Author Byline Question
-
What's the best practice for displaying author information at the beginning of an article?
We're presently displaying it as: By <Author> • Jan 16, 2015 • <City>.
We're considering making it even more concise by removing the term 'By'.
Would be shooting ourselves in the foot if we did this? Any other ways we should optimize?
-
In addition to what have already been said, I would consider adding rich snippets such as schema.org/author
-
I really don't think there's any "right" or "wrong" way to go about this. As Ray said, this is a very, very small aspect of your on-page SEO and shouldn't take up too much of your time in terms of worrying.
When in doubt, ask yourself "will this make sense from my reader's perspective?" On average, if you follow that line of thought, you won't go far wrong.
-
I think that the "by line" should be....
Joe Schmoe, Chief Widget Designer at Widgets.com
-
I'm curious why you think you would be negatively impacting your SEO by removing 'by' from the line?
I think this falls under a UI consideration, what makes the most sense for your readers. It's a very small aspect to the overall content of the page. I wouldn't worry about SEO impact for this change.
http://moz.com/blog/hacking-keyword-targeting-whiteboard-friday
Checkout Moz's latest Whiteboard Friday post - their byline includes the date, author, and a few categories the article is posted in. The categories are mainly there to allow the reader to easily find other related articles and keep them engaged with the site (move from one article to another article they may be interested in quickly and easily).
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How come my Domain Authority is slower by 2 points today. Did I do something wrong?
Hello. I've bein working hard Seo in the last months, i started testing Moz Pro, found many issues with my website which i fixed. Today was the big day i was going to be crawled again. But to my surprise my Moz Authority went down by two point. Did I do something wrong? I also had page rank 1 now i have cero. I going backwards. Please any help would be apreciated, regards.
On-Page Optimization | | ebest.cl0 -
Yoast WP Plugin - Social - G+ Author
Hi The author for homepage box/dropdown menu is ony showing 'dont show' or the G+ company page name (which i presume is publsiher not author) as options. The G+ personal page profile does link to the website in links section so wandering what might be going wrong here that i'm not being giving the option of selecting the author ? any help here appreciated ? all best dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Silly question about noindex and canonical
Hi, This is probably going to sound a bit stupid, but I nevertheless want to check. We have a site that's going to have identical pages (really not my choice) for a sales reason. The two examples would be example.com/profile-name and example.com/location/profile-name Users using the onsite navigation will always end up in the latter example naturally as they have to select a location before viewing content (plus having the location in the url is nice as there are multiple profiles across different locations that have the same name). However, it's easier to sell our services when we can offer just example.com/profile-name to users for their own marketing reasons. I'd like to make the example.com/profile-name noindex follow, and have just the example.com/location/profile-name indexed, but not sure if it would be better to implement canonical tags instead? Can anyone see any potential pitfalls of using either method or does it not really make a difference (which is what I suspect, but I'd rather look stupid than get this wrong)? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | LeahHutcheon0 -
Meta Description Question
Hi, Lets say you have a 1000 pages, is it ok to generate a template meta description and flip the keywords depending on the page? For example: Red Shoes page: Buy Red Shoes at amazing prices. We have a large range of Red Shoe sizes available. Blue Shoes page: Buy Blue Shoes at amazing prices. We have a large range of Blue Shoe sizes available. Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | Bondara0 -
Question Regarding RSS Feeds
A site I have been asked to take a look at has an RSS feed on there home page. The site offers Austrian mortgages. But the RSS feed is in the side bar and it is drawing information for Austrian News. I personally would of said that if it was to draw anything then it should be more accurately related to the site, or am I wrong? I also have seen that he has installed RSS Bomber, now it just submits his blog posts to a lot of RSS aggregators each time he makes a post. Is this a bad thing as I am not sure. I am thinking it cant be good as it is effectively automated but I would like others opinions on this. Thanks Paul
On-Page Optimization | | propertyhunter0 -
Editing Author Pages
Hi, Quick question regarding author pages. I have the blog set as me for my author page. so the url is: mysite.com/blog/author/miles/ Now, seomoz has picked up that my author page is missing meta description. But, this cannot be editied through wordpress as there is no edit option available. I may really be missing something, but where can I alter the author page, I have a feeling it might be fed from G+ but no really sure what part of G+ is used as the description. Thanks Miles
On-Page Optimization | | easyrider20 -
Quick Question on Redirects
This might be a silly question, but one important enough for me to ensure that I understand the best practice of URL redirects... I'm thinking of changing my URL's and hierachy of some of my WP subpages around, in order to logically fit the keyword into the url and place the subpage closer to the root domain. My question is, when doing this, can I simply edit the URL and create a redirect after the fact, essentially killing the old URL. Or, do I create the new page with the updated URL and hierarchy, keeping the old page live and intact, but have that 301 redirect to its new corresponding destination? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | JayAdams320