's minimal or in an experimental stage) Currently, the major benefit of the authorship markup is getting the rich snippets boost from the author profile, and possible increased social visibility in the SERPs.
If you find the photo is hurting you, the first thing I would do is experiment with different photos. Attractive, eye-catching photos seem to get a higher CTR, and you could even experiment with adding a branded logo as your official profile pic as well.
If your site has a good Google+ pretense, you may benefit from the rel=publisher tag. Mostly, I've only seen this tag help much larger publishers like the NYTimes, but it seems to be rolling out to a broader base of publishers now as well. But again, the benefits of rel=publishers mostly seem to be an increased visibility in the SERPs, and don't seem to highly influence rankings (yet)
In the end, I'd recommend on focusing on appropriate rich snippet markup for your products, including price, description, photo, etc. and not worry so much about the authorship markup.
-
I ask because I notice in individual Google profile you must fill in "contributor to" to get the rel=author to work, but that doesn't exist in the company Google profile. Im guessing the "Links" page in the Google + for a company then is how to verify?
-
Hi
OK, so is it the same rel=author steps or is this now a rel=publisher thing?
Thanks
-
Jamie's response is very useful. Make your profile page represent your company and make it easy for the person to then click through to your website from your google+ profile page.
I have had quite a bit of success with the rel=author tag. I have a new site I am creating and I have already had over 30 visits through search (not provided) this week. I am trying to use google+ as much as I can to interact with my site as I think it gives a real boost.
-
One idea would be to create a company page for your site. You can then upload a company logo or other image to represent your company, and use that page to represent the author of your content. Then, any results would show your company image.
For example, look at the SEOmoz Google+ page. It shows Roger bot as their face photo. I don't believe SEOmoz uses their company page as the author for any material, but it seems they could.
To clarify, the above is just an idea and my best guess. I have not implemented this practice.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What other major publications use bloggers for content? (UK)
Hi Guys. I've been building a database of journos who write about our niche recently for some outreach. I discovered that in at least one case (Metro UK), a huge amount of content is simply by bloggers, not 'official' journalists. (They can be found easily on Twitter but not in databases like muck rack etc) Generally, bloggers represent an easier 'way in'. So I thought id ask... Is this common practice? Has anyone identified other publications using bloggers for content creation? (Bit of context... We're looking at' Best diary/ planner' runs downs, 'best stationery for new year' and similar. Not strong story-based pitches to journos. (For example: Company blar is revolutionizing market X with Blar.) Simple product runs downs is what we're after for some quick wins on exposure during the holiday period.)
Branding | | isaac6630 -
Is there any value in trying to add a page to wikipedia
Hi Mozzers, My manager has asked me this question and I'm not quite sure how to answer it. "Is there any value in trying to add a page about our company to wikipedia" I would have thought it's very difficult to get a page to stick in wikipedia if it's about a company that isn't huge (like Apple or Google). Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Personally I think it's potentially quite risky and unlikely to bring much traffic (because I can't imagine anyone would visit a page on wiki about my company - not that my company isn't great, because it is, it's just not HUGE or global...) I think a wiki page could be a bit spammy! Would welcome your input, and I am happy to be proven wrong! Thanks, Amelia
Branding | | CommT0 -
Facebook page not appearing in search results
Could anyone give a reason as to why a facebook page wouldn't be appearing in search results? - I've setup numerous facebook Pages for businesses and they usually get indexed and start appearing in the SERPs for their respective name/brand name relatively quickly, but have a Page for a business (which has even been quite active recently) and it's nowhere to be seen in Google's results (not even on a search for the complete URL). Any thoughts appreciated, thanks. Greg
Branding | | GregDixson0 -
Google displays the wrong store hours. Can anyone help lead me to the fix?
When doing the following search on Google "Ticket King Milwaukee hours" we see the wrong hours displayed at the top of the page. Just to the left of our places page, you will see "Tuesday hours 8:30-1:00 pm." That 1 pm closing comes up for every weekday, even though we are open until 6 pm weekdays, and 3 pm on Saturdays. I have checked the hours listed on our G+ page, our "Places for Business" page, our "about us" page on our website, and can't find where they are getting this incorrect data. I even went out and checked most of the "List your business" sites that I have registered with.
Branding | | Ticket_King
I have submitted this to Google, but have not heard back. Does anyone have any ideas as to how I can fix this, or at least find out where this bad data is coming from? I did find a company blog post from 2010 that listed our ours in a somewhat confusing way, but it was still correct. (I have since fixed that old post.)0 -
Product Reviews
Any one have good strategies to get product reviews from customers? Whether general or specific to G+, Yelp, On Page, local review sites, etc? Thanks
Branding | | IOSC0 -
Loop-hole to Google's Penguin update? Anyone else have some input?
So I have this theory and I’m wondering if anyone else has some input. I believe I have found a loop-hole to Google’s Penguin update. Let me explain. I work for a pretty competitive party planning company. Our biggest competitor for search is also our bread and butter to our company, our consultants. In addition to outside competitors trying to manipulate business from those consultants. Anyways, one of my top priorities is to not only rank for multiple pages on our site, but to also have our social sites rank on the first two pages. Recently I have watched a spamming MLM YouTube video review of our company crawl up the YouTube charts and out rank us for our Company name in YouTube search. And now, this week, the video has crawled up to rank 3<sup>rd</sup> behind our main site and Wikipedia for our brand keyword! So how does a YouTube video that is simply a review out rank us for our company name in our social platforms? Mind you he is also outranking our core social sites of which we have thousands of comments and interactions on per day? Looking at all of the metrics of the video, according to how I believe ranking to work in Youtube, there is no way this guy should be ranking as high as he is. The video has a decent amount of copy, it has fewer than 10,000 views, 76 thumbs up, 5 thumbs down, fewer than 2,000 subscribers and his channel only has 12 videos. It wasn’t until I was looking at our search results in Seomoz that I realized what this guy was doing to move up so quickly in rankings. He has 1,671 linking root domains to his video. He has been building excessive links to this video on Youtube. Well, since Google isn’t going to penalize its own website, the old technique of excessively building links to one page… seems to be working. Has anyone else come across something like this? Where building excessive links to a video or other social platform substantially has increased rankings?
Branding | | ScentsySEO0 -
Can we use SEOMOZ to get insights/data on the members of a twitter list?
It would be so useful if we could get insights into the members of a twitter list in the same way we can get statistics on the people we search through the "search twitter bio" options (following/followers/RTs/Social Authority/etc). This is possible through the twitter api but it limits to 20 list member which is useless. Anyone know of a solution? Thanks!
Branding | | VGRRI0 -
Is having two websites that sell most of the same products a good idea?
Hi - Please read this in full before you answer. I currently own a website that sells kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities that match the kitchens. This website has been operational since Arpil 2009 and we have built good rankings over the past 3 years. The site is operated on the Volusion platform (my mistake from the beginning, but we're kind of stuck now). We are in the process of designing a new website on the Magento platform - everything will be 100% different from look, speed, the way our customers shop, content, product skus, etc. The original plan was to keep the same domain but implement 301 redirects for subpages (subpage urls would have to change) and shut down the Volusion site and transfer the domain name to the Magento site. Our current website does make money right now and we would hate to lose rankings (even if only temporarily) during the switch or have something go wrong. What I am now thinking is keeping our current website on Volusion where it is currently making money and having the new Magento site have a new name/domain. The sites would sell most of the same products (the Magento site would sell more types of vanities and accessories though). The two sites would have different email addresses, phone numbers, and mailing addresses. Is it a bad idea to try and rank two websites selling pretty much the same thing? We have competitors out there that sell the same products as us, I would just prefer to compete with myself rather then someone else. Another issue is our name, one of our competitors names is extremely close to ours and we rank for pretty much all of the same keywords and customers get us mixed up all the time. This other site would have a different name (one that makes more sense). I want to make a decision that will not come back and bite us later. I know there are a lot of bigger sites that operate tons of niche sites, and of these website could eventually be similar to that. I really appreciate your help and guidance! Thanks
Branding | | tyler7560