A relatively new feature of Google search is the authorship markup. If you’ve ever seen a search result with a picture of someones (the authors) face next to it, that’s authorship. If you haven’t, click here and take a look at my ugly mug.
Why Authorship?
… Because as an SEO Agency we need to know this stuff! For a start, its is shown to increase click through rates from the Google search results to your website. Various reports have seen Click Through Rate (CTR) increase by 30 to 150% more. Basically, by linking your Google+ profile to your content (such as Blog posts) Google knows you are the original author of the content and displays this information in search results.
Take a look at the below screenshot, which results stand out the most?
How to I set up Google Authorship?
Its actually quite simple, and once you’ve done you should start seeing your name and picture appear in search. You’ll also get an email from Google confirming (although mine took a few weeks):
1. As Google Authorship gets the image for the Rich Snippet from your Google+ page, you’ll need to set one up.
2. Get a good quality headshot of yourself and use this.
3. Fill out all the information fields in your profile such as occupation, education to let people know more about you.
4. Add the name and complete URL of your blog / blogs under the section called “contributor to”
5. Grab the URL fof your profile rom the address bar of your browser
6. Then, on your blog article, create a link (anywhere) to your Google+ profile that includes the rel=”author” attribute (I did this at the bottom of each blog, see below), here’s an example (substitute my Google+ profile link with your own)
<href=”https://plus.google.com/117104688008898018696?%20rel=author”>
Simple as that. You can even track the increase in traffic to your blog by looking at Author Stats in Google Webmaster Tools.
Get started by visiting: https://plus.google.com/authorship
