The SEO community is abuzz with predictions for 2013. Most people agree that we’re heading for a world in which content and authorship are going to be taking up most of our time over the next 12 months, but nobody predicted Penguin last year, so frankly, we don’t really know what Google’s got up its sleeve.

The traditional ranking signals are, one-by-one, going out like prison lights in an SEO jail, and thank God for that. We’ve seen the devaluing of anchor text and the increasing importance of context (underlined by Rand’s co-citation WBF), and I hope we’ll see the end of “bung a few keywords in the page title and hope for the best” as an SEO ‘strategy’. It’s not even a tactic, never mind a strategy. In fact, it makes me want to cry every time I hear an SEO say “oh but you don’t have your keywords in the page title”. Is it really that dull?

We can, however, do what we always have (or at least, what we always should have been doing), and plan to make our clients the best, most amazing and most inspiring brands that they could possibly be online, and use our SEO knowledge to guide that journey. Over the coming year, we need to start harnessing authorship and content properly, and for me, that means letting go of your ego (and your own author rank), and taking advantage of your client’s influential people.

The problem with influential people – outside of the closeted world of SEO – is that most of them are not digital people. They live in the real world, away from Twitter and Google Plus (come on, admit it, we’re the only ones who use it). They live in the world of conferences, trade magazines, breakfast meetings. They have confusing job titles and 30-40 years’ experience under their belts. They remember when there were no computers, no mobile phones, no tweeting or sharing of memes and lolcats.

These are the people whose knowledge, whose experience and whose popularity we should be harnessing and marketing.

If we can “do SEO” on them, bring them into the virtual world, and drive activity off the back of their reputation, our clients will surely prosper. What our influential people do is they give us a head start in the race for authority and relevance. It’s easier to build authority online when you have evidence that your client is already an authority offline.

So let’s look at some influential people that you may never have heard of, what they do in the real world, and what we could do online that would have an impact.

Mr. Payroll: Simon Parsons

You may not have heard of him, but Simon Parsons is ‘Mr. Payroll’ for many people, although he only reached number 2 in the UK’s top 50 payroll professionals. He won the Strathearn Award for Lifetime Achievement in Payroll, and he sits on government bodies that discuss legislation.

When Simon speaks, the payroll community listens. I used to work with Simon, and saw him at conferences with hundreds of payroll managers, mostly called Maureen and Doris, staring up in wide-eyed adulation. I’m sure one of them had tattooed “I love you” on her eyelids in a very Indiana Jones moment.

You can find Simon’s contributions in books, in roundtables, and in various trade magazines all about Payroll. Even competitors name-check him on a regular basis, he’s so authoritative. Simon Parsons is payroll.

Simon’s ahead of many influential people in that he does have a regular column in his company’s monthly blog/newsletter, and he has a LinkedIn profile. What Simon needs now is Author Rank – a tie-in with his G+ profile, if he has one, and a Twitter account so that he can start to take advantage of the inevitable masses of very relevant followers he will no doubt acquire.

Mr. Security – Chuck Collins

Being named as the eighth most important person in the world of IT Security by securitymagazine.com may not, to you, sound like an accolade you want to polish every evening before going to bed. However, we all have our specialty, and Chuck’s is security.

Chuck is described as a ‘visionary’ when it comes to implementing software as a service, and has responsibility for 158 restaurants with sales of over $1.6bn. Put simply, Chuck uses technology to make guests, employees and corporations more secure, and he uses it well. He manages risk, he reduces costs, he improves efficiency – Chuck’s the man. A leader. A visionary.

Despite nearing retirement, Chuck is still way, way ahead of the game on designing security teams and processes. His thinking defines the way other businesses work.

Despite this, it’s hard to find evidence of Chuck’s work online. You’ll find people quoting him, you’ll find people citing him as a leader and a visionary, but imagine a guest blog penned by Chuck Collins on exception-based reporting systems. Not thrilling, but you’ll immediately have a community of tweeters, sharers, linkers, eager to share the thoughts of the eighth most important man in IT Security.

Mr. Additive Manufacturing – Terry Wohlers

You probably haven’t heard of Terry Wohlers, and you probably haven’t heard of Additive Manufacturing. I am, however, trying to give you the most extreme examples, so bear with me.

Terry has spent 30 years in the industry, consulting in rapid product development, additive manufacturing and 3D printing. If you want to know anything about the above – turn to Terry. He has written 400 books, magazine articles and technical papers. More than 1,000 people said he was the most influential person in rapid product development and additive manufacturing back in 2007. He’s been in Bloomberg Businessweek, CNN Money, Computerworld, Discovery News, The Economist – the list goes on. And on.

He has spoken all around the world. He’s even presented at the White House.

