Author Rank, Popularity, Authority, Social, Ranking? What's the Tie?


For several years now, Google has characterized links as a figurative vote for a webpage, implying the page's popularity with other pages. Recently, however, the gauging of popularity seems to be taking on an entirely new scope... authority.


Google is obviously a business, and at more than $700 per share, a fairly successful one, at that. So while they may undertake a few projects that aren't expected to be standalone money-makers (the company's charitable contributions notwithstanding), it's a pretty sure bet that there's at least some long-term gain expected, or they simply wouldn't bother.



Trend or trendy? The two bear somewhat different connotations, but trendy isn't necessarily always negative.

Personally, I think that if you're doing something just because everyone else is, there's darned little positive to be found in that. But if something catches your attention and some thoughtful analysis tells you it's a worthwhile path... more power to you. More on this at the end.

For some time now, we've seen a trend developing, in which links seem to be providing a diminishing portion of the ROI in a comprehensive SEO program. They're still important, and are likely to remain so for some time... but new metrics have appeared, apparently usurping some of their impact.

Authority has become a popular buzzword, although I think it's been considered by Google for longer than many people seem to think. But before any assignment of a value of authority could be made, steps had to be taken to minimize or eliminate gaming.

First, they attempted to establish reliable attribution, via the rel="author" tag. Verification wasn't foolproof, but it was a big step forward. Now, authors could stake a claim to their work and tie it to their Google+ profile. There were several benefits to this, not the least of which was a new incentive to adopt Google+ as a part of one's online presence. That made a lot more information available to Google's graph.



Here, as Bayes said, "the plot thickens upon us". There can be many benefits to Google from accurate attribution. One is certainly the ability to reduce the amount of duplicate content, which, by extension, helps them improve the quality of the searcher's experience. That's a benefit most of us would enjoy, as well, both as users and as authors.



That Which Binds



If authority is to be accrued and conveyed, it could easily dwarf the impact of links in a ranking sense, which is probably desirable. As I said, though, links aren't likely to lose all value. In future, though, I suspect we'll be seeing that they'll be joined by all sorts of other interactions which can be interpreted as votes, well.

Much as a link from the New York Times to your blog post would be a WOOT! moment ('fess up... who among us wouldn't kill a kitten for that?), we already know that even a non-linking citation has value. A Like or a tweet is another sort of endorsement that can have benefits, even if only the added exposure it offers.

But what about a comment from an authoritative entity, in response to a comment you leave on a third party site – a subscription to your feed or a Twitter follow from a WSJ editor? How about a LinkedIn connection or a Facebook friend, or repeated interaction on Quora or Empire Avenue? There's a long list of venues on which someone's attention might pass some authority to you, entity to entity.


And I think it's only reasonable to assume that authority could also be passed from individuals to pages and vice versa.

If That's the Case

So... if this makes any sense as a possible direction of the trends we're seeing, then being trendy might be a good idea. Ironically, the most obvious way to take advantage of these trends is to do what common sense has dictated for a long time, in terms of branding and relationships.



If I'm right in my estimation of where we're headed, doing so can mean the difference between leading and following. If I'm wrong, none of the above can do any harm. In fact, it can still help.

As always, the comments are for discussion, and I'd really love to hear if you think I'm on the right track or way off base. I know my opinion... let's hear yours.

About the author

Doc Sheldon is co-founder of Top Shelf Copy – a content strategy and SEO services firm with offices in San Diego, California, and Albany, New York – where he specializes in technical SEO. Doc has over 30 years experience in marketing and professional journalism bolstering his 9 years online marketing background.

In addition to his primary interest – the Semantic Web and the technologies to achieve that end – Doc also performs organic search optimization services for Top Shelf’s clients worldwide, specializing in content strategy services.