Many people say author rank will be more important than major Google algorithm changes such as Panda and Florida, which boosted the importance of authoritative, trusted domains linking to a webpage. I disagree. I have I lot to gain if they are correct. However, Google’s authorship program is very different than author rank. The Philadelphia SEO and social media sectors are missing data needed to show author rank helps rank a website page. The operative word is currently. The patent is out there. It’s impressive, but people are speculating too much about author rank.
We just don’t know how much juice these links will provide for SEO. I don’t think they’ll be as important as links from authority domains. Simply put, for most web content creation, publishers and readers don’t want an individual’s attribution.
How many pages on highly authoritative websites that have immense brand recognition in Philly show the content creator name? When we look at large originations, or trusted organizations, we are not interested in seeing the working bees. We want to see their creation, their end results, much of which are a direct result of a the tools their employers provide for the hives of workers.
Think about a “sexy” brand in Philadelphia, perhaps the Phillies. 
Do you care who took the photo and who wrote the copy for a fantastic new page they put on their website? A little. And what about the pitcher from last nights win, where does he or she get the type of content creation recognition, the SEO benefit that author rank provides? The action, the creative or athletic achievement happened offline. Sorry people, but the link juice for pages from the team’s website will come from the domain’s authority, not the digital content creators’ that contribute. I’m a big proponent for author-rank, but there are serious limits to the power of the digital creator for a signal that helps with the SEO for the Phillies website or ClickStream.
If you are a content creator with a strong social media presence, it’s imperative that you do join Google+ and you do join the authorship program for both SEO purposes, as well as personal branding benefits. Eric Van Buskirk can assist for a modest consulting fee. Your authorship will have “link juice” value in the future, just don’t expect it to be more important than a link from a website with the content known around the world and close to the root folder of their domain. Think about how much content you create where credit is out of place, not wanted or needed? Google and Bing will need to implement their author rank system in a way that people don’t abuse the power of the pen.
