With the New Year comes the new Google+ Author Rank integration and if you are a writer and or have your own blog  you should be aware of the changes and what this means to you.

Google+ Profile &  Author Rank – Leveling the Playing Field

If you have a blog or you write for one on a regular basis, this is something you should be aware of and understand. Google decided to come up with a way to measure  and grade content by author and this starts with the simple process of linking your Google + profile to your blog. (Yet another reason to self host). If you have a self hosted blog and its WordPress based, you can add a plugin – Google Author Link - that will give you this functionality and it takes about five minutes or less to do. If you don’t you can look to hone your coding skills in order to add the snippets of code on your blog or page so that this will work for you.

Author ranking was going to happen at some point anyway – with all the content gaming stuff going on and bots etc being used it was just a matter of time before someone – in this case Google figured out a way around it.  When your site and post is properly configured you  the google search results will list your name as author of a post with links to more by you as long as you have the sites linked via your google + profile.

If you have been up to now ignoring SEO can’t do it anymore and expect to maintain a viable blog.

What this all Means

Your reputation as an author will  influence your page rank in search engine(Google). Why this is so important, because the old way of ranking by links – and link backs will not be a major part of the search algorithm that Google uses they will instead be moving towards content/author ratings and rankings and it will affect search results.

This will take affect not only on authors but on specific categories and content – so you could be highly ranked on some content – which you write better about and not so highly ranked on content that is not as concise or effective.