In the previous post I shared the changes you need to make in you SEO Strategy to factor in Google’s new rules of the game. I shared about use of rich media, infographics and exact match. In this post I will talk about Authorank. Before that on the topic of exact match, this week Google announced that it will be making a change in its algorithm to filter out low quality ‘exact match domain’ sites.
Another U turn in how Google deals with match of keywords in the domain. In the last couple of years getting a keyword rich domain would shoot you up the rankings. This led to many businesses buying multiple domain names. Just by building a single page website on them you could get good rankings. The strategy worked. Google is now announcing what it should have done long back – reduce the weight-age of exact keyword match in the rankings algorithm. It will still be a factor amongst the 300 other factors that decide how the websites rank. It will now carry less weight. I am keen to see how that will change the ranking results. For example, I did a search for the phrase ” accounting jobs”
The site that comes organically on rank 1 has the exact domain name
It will be interesting to see how the shift in weightage plays on ranking results.
So what else is new? Author Rank.
To give an example, here is a search result for financial planning tips.
On the middle of the page is a result from Google+ with image profile taking prime real estate. The listing stands out amongst other ranking results.
The rich snippet that you see in the description comes from a combination of your tagline, occupation, employment and introduction fields on your Google+ account.
So if till now your social media efforts were limited to Facebook and twitter or perhaps Pinterest you need to sign up for Google+
It is very powerful especially if you want to position yourself as a though leader. If you contribute guest blog posts on industry websites, are an author or blogger, have presentations on slideshare Google+ will help you lift your personal brand online. It links authors with published content, regardless of where that content lives on the web.
All you need to do is:
- Have a profile photo with a recognisable headshot.
- Have a byline containing your name on each page of your content (for example, “By First name Last name”).
- Make sure your byline name matches the name on your Google+ profile.
- Populate the contributor to section by linking to pages where you contribute
And yes, if you are like the Australians who are finding themselves dealing with Facebook fatigue, freshen your online social network by adding people to your circles using Google+
