Google has said that they are now supporting authorship markup which is a fancy way, in the SEO consultancy world, of saying that webmasters can now properly connect content with the original author.
It’s all part of laying claim to content and in the SEO consultancy environment, its further evidence that Google is throwing its full weight behind original and relevant content.
Google provides the example of an author at the New York Times who has written a large number of individual articles. It says that a webmaster can connect this content with an author page at the New York Times author page. The link is public and connects directly the content with the author.
An author page is built to let a user know the pertinent facts about that writer, including a description, image, biography, articles and relevant links.
Google recommends that if you own, or operate a website which includes authored content, you should get to know the basics and learn how to exploit the new authorship markup.
The markup basically enables search engines to recognise an author’s work across the internet. It’s based on existing code instructions such as HTML5 and XFN.
To help webmasters and the SEO consultancy operations, Google has already completed a lot of prep work with a number of news media sites, including CNET, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Washington Post.
The markup will also be supported on YouTube and Blogger.
Google are also trying to rank authors and their content, and this will go some way in giving that process meaning.