How should I handle author attribution for ghostwritten content?
-
I've been using Crowdcontent for article production, and always feel like I'm potentially missing out on some authority or social proof with visitors (and maybe Google?) by not attributing an author (Crowdcontent doesn't give you the name of the author, otherwise I would just use their name). Would I be doing myself any favors by attributing myself as the author and pointing it back to my Google+ profile? Thanks in advance for any guidance!
-
Yes, I believe google would give you a boost if you could acquire an influential writer in your field. Author rank is still new territory, so the only way to be certain is to test.
-
Thank you Thomas. Would there be a benefit in hiring writers with topical expertise or credentials directly, and asking to link their Google+ profiles in the author byline on articles they produce for my sites? In other words, would Google look more favorably on my site if it had content written by highly-referenced influencers In a particular field?
Thanks!
-
I've been pretty impressed with the service, and so far it's been worth the price in terms of ROI. I only publish high-quality content on my sites because obviously I also want to give visitors a reason to subscribe and link in, in addition to getting love from google.
With regards to paying freelance writers, look at it this way: NY Times pays a lot of writers across their sites to produce content--writers who are no more invested in NYTimes than the salary or payment they receive for their work. I could never put out enough content on my own to stay competitive. It's simply a division of labor.
I agree with your point about the risk in losing a clear and consistent author voice when using multiple writers. For that reason alone I might avoid it, coupled with Thomas' point about volume of content being low-value when it comes to author rank.
-
lol... "wait 'googs stolz my cheezburger??"
-
Well put Thomas. I very much agree with your ideas here, especially the part on Google's perception of this practice. He seems very certain that Google won't ever penalize this. We all know that Google is entirely unpredictable. Wait til they roll out their cat-penalties and start targeting the 'i can haz cheezburger' sites.
-
The answer to your question is no, imo. I don't think people care about the author unless it's a well-established source. Now perhaps you would like to make yourself a well-established source, but I feel like that would be hard to do with somebody else writing all of your articles... you'd never establish a clear voice.
As far as what you said... that's good. I guess. Better than the $5 per article sites. I still don't much care for the service, but to each their own. As I said, I can't see how somebody else who was not invested in my company could come up with better content than someone invested in said business. Again, just my opinion.
Yes, if the articles are spammy looking Google could possibly penalize you depending on submissions. Sounds like at that price they won't/shouldn't be.
How much traffic and visibility are you getting on all of these articles? Just curious about this model...
-
You pay a "ghost writer" to be invisible. Therefore you claim the content as your own. If the content is original quality content than it could and most like would boost your authority. But author rank is more than just having a lot of content published by you, it is about influence. So simply writing a lot of good content does not make you an influencer. Your influence and in turn author rank are based on the citations you receive and the traffic you command.
Back to your 'ghost writer" question. Ghost writers have been used on and offline for sometime now. It seems to be a generally acceptable practice. But this does not mean that Google does or will always accept this. So if you were to ask me if this were acceptable, then I would judge this by how much you are contributing to the content.
An alternative method would be to set up a "persona" as the writer. This is justified by saying authors use pen names. Indeed, Franklin once wrote newspaper columns under a pen name in his early years for fear his age would discredit his work. But this "persona" approach may also run a risk with google.
So pick one or the other, and stick with your story.
-
Hi Jesse, thanks.
To clarify, CrowdContent is not an article submission site. It's a platform like Contently where you're essentially just hiring freelance writers. Their writers are all professionals from the US or Canada, and I generally pay between $50-$100 per 500-750 word article. Quality of content isn't the issue. It's simply not feasible for me to write all my content across dozens of sites in-house; that wouldn't scale, and I don't see a problem hiring freelancers for that. Google isn't going to know or care whether I wrote the content or paid someone to.
My question is whether I am missing out on any favorability with visitors or the SEs by not adding an author line to these articles.
-
Yikes.
