How to Create Google Authorship and Increase Your Presence in Google

Google+ Authorship – How To Set It Up

You’ve probably seen them by now… the little profile photos
beside some of the Google search results you’ve searched for lately (like the
glamorous one below).

Cam Wilkes Google Authorship – SEO Advantages

These aren’t accidental – these type of results are labeled
‘Google Authorship’ results and are very much purposely modified search results that are becoming increasingly vital in establishing authority in a particular
niche or market.

Establishing Google Authorship on articles and posts on your
own or another’s blog/website effectively links your Google+ profile to any of the content you create.

Considering your content is of a good quality it will be shared, linked to and mentioned in social circles. This can help boost the presence of your content in Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

In short; by linking your Google+ profile to any content you
create on the net, you are alerting Google that you are the author, and in return Google will gauge your reputation as an author by the amount of interactivity around your content (known as ‘Author Rank’).

So How Do I Create Google Authorship?

1. This is a very simple process.
Firstly, make sure you have a Google+ profile set up and that you have a
profile picture that is easily recognisable as you (these show up quite small
in the SERPs so you want a clean, crisp headshot that is easily identifiable).

2. Make sure your name