How important are author bios to SEO?
-
I'm trying to understand the importance of author bios to Google and its latest algorithms. Some say author bios affect rankings, but others say that has not been specifically stated by Google — but it does affect the user experience. Anyone have input on this? Thanks!
-
Yes, our subject matter experts who write content have multiple degrees and belong to professional associations. The author bios were originally kept short, so I may have to fill them out a bit, but they're definitely the "real deal" when it comes to their expertise and credentials. Thank you for your insights!
-
"Would having an author page for subject matter experts who legitimately write content (courses and/or blogs) be helpful to SEO/rankings? "
Maybe yes. Maybe no.
The answer depends upon the strength of your authors' bios and their relevance to the content area of your website.
And, here is something to think about... If your authors are using their real names, that is likely more valuable for SEO than if they are using a nickname. Why? Because Google can use a person's real name to confirm professional registrations, college degrees, work history, licenses, and many other signals that will be valuable for determining E-A-T.
If a person has a website about SEO and uses his/her real name on the articles there, then it is probably a good idea for that person to use their real name when posting in an SEO forum. IF a person is posting in Moz Q&A and receiving lots of "good answers" and "endorsed answers" that might be valuable for a person's authorship credibility on the SEO site. If your website is not about SEO then the reputation earned in this form is probably of much lower value.
-
This is very interesting information
-
We have been running multiple sites, all for over a decade and the authors have degrees that either exactly or closely match the topic areas of the websites. Until two years ago we considered that all articles were written by "our staff". However, we then added author bios with degrees, certifications, years of experience, Google scholar, relevant employment history spanning decades. Within a few months after that these sites received a rankings boost that was surprising.
Now, you ask about "the importance of bios". Adding bios for the sake of adding bios is probably not going to do much for you. Instead, it is the quality of the authors that is important.
If you have authors who have substantive, long-term, quality education, experience, and work history, then that, I believe will do something for you. If your authors have a publication history on important sites, with lots of links and citations for their work from government agencies, academic publications, professional societies - all of this that you can link to, then you have built a gold mine. Very hard to fake, easy for Google to confirm, will attract links like bugs to a Georgia porch light.
It will be really hard to fake a publication history over three or four decades with links from loc.gov and important websites across your discipline and professional registrations on government websites.
-
Thank you for your response! I have a follow-up question, if that's OK. Would having an author page for subject matter experts who legitimately write content (courses and/or blogs) be helpful to SEO/rankings?
-
At this point it's more about how Google defines and records search entities. If Google sees an author bio on a post that looks legitimate, they might link the post to that author's personal search entity (if they are big enough for search data to form one) and that could create some beneficial piggyback traffic for the publisher. But they're not really considered a distinct, separate thing in the way that people often reference them. It's no different to writing a news post about Coca Cola and then the post temporarily appears for Coca Cola's main brand term for a bit (in universal-search news results). We as human see one as an author and the other as a company / brand, but to Google they're mostly all just interrelated 'search entities' which have meaning only insofar as they are a 'thing' that 'recent search data' shows 'people care about it'
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
-
ATTN SEO MINDS: Is there a way/tool to categorize keywords from an Omniture/GA report?
So ideally I would like to take the list of keywords I am currently ranking for, and group these based on what the user intent was in making that query. For example if I am a Thai delivery chain and I am currently receiving traffic from the queries "vegan dish" and "tofu thai food", I would want to have a column in a keyword report that says these queries fall into the VEGETARIAN category. I think what I want to know is how can I filter a massive list by a range of keywords? I want to know does this cell contain, "keyword A" or "keyword B" or "keyword Z". If so list the corresponding category. This way I can look at keyword performance by category or user intent/motivation. Is there a tool out there that will help me accomplish this, or is there a good solution in excel I can use?
Algorithm Updates | | Jonathan.Smith0 -
Fresh content..how important to SERP position?
I've heard that fresh content helps boost your position in the serps. If i wrote all new unique content on some of my pages that havent been changed in several years, would i see a boost in the rank? If so, how many positions?
Algorithm Updates | | Ron100 -
Does articles for SEO purposes have a minimal and maximum word count in ordered to be crawled/indexed by Google and other search engines?
Does articles for SEO purposes have a minimal and maximum word count in ordered to be crawled/indexed by Google and other search engines?
Algorithm Updates | | WebRiverGroup0 -
Author Photo No Longer Showing Up in Search
My author photo has been showing up in search for quite some time but starting today I noticed that it no longer does even though the structured data testing tool still has it showing up. It only seems to show up on my google+ profile. Anyone notice the same thing?
Algorithm Updates | | casper4340 -
How vital is it for a site to have a mobile site for mobile SEO?
With the exponential growth in mobile device sales and usage and an expected 980% growth in advertising next year for/on mobile devices, we at http://www.mobilewebsitegurus.com decided that it was time to help companies create great looking mobile websites that are user friendly and SEO friendly at affordable rates with tons of features built in from the start. However, when selling our design, how important is it to have a GOOD mobile site compared to a big one to rank on mobile devices? We head that Google was thinking of only showing mobile sites on mobile devices. NOT TRUE. Then we read/heard that the rankings were MUCH BETTER if you had a mobile site, but after a lot of research we found that too NOT to be true. On most sites there were NO difference. So what is the TRUTH about this and is it maybe just that it will happen, just has not happened yet - the different rankings for mobile and regular sites on mobile devices that is? ANY insight in this would be great not only for us but for the entire SEO community 🙂 Thanks. ALSO, add "Mobile SEO" to the boxes below of "Topics" since mobile SEO will grow in importance.
Algorithm Updates | | yvonneq0 -
Bing SEO?
I've put in a lot of time on my site to make sure it is full of good relevent content and has a healthy back link profile. I rank well on google but not on Bing. How do I go about optimizing my site for Bing and what does Bing look for that makes them rank sites differnetly than google? Also what other search engines should I be looking to optimize for? As a note I am a Realtor with a Real Estate website.
Algorithm Updates | | bronxpad0 -
URL SEO
Hi All I am completely new to SEO and I have a question about URL's which I would like advise on. We are about to launch an immigration consultancy website which caters for several countries. For the example below we are targeting the keyword "UK Visit Visa", which URL would be better from an SEO prospective? 1. www.example.com/uk/visit-visa
Algorithm Updates | | Fuad_YK
2. www.example.com/uk/uk-visit-visa Thanks, Fuad0 -
Does my overly dynamic website hurt my SEO?
I have heard from a couple of people that my overly dynamic URL's hurt my SEO tremendously. Can anyone verify that? Of course my provider says it doesn't matter but I take what they say with a grain of salt. Another thing, my web crawls show a TON of errors for duplicate page title and overly dynamic url and duplicate page content. How big of a deal is this? http://www.nvclothing.com
Algorithm Updates | | sviohl0