Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How Are You Handling Blog Posts/Author Pages when Employees Leave the Company?
-
What do you believe to be the best approach in handling blog content for employees once they have left the company? We don’t want to remove the blog posts so they need to stay, but then there are the author pages.
This gets tricky because the CMS ties the blog post to the author.
One approach might be to change the author’s name to the Company’s name to get around author pages for people no longer with the company.
It’s kind of tricky because the blog posts won’t have the same credibility if they don’t have a person’s name/photo associated with the post. We could leave the blogger’s page and list him as a “Contributing Author” once he’s left the company.
Thoughts?
-
Yeps we do the same thing, they won't have access anymore in our CMS so we'll include on their author bio that the editor has left the company and what company they went to work for. In some cases in their new job they also want to contribute and that leaves their (old) content still as it was.
-
I agree. If the author was a talented writer then you will lose the benefit of their authority if you change the attribution to "nobody". If the writer continues to produce good work in the future then you will benefit from the growth of their authority over time.
Google says that someday they will start ranking the works of authoritative writers higher in search.
I have been writing as part of my profession for about 40 years. The first works that I produced still have my name on them. My past employers have not scrubbed my name from my work.
Today, with authorship in Google, your employees might get very angry they see you scrub authorship when someone leaves. If they did good work for you they will want to carry that with them. So, if you want to get the best possible work out of your authors they best not see you scrubbing credit for their work.
Keep in mind that a powerful author leaving your biz and going to your competitor will help your competitor as well.... but at the same time the work that they do for your competitor will also be helping you. Nothing like having a competitor paying for some authority that flows through to your website.
-
Akin to what Keri's said, I don't think there's any reason to change the authorship in your CMS.
Yes, the article(s) may have been written by someone no longer with your company, but it's most likely that their posts are considered intellectual property (IP) owned by your company. If you paid someone to write something, it's yours - barring anything to the contrary in their contract.
-
At Moz, we remove the "staff" sash from an author's profile when they leave, but we don't do anything regarding their posts -- they're all left as-is.
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
-
Can I use expired domain content on My Blog
Hello Expert, I wanted to know, can I use expired domain content on my blog channel. I have done many searches on google but couldn't find a satisfactory answer. Please help me to find out this.
Content Development | | vijay77960 -
How do I fix a broken link to a product category page in wordpress?
We are building a new site currently at http://67.222.109.48/~cheapnan/ I started doing some SEO after the developer I hired failed to do it even though it was in the agreement. I did our old site so I should be able to do this but I am new to wordpress. Now when i go to the products tab at the top of the page the first 2 have broken links, I checked the rest and there are 3 total that I need to fix. I am unsure how to access the navigation so I can fix the links. Please tell me where to look.
Content Development | | cheaptubes0 -
Is it okay to delete old blog posts?
Hi All, I'm doing some SEO work on an entertainment (movies/tv/gaming) blog that started in 2011. Their recent articles have gained some popularity due to improved content and marketing, but there is some old stuff from the early days that was poorly written and gets virtually no traffic. These are mostly old news pieces. Out of approximately 10,000 articles, about 1,000 are receiving the lions share of the traffic. I feel like their good content is getting bogged down in a sea of crap. Would there be any harm in deleting some of those old posts? Is there a best practice for culling content? Thanks!
Content Development | | 74andsunny0 -
Can We Publish Duplicate Content on Multi Regional Website / Blogs?
Today, I was reading Google's official article on Multi Regional website and use of duplicate content. Right now, We are working on 4 different blogs for following regions. And, We're writing unique content for each blog. But, I am thinking to use one content / subject for all 4 region blogs. USA: http://www.bannerbuzz.com/blog/ UK: http://www.bannerbuzz.co.uk/blog/ AUS: http://www.bannerbuzz.com.au/blog/ CA: http://www.bannerbuzz.ca/blog/ Let me give you very clear ideas on it. Recently, We have published one article on USA website. http://www.bannerbuzz.com/blog/choosing-the-right-banner-for-your-advertisement/ And, We want to publish this article / blog on UK, AUS & CA blog without making any changes. I have read following paragraph on Google's official guidelines and It's inspire me to make it happen. Which is best solution for it? Websites that provide content for different regions and in different languages sometimes create content that is the same or similar but available on different URLs. This is generally not a problem as long as the content is for different users in different countries. While we strongly recommend that you provide unique content for each different group of users, we understand that this may not always be possible. There is generally no need to "hide" the duplicates by disallowing crawling in a robots.txt file or by using a "noindex" robots meta tag. However, if you're providing the same content to the same users on different URLs (for instance, if both example.de/ and example.com/de/ show German language content for users in Germany), you should pick a preferred version and redirect (or use the rel=canonical link element) appropriately. In addition, you should follow the guidelines on rel-alternate-hreflang to make sure that the correct language or regional URL is served to searchers.
Content Development | | CommercePundit0 -
Blog Sub-Domaine on Other Server, Is This Possible???
My eCommerce cart is BigCommerce. It is not possible to use my domain name to add a blog on there server. I would like to create a blog on a sub-domain, something like: http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com/blog/ Is it possible to host this sub-domain on another server? Host this sub-domiane to BlueHost for example and keep my domaine to BigCommerce. If YES, I would like to buy a Word Press theme and start a blog on this sub-domain: http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com/blog/ Thank you, BIgBlaze
Content Development | | BigBlaze2050 -
Best place for a blog blog.mydomain.com or mydomain.com/blog
We have used blogs on a good number of client sites and always got good results from having them. However do you feel its best to have a blog as a subdomain or included in the site ie blog.mydomain.com or mydomain.com/blog
Content Development | | tempowebdesign0 -
2,500 Word blog post? What's your advice?
Most of my blog posts end up being 400-600 words, sometimes more, sometimes less. I have written one that is 2,500 words this time. If it were you, would you make one huge post, or split it into two or three? Or would you say it wholly depends on my site and the type of content? As far as link bait goes, one page is better . . . I guess. But would anyone ever read a 2,500 word blog post, even it it's about a subject he/she is interested in? Additionally, what's better for SEO? Just wants some second opinions. Thanks!
Content Development | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Posts vs Pages and Rankings Differ Greatly
I use wordpress for most of my sites and generally have a post 'news' section. What I've noticed is that just about every time a post will always rank much higher and much faster than a 'page'. As long as I don't let it get buried in the news archives it continues to rank well, better than if I were to create a 'page'. Is there any sort of reason this might occur? I'd like to be able to just create 'pages' but at this point in time it makes no sense.
Content Development | | GYMSN0