Imagine, for a minute, having someone within your client’s business with a tenth of the credibility that Terry Wohlers has built up over the years, and how much of an edge that will give your online campaigns. Instant credibility, instant recognition by industry peers, and the kind of natural, inbound links and social signals that you can only dream of starting out on your own.

How to convince your influential people it’s worth their time

Now you’re excited about payroll, IT security and additive manufacturing, let’s see how we can get the most out of these people.

This is where you stop being an SEO, and you become a salesperson. Your job is to convince this highly influential person that you want to piggy-back on their years of reputation building, speaking, writing and sitting on important panels. You need to tell these people, who spend their days being important in the offline world, that they have to open a Twitter account.

So, good luck with that.

No, really. You have to convince them that they need a Google Plus account as well, so that you can start giving them an Author Rank for any work they’ve written online. But they don’t have to actually do too much. You’re going to do it for them. Therefore, you need to step out of the SEO world and put it in clear, concise terms – i.e. the benefits:

• their influence can significantly help build the business’s online presence
• their influence can help build inbound links from reputable sources
• their influence can help increase the company’s visibility and further increase lead volumes

Your job is not to teach them how to use Twitter, or any other fancy tool you’ve got, your job is to ally your knowledge of SEO, content and social media, with their in-depth industry knowledge and popularity.

Trace back the footprints

Influential people have a footprint online that we can start to take advantage of immediately. This footprint won’t necessarily be optimised, meaning that your client has been missing out on valuable backlinks, or alternatively that the backlinks simply haven’t been optimised themselves.

Use search operators to find instances of their name without a link back to your site – and start collecting these non-backlinks as part of an audit.

You don’t have to go asking for a link immediately, but some tactics I’ve tried in the past that have really worked:

• offering a follow-up article from your influential person (this time, with a link)
• offering supplementary information or quotes
• offering an alternative link destination within the body of the article

Now, you can go back to these link sources and ask for them to link your influential person’s name back to their Google Plus account as well. I’ve found that web content managers very often don’t know how to do this (and remember, outside the closeted world of SEO, hardly anyone knows or cares about G+).

So supply the code, with ?rel=”author” appended to the URL, add the site on your person’s G+ profile as one they’ve contributed to, and use the rich snippets testing tool yourself to ensure that it works. Some CMS’s like to strip out code, so be prepared to go back and forth until you’ve got that tie-in.

As a result, you could benefit from further fresh content from the website, an updated version of your article, and valuable deep links to fresh content on your client’s site. All without having written a single piece of content.

Getting the most out of the little time they have

Influential people are busy people, so be prepared to get about, ooh, five minutes of their time every month. Be prepared not to have an article from them this month, and be prepared to sit in conferences listening to them talk about additive manufacturing or payroll and tax legislation. Be prepared to drag yourself to operations meetings, way outside your original remit, but full of valuable information you may otherwise not have gleaned.

The most you’ll probably ever get is a few bullet points, so you’re going to have to ghost write.

And if you’re not a writer, hire someone who is. You can’t pull the wool over the eyes of experienced web editors, and you can’t ruin your influential person’s reputation with a) bad writing and b) half-truths or false statements. Therefore, you have to stick to their style, and you have to get the piece fact-checked BEFORE you send it back to your influential person for sign-off.

Generally speaking, when an influential person is putting their name to a guest blog, it’s not unlike PR – they’re more than happy to spend time reading it through and ensuring that it’s factually correct.

Looking to the future

At some point, they’ll retire. At some point, they’ll disappear on holiday for two months. At some point, another influential person will pop up within your organisation. So be on the lookout for future stars. As SEOs, we bang on about how our remit has changed, and how we’re doing more than just SEO – well, we’re talent spotters, now. We’re looking out for people whose natural popularity and authority can be harnessed and used for an online advantage.

Every influential person has influenced people within the business. People, who will want to follow in their footsteps, so keep an eye on them, and help them build up their authority online. They’re your future sources of key industry information, your future competitive edge…

As we all look to 2013, I believe we’re looking at a greater ‘verticalisation’ of the SEO industry. If you’re an expert in a certain industry, then you’re going to carry more weight with clients within the same industry. SEOs will eventually become stronger in specific verticals, meaning that would well have a ‘Human Resources SEO’ expert, or a ‘CRM SEO expert’ with significant clout in that domain.

I also believe we’re looking at more complex, more intuitive search engines with a greater focus on people. After all, a website is nothing more than lines of code, with other lines of code pointing towards it. If that can be gamed, what’s next? People are next.

2013 could be the year when an influential person, perhaps you, could outrank an established website with a brand new blog, simply because you are you. And if it’s not you, then don’t be sad – find someone who’s better within your client’s business.

Isn’t that fantastic? Isn’t that infinitely more fun than “bung some keywords in the header and page title?” I’m looking forward to it.

Gareth Cartman is Director of Digital Marketing at Clever Little Design, a Berkshire-based SEO agency.