Author profiles

Everyone who writes for The South African MUST have an author profile on the website before publishing any articles.

More than this, you must also have a good digital footprint, which includes profiles or accounts on social media platforms (X, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram), Muck Rack and a Google account profile. And please remember to disseminate and share your articles via your social media accounts frequently.

Also, note that all social media accounts which appear on your author profile should be active. If dormant, please disconnect/remove them from your author profile.

This is what your author profile should look like on WordPress, in the backend:

Please pay attention to how the respective social media fields have been populated, i.e. the link formats displayed.

This is how your profile should appear on the website, in the front:

Additionally, please link back to your author profiles in the bio of your respective social media accounts. See examples below:

What is an author profile?

A short description of who you are, what you write about, what your credentials are, and something interesting about you. Why should readers care what you write?

Why are author profiles important?

Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness: Google uses this framework to assess content creators, webpages and websites as a whole.

Google wants to make sure that sites producing high-quality content are rewarded with better rankings and sites that create low-quality content get less visibility.

Expertise
These are people who possess the necessary knowledge and understanding of a field to talk deeply about a specific topic. This can be general knowledge or highly specialised.

Authoritativeness
The more high-quality articles you publish on a specific topic, the stronger your authority becomes in that area. That’s why it’s important to “stay in your lane” – avoid diluting your credibility by producing thin or unfocused content on subjects outside your expertise. Both your audience and Google can tell the difference.

Trustworthiness
You have to put in a ton of hard work to earn the trust of people and search engines. You want people to trust your content.
One way to increase your trustworthiness is by highlighting your credentials in your author bio. Think awards, testimonials, endorsements, and other trust factors.

Furthermore, ensure your work is always accurate and error-free – whether factual, grammatical, or otherwise. It only takes a single mistake to damage a reader’s trust.