Another exciting week of SEO is in the books. And we all know what that means… it’s time for another edition of Gnomes Likes!!! (And the crowd goes wild…)
In this week’s recap, we have an excellent article about AuthorRank, a list of mistakes to avoid when you’re writing copy for your website, exciting new metrics to monitor on MozCast, and 3 steps for performing predictive keyword research!
Now, let’s get down to business…
How to Prepare for AuthorRank and Get the Jump on Google
In this post, Mike Arnesen provides an excellent overview of AuthorRank: what it is, how it might be calculated, and ways to take advantage of it in your content marketing efforts.
AuthorRank is a phrase that is becoming increasingly popular in the SEO community to describe Google’s efforts to rank the authoritativeness of content creators (and more specifically, Google+ users).
As Mike explains, many believe that AuthorRank is inspired by Google’s Agent Rank patent, which describes a method for ranking agents and using those rankings to evaluate the quality of agent-generated content.
The idea is relatively simple: incorporate an author’s ranking as a signal that ultimately influences the search results. The following image shows a hypothetical SERP before and after AuthorRank has been applied:
After the AuthorRank introduction, Mike makes an excellent point: “sites that have been prepping and carefully building AuthorRank for their site contributors are going to have a major advantage.”
And that raises an important question. Since AuthorRank is going to influence the SERPs of the future (even more than it already does), how is AuthorRank calculated?
Google will never publish the exact components of AuthorRank, but here are a few factors that Mike lists in his post:
- average PageRank of an author’s content
- average number of Google+ +1s and shares for the author’s content
- number of Google+ circles an author is in
- authoritativeness of the authors that have an author in their Google+ cirlces
- social engagement of an author’s content
Based on this list, the first (and most important) step to improving your AuthorRank is to join Google+ and verify authorship of your content.
Once you’ve verified authorship, you need to consistently create high quality content that is useful to your audience and extremely remarkable (be sure to read Inbound Marketing for more information about remarkable content).
For even more advice about raising your AuthorRank (including a daily checklist), check out Mike’s full post!
6 Copywriting Mistakes That Shatter Conversion Rates
In this post, Craig Anderson offers 6 mistakes that you’ll want to avoid the next time you’re writing copy for your website.
Read the full post for more details, but here’s a summary of the 6 mistakes:
- Failing to test long copy – Don’t assume that longer copy won’t be read by potential buys. In many cases, longer copy offers more incentives for potential buyers to convert to actual buyers.
- Using the structure that strangles your copy – Test using single-column layouts that contain text that flows from one section to the next. When you use multiple columns of text, you run the risk of visitors ignoring your copy.
- Assuming mathematical literacy – Quite simply: the general public is NOT good at math. Keep that in mind when you’re writing copy, and make things as simple as possible.
- Thinking you’re like Twitter… or Facebook – These massively popular sites aren’t popular because of their landing pages. They have extremely strong brands, and their landing pages are optimized for easy sign-ups (not persuading people to make a purchasing decision).
- Neglecting the most persuasive conjunction – Always explain why… in positive and negative situations. People are much more receptive to requests when there is an explanation attached.
- Forgetting to flip positives into negatives – Every statement can be presented as a positive or a negative. If you’re not testing negative statements, you could be leaving conversions on the table!
If you have other copywriting mistakes, be sure to share them in the comments!
New on Mozcast – 5 Real-time Top-view Metrics
If you’ve been following our blog, you know that we’re huge fans of MozCast and Dr. Pete. And this post offers the best of both worlds as Dr. Pete presents 5 real-time “top-view” metrics that are now available on Mozcast.
The post gives full details about each of these new metrics, but here’s a quick summary:
- Domain Diversity – This shows the percentage of unique subdomains in the MozCast-monitored SERPs (i.e., the level of SERP “crowding”).
- SERP Count (“Shrinkage”) – This is the average number of results that appear on page 1 for the monitored SERPs.
- EMD Influence – This shows the percentage of top 10 rankings that are occupied by Exact-Match Domains (EMDs).
- PMD Influence – This is the percentage of top 10 rankings that are occupied by Partial-Match Domains (PMDs).
- Daily Big 10 – This shows the percentage of top 10 rankings that are occupied by the ten most popular subdomains on any given day.
Finally, here’s a screenshot of the new metrics on the MozCast site:
For even more details, read Dr. Pete’s entire post.
Predicting Keyword Volume Before Data is in Adwords
In this week’s edition of Whiteboard Friday, Rand Fishkin presents 3 steps for conducting predictive keyword research. What’s predictive keyword research? Watch this video to find out:
Over to You!
I hope you enjoyed this week’s recap, and I’d love to hear from you in the comments. What were some of your favorite posts this week? What do you think about AuthorRank and the new MozCast metrics?
