Google Author Rank is Coming; ClearVoice is Ready

Google Author Rank is coming. Author Rank is an algorithmic analysis of an author’s authority which is used as a search engine ranking signal. When Google Author Rank comes, you’ll want to be ready, having firmly established yourself as a trustworthy authority. Now is the time for authors, journalists, bloggers and other content creators to evaluate themselves as authors in the way a search engine would. With last month’s disappearance of author photos from the SERP, we believe we’re closer than ever to the actualization of Google Author Rank. This means it’s time to evaluate your authority as an author by:

• Looking at Google Analytics to determine the traffic, bounce rate, and time-on-page to articles on your site
• Looking at data on when, where and how your articles (across sites) are being shared
• Consistently monitoring your content to see where it is ranking for its intended keywords
• Looking at how you align with prominent authors in your area of expertise; i.e. are you as prolific? As in-depth? As followed? As shared? As socially influential based on Klout score (read more on Klout here)?

In the search marketing industry there’s high demand for tools that can evaluate an online presence against metrics like those above, and tools built specifically for analyzing author authority are now coming to market. One such tool that calculates an authority score is ClearVoice, a free platform which has already indexed more than 100,000 authors since it’s launch last month.

“Authoritative writers are finally being digitally recognized by readers as trusted sources. It’s only natural that search engines would weigh the importance not only of the source of content but the voice behind it to showcase content authority,” said Joe Griffin, co-founder of ClearVoice.

How is the ClearVoice Score Determined?

With the ClearVoice Score, content creators have access to an objective measurement of their authority as an author. The ClearVoice Score is calculated by an algorithm that evaluates content that has been marked up for Google Authorship or for Twitter social cards. The ClearVoice Score is then calculated based upon factors including:

• The amount of websites the author contributes to
• The domain authority and reach of those websites
• How often the author publishes content
• How much each piece of content is shared

Authors will then be given a score between 1 and 100 (100 is the top possible score). The average ClearVoice Score is 45.7, and 25% of writers score between 40 and 50. The top .01% of writers have a ClearVoice Score above 90. These numbers, of course, can fluctuate as more and more content creators are evaluated.

“This metric is imperative in today’s influencer marketing economy. If, as a brand or publisher, you’re looking for a writer with a strong voice in a particular vertical that not only can produce compelling content but can also amplify that content, ClearVoice is a powerful tool for identifying those top-tier voices,” explained ClearVoice PR Director Allison Freeland.

Freeland also points out that ClearVoice is the first platform to use Twitter social card markup for authorship validation. ClearVoice studied the habits of 500 major media outlets and found that 40.8% of articles are marked up for Twitter social cards and 33.4% are marked up for Google Authorship. Knowing that, ClearVoice thought it would be valuable to identify content creators via their “digital signature” on Twitter as well as Google+.

How to Leverage Your ClearVoice Score

There’s a reason we look at metrics; as with traffic reports, ranking reports, follower counts and more, they provide us empirical data of where we’ve been and where we’re going. Is ClearVoice an absolute indicator of your worth as a content creator? Or course not — but it’s a tool to help you gauge your reach and grow by identifying how and where you can improve. That way, when Google Author Rank comes (and we believe it will), you will be ahead of the game!

Kristi Kellogg is a journalist, news hound, professional copywriter, and social (media) butterfly. Currently, she is a senior SEO content writer for Conde Nast. Her articles appear in newspapers, magazines, across the Internet and in books such as "Content Marketing Strategies for Professionals" and "The Media Relations Guidebook." Formerly, she was the social media editor at Bruce Clay Inc.

See Kristi's author page for links to connect on social media.