Okay don't take this the wrong way, but I don't know why you're using an article provision service and I would flat-out advise against it entirely. These article submission sites are a perfect way to grab an unnatural link penalty. Granted, I don't have any experience with this particular company, but I'm willing to be the articles sound spammy and aren't going to help you at all.
I guess what I'm saying is, write your own content in-house. That's the only way to have complete control and avoid unnecessary penalties. Not to mention you will care more about it and spend more time writing content that people will actually want to read.
---my two cents.
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
-
Duplicate content because of member only restrictions on a forum.
Our website's Community Forum links to the membership profile pages, which by default are blocked for non-members. https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/community/ https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/community/member/1301/ We're getting warnings in Moz for duplicate content (and errors) on these member profile pages. Any ideas for how we can creatively solve this problem? Should we redirect those pages or just beef them up with more content? Just ignore it and assume that search spiders will be smart enough to figure it out? See attached video for further explanation. Community_Area.mp4
On-Page Optimization | | Bjork0 -
Duplicate content question
Hi I have a site that is run off one CMS system but has 3 different web addresses. One is a comic shop, one is a toy shop and one is a game shop. Now due to the nature of what we are selling some of the products we are selling on both or all 3 of the sites. I was wondering as to whether this would affect my ability to rank in google and if i would be penalised for any duplicate content? Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | TheZenAgency0 -
Google showing my content on the serps in a different domain
Hi all, Recently a partner of ours discovered that Google is showing a meta description on the serps for his homepage that is not his but ours. On his site, he sells add-ons for our software, so the name of our software appears many times and as well there are many links pointing to our site. He claims he hasn´t copied this text from us, and I have used some tools to verify this. I don´t understand how Google can get confused and show our text as the meta desctiption on the serps for his homepage. Any idea on why this happened?
On-Page Optimization | | Paessler0 -
Home Page Content
Hello. i'm optimizing this website, > home page for one keyword phrase and i was wondering how many words article do i need with that keyword?and if i need it at all? as you can see if i add some content on my home page before the slider, it will ruin the look of the website, What is the right way to do it? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | KentR0 -
Similar content multiple pages
I have run in to a situation on an e-commerce store where products from a certain manufacturer require a fairly large chunk of corporate information to be posted underneath the product description: I.E. Trademark information, etc. This information happens to be close to half the size of the product description information. Am I at risk of getting hit negatively for this portion of text duplicated across multiple products? I was considering putting a link to a separate informational page with this information but am not sure if it even matters? What are your recommendations brilliant SEO'erz?
On-Page Optimization | | wishmedia0 -
Duplicate content on ecommerce
We have a website that we created a little over a year ago and have included our core products we have always focused on such as mobility scooters and power wheelchairs. We have been going through and updating product descriptions, adding product reviews that our customers have provided etc in order to improve on our SEO rankings and not be penalized by the Panda update. We were approached by a manufacturer last year about their products and they had close to 10k products that we were able to upload easily into our system. Obviously these all have standard manufacturers descriptions many sites are also using. It will take us forever to go through and change all of these and many products are similar to each other anyway they just vary in size, color etc. Will it help our rankings for our core products to simply go through and delete all of these additional products and categories and just add them one by one with unique descriptions and more detailed information when we have time? We aren't really selling many of them anyway so it won't hurt our sales. I'm clearly new to SEO and any help at all would be greatly appreciated. My main website is www.bestmedicalsuppliesonsale dot com A sample core category that we have changed descriptions for is http://www.bestmedicalsuppliesonsale.com/mobility-scooters-s/36.htm A sample of a category and products we simply uploaded would be at http://www.bestmedicalsuppliesonsale.com/Wound-Care-s/4837.htm I'm open to all suggestions I would just like to see my traffic and obviously sales increase. If there are any other glaring problems please let me know. I need help!
On-Page Optimization | | BestMedical0 -
Duplicate content Issue
I'm getting a report of duplicate title and content on: http://www.website.com/ http://www.website.com/index.php Of course, they're the same pages but does this need to be corrected somehow. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | dbaxa-2613380