In a recent get together with a few clients and colleagues, one of my clients remarked that Digital Marketing is best described as a “flopportunity”. Now, none of us knew if such a word existed and what it meant but as the gentleman was keen on explaining, we did not need to ask. He said that most digital marketing campaigns throw up unexpected results, sometimes acute failures as well. However, such failures are capable of creating an opportunity for you and so the “flop” idea becomes a “flopportunity”.
I was reminded of this incident when I read about Google's new and upcoming algorithm which will factor in the AuthorRank of the off-page content while judging how much PR juice your website should get from a link in an article published somewhere on the internet. Google+ will play an important role in the implementation of this new Search Engine Algorithm. As big a flop as Google+ was made out to be, Google surely used this “floportunity” to focus on what it does best, Search.

In recent months, Google has been focusing on weeding out the loopholes in its algorithm with special focus on eradicating the practice of using bad quality content to create quality backlinks. With content in focus, first it was Panda & Penguin updates which resulted in complete overhaul of SEO strategies and now it is AuthorRank.

THE “WHAT”, If a writer has a Google+ account, the person can “claim” the content on various publishing sites written by that person. This content is then associated with that Google+ profile and the more this content is shared by the author, is “+1” by friends, shared by people in “circles” and is commented on, the more the quality quotient of the content goes up. So, in a way, people will decide which content is of good quality and that is what Google will show to other users in searches.

THE “WHY”, Checking content quality, as of now, is dependent on traffic statistics which are prone to manipulation. As Google is dependent on bots which work on specific equations and formulae, it is indeed possible to fool the bots which most expert SEOs can easily do. So, Google is trying to move away from creating complex equations for judging the content quality and is betting on real people to make real judgments.

THE “HOW”, So, the real question is how marketers should take advantage of AuthorRank. AuthorRank will give birth to thousands of writers who will be able to consolidate their scattered content and climb up the ranks. Seeing the results and benefits of content written by established and professional writers, the days of low quality or spam content will soon be over.

THE “WHEN”, While Google is keeping news about AuthorRank as a closely guarded secret, this new game changer has already mobilized hundreds of SEOs around the world to re-think their strategies. Your own SEO efforts should already be inclusive of adding Authors with a good ranking so that by the time AuthorRank becomes the mainstay of SEO your offline content is already of high quality.