Presentation on a case study of implementing Google authorship across 14 web sites for over 1000 authors.

1. AUTHORSHIP
THE DEEP DIVE
1
John Carcutt
Director of SEO and Social Media
Advance Digital Inc.
@JohnCarcutt

2. OUR NEWSPAPERS

3. OUR WEB SITES
3

4. OUR ORGANIZATION
Search & Social Group
• 6 Team Members - SSG
• Authorship Organizational Coordination
• Content Strategy Team – ADI
• Technical Services - ADI
• Local Publishers - Papers
• Local Editorial Staff – Papers
• Over 1000 Authors

5. OUR ORGANIZATION
To be Set-up with Authorship
Then trained to build AuthorRank

6. OUR CHALLENGES
• Early Adopters
• Technical Implementation
• Mass Training
• Author Pushback
• Google+ Indifference
• Time and Priorities

7. EARLY ADOPTERS
We love our early adopters !
But they can get caught up in early issues with
products as is the case here.
• Photographers Love Google+
• Reporters not so much
• Email Verification is a problem for us

8. NEGATIVE FACTORS
Syndicated Content
v
v

9. TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION
Request for the Implementation of Authorship
was made Mid 2011
Implementation happened
1st Quarter of 2013

10. MASS TRAINING
Something we are very familiar with.
• Annual in-person training for each
market
• www.advancessg.com
• Monthly internal newsletters

11. MASS TRAINING
What did we add to training?
• Creating a Google+ account
• Connecting their account to our sites
• Managing their “Contributor to” links
• Using/Optimizing Google+ overall
• The effectiveness of G+ Communities
• Why this all matters

12. AUTHOR PUSHBACK
Why are we adding one more thing for them
to worry about?
• Too many social accounts to manage
• No one is on Google+
• There are better uses of my time
• I don’t have time
Adoption is slow. I’m happy with 20%.

13. NEGATIVE FACTORS
Syndicated Content

14. NEGATIVE FACTORS
Selling AuthorRank .. It’s already happening
“ … they have connected their web sites to their
Google+ profiles and all of the content they write
appear in the Google search results along with their
photo that shows their Authorship status.”
This might work for a while .. But not for long.

15. AUTHORSHIP OWNERSHIP
When an author leaves the organization what
happens to their authorship?
• We never change by-lines.
• Policy strongly suggests no “Hybrid” account
names such as “JimDuncanTP”
• Authors that have moved on will continue to
build AuthorRank and improve our site too.
• At some point, Authorship/AuthorRank will
become a hiring consideration

16. THANKS
16
John Carcutt
Director of SEO and Social Media
Advance Digital Inc.
@JohnCarcutt