Presumably, the Author Rank works as a kind of Klout : it calculates the author's relevance on social networks, takes into account which quality blogs they have published on and what dissemination and acceptance their writings have had.
What does this mean in practice? Well, now, whoever wants to build a website will no longer use a strategy of getting incoming Special Data links (the famous link building ), but will have to resort to collaborators with high Author Rank , generally people who have been building their digital relevance for years, who have many followers and of quality, who influences and, of course, writes well. Good for them, they surely deserve it.
Although the center of gravity shifts from the continent (the blog) to the author of the content, large blogs will continue to have the advantage that there is probably no better way to increase Author Rank than by publishing on them.
Why you should quickly open a Google+ account
This is to be expected: Google+ is deeply involved in this play. To begin with, because the way to tell Google what your content is is by linking it to your Google+ account. In fact, the author's photo in the search result that we mentioned above is taken from the Google+ profile.
But there is more. When it comes to increasing the Author Rank, all the activities on this social network will also have a lot of weight . Google does not trust a network as closed as Facebook or a transparent Twitter, but full of fake profiles that are used to generate virality. And furthermore, it seems evident that those from Mountain View have decided to make their social network succeed, even if it is by imposing it on everyone who wants to get something in their search engine or wants to use any of their great tools (Gmail, Google Analytics, etc.) The strategy works , Google+ is now, by far, the fastest growing social network.
Therefore, follow, post, debate and participate in Google+ hangouts .
Author Rank Opportunities
The first consequence will be that the author's digital capital is no longer subject to his blog and social networks . If until yesterday collaborating on a renowned website in the best of cases provided the author with visibility and an incoming link to their own blog, now it also helps them increase their Author Rank. The author will no longer need to save his best content for his website, but will be able to publish it where he believes it will have the most effect because Google will recognize it.
The best authors (or rather, those with the highest AR, which there will be time to discuss if it is the same thing) will be raffled off by the big brands to improve the positioning of their websites. Who knows, if the money that until now went to link building is allocated to more quality content, will we see a resurgence of journalists and writers.
