What is Author Rank? (and Why You Need it)

The idea of Author Rank, or what was first referred to as “Agent Rank” in 2005 (when Google first announced the idea). But Author Rank really started to make waves in 2012. Coincidentally this was around the same time that the huge changes in Google’s search algorithm happened, with their updated versions of Panda and Penquin.

These two algorithm adjustments caused almost every webmaster to change their strategy on how they were getting traffic through search engines and re-think what they were doing to get search engine traffic.

What is Author Rank?

Author rank is an SEO concept that’s based on a fairly simple premise that Google recognizes different authors. So when an author is assigned to your content, Google can determine whether that’s who really wrote the article, and then rank content accordingly.

If Google thinks that your’e actually an expert in a given space or for a particular content, then it increases the chances of that content ranking.

That’s why Neil Patel constantly ranks high for his marketing content.

However, author rank alone won’t help you climb the SERPs. It’s just one of the many things that helps the algorithm evaluate your content. So no, you can’t start a brand new website today, publish a blog post about electric car batteries under the name “Elon Musk” and expect to rank. That’s not how this works.

Benefits of Author Rank

There are plenty of benefits to Author Rank that would make it great for any business (no matter how large or small):

Standing Out in the Search Results

This can be true even if they also have Author Rank, by using a different background color, etc. Often times people forget about ‘click conversions’ (or click-through-rate) in the search pages, so while you may not be ranked 1st for the keyword, with a catchy enough display (including an Author Rank photo combined with a quality Title tag and meta description) you could get more clicks than whoever is 1st in the results.

Establish Yourself as an Expert in Your Field

If people are searching for something in your niche and they see your Authorship photo appear multiple times in their research, they recognize you and may see you as a strong figure on the subject. Not everyone remembers your brand’s URL, title and meta tags (which are changing constantly per post/page), but your image should be something that really sticks with the viewer, especially since a lot of people are only skimming through search results and not necessarily reading each listed website.

Build Authority

It makes sense that bloggers and journalists check out how many other news and blog sites have covered you previously. No one wants to take a chance and cover you for the first time if it is unclear you are sought after or interesting. They are also potentially more likely to share your story (when they are looking for an expert) if you have lots of Twitter followers, many “shares” of your content, significant connections, Author Rank.