Ramzan » Roger
What about the Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness (EAT) and Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) Alogrithm. If I escape this then what happen?
Roger » Ramzan
There are no EAT and YMYL algorithms. There are content related algorithms. YMYL is treated differently but we don't KNOW how.
In my opinion (OPINION), it's probably just content (and links always play a role already in everything so should that even be mentioned?).
Many SEO users still haven't wrapped their minds around what Google wants in terms of content, so they wave their hands about author profiles and two years later we now know that was all useless.
I've done site audits for sites where they tried to "fix" the author stuff and it did nothing to help because many SEO consultants still haven't wrapped their minds about what Google wants in terms of content so they focus on things like author profiles and disavows and none of that ever fixes anything because it's more often about the content (which the SEO consultants don't understand).
Content is the #1 factor that many people do not understand. Maybe because they're still focused on keywords, you know, the mechanical aspects about it.
I think part of the problem is because some of those consultants talking about author bylines and whatever don't really read patents and research papers, they're just focusing on the Search Quality Guidelines and there is NOTHING in there that is about algorithms.
So we have a bunch of people with a background in Big Brand Site Development who dabble in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but have never successfully built an affiliate or AdSense site telling the SEO community about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? That's where these author profile ideas come from, you know.
Coyle » Roger
If you are trying to perform in Financial Services or Medical and have a small to medium brand, doing it with "Admin" or staff-nameless authors makes life a lot harder on you. They absolutely know the sources of authoritativeness and have associative matrices to reference.
Roger » Coyle
How to Cure a Soar Throat.
Healthline and Mayo Clinic etc. at the top but position five is a site about allergies and plastic surgery with no author profile (not even admin/staff) outranking WebMD.
Authors make no difference, imo.
Doesn't mean you're wrong and doesn't mean that I'm right because we just do not know with certainty, and ultimately we all have to judge by what we SEE in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) and make a judgment call on that.
Here's another example:
How to Understand When to Refinance a Mortgage. NerdWallet, an affiliate site, holds positions two and three. They have an author profile but I doubt the profile is their magic ranking mojo. It's an affiliate site, right?
Here's the author profile:
"Hal M. Bundrick is a personal finance writer and a NerdWallet authority in money matters."
THAT is going to give Google an EAT boner and rank it better?
Coyle » Roger
First example: Medically reviewed by Debra Rose Wilson, Ph.D., MSN, R.N., IBCLC, AHN-BC, CHT — Written by Colleen M. Story and Ana Gotter on March 29, 2017.
Mayo is a specialized example with major attributed staff and direct attribution.
My comment was it makes life a lot harder if you don't. Some sites have authority on topics (authoritativeness at the topic level) without needing on all posts, but many die without it. Hard to grow in these spaces w/o it.
Shayto » Coyle
You're wasting your time if you think author info or "medically reviewed by" whoever has any effect on anything other than making your content feel more trustworthy to the actual reader reading it, and more linkable if you're doing outreach.
Roger » Shayto
What Coyle thinks is important because he has the decades of experience and knowledge and research behind everything he says. He's one of the few people in SEO that I put on a pedestal in terms of SEO knowledge.
Shayto » Coyle
I can start an entrepreneurship website and have every article I write on there credited to Jeff Bezos. Will that improve my site's EAT?
Come on, it's much more complicated than that.
It might have effect if Jeff Bezos actually links back to your website from his profiles/digital assets, etc..
Roger » Shayto
Read his other comment about the Mayo Clinic, he's talking about way deeper than just authorship.
Shayto » Roger
Just saying my 2c. I've seen websites get crushed, have all their articles medically reviewed by XYZ, and get crushed in the other 2 updates.
And I've seen websites without any mention of any author info gain in YMYL niches, over the websites that had all their articles medically reviewed by XYZ.
There's a lot more to it than just that. OH alright, I must have missed that comment.
Kristine » Roger
Mayo clinic's a partnership that's not the same thing and there's a myth going around because of people improperly interpreting the quality raters guide that authorship matters and Google knows authors and they don't —
Kristine » Coyle
They don't know authors but let's pretend for a moment that they did this would be the easiest thing in the world to game.
Google has no idea who I hired no way to prove it.
So I can put a site up and I could claim this was written by XYZ famous person and Google would not know that that was not true.
They would not use author because they don't have any way to determine authorship is real
Now when Google Plus was around they did have an authorship patent but that was related to Google Plus which was an identity Network and so they did know who people were they do not know that anymore that no longer exists.
And in fact I can create fake researchers and post in fake conferences that they presented there — there's an entire industry of fake research documents with fake writers and fake speakers and Google would have no way of knowing so they wouldn't use it as a signal because they couldn't control that signal and they couldn't determine authenticity of the signal.
Coyle » Kristine
Hi! Maybe we can talk about this in our upcoming webinar ::plug::
My comment was primarily:
"They absolutely know the sources of authoritativeness and have associative matrices to reference."
The other angles on this are rabbit holes I'm not tremendously excited about discussing in open forum 😉
Cody » Roger
Uses his name on Search Engine Journal (SEJ). That's how I recognize him here! 😉
Roger » Cody
Ha! I read an article somewhere that my name is authoritative and that's why my articles rank well for SEO keywords.
And that, imo, is incorrect because the author of that article doesn't know how I planned some of those articles to specifically rank better.
And I'll say this, I don't try to understand why the top ranked sites are ranking. I don't. And I still pop up, not just for SEJ content, but for my private stuff on the side and none of that stuff has an author name or bio attached to the articles.
Coyle
I'll send the direct reference to Roger on this topic and he can give his perspective on it. It's part of the entire picture, not stating this is a way to 'game a system.'
The example I have actually uses Mayo. Yeah, there's a massive pile of things to it. I'm gonna back away from this burner though. Always appreciate the other side of a debate.
Kristine
I am getting a little confused on who's arguing what point at this point cuz I feel like some statements contradict each other. LOL … AND THAT may just be me because it's 3:30 am … but authorship's not a thing and nobody's ranking better based on author and the Quality Raters Guide even says you don't need to have an author.
Not having an author will help a lot of other metrics for your site and trust and authority with users but there's not a ranking signal for authors in Google and entities would be way too inconsistent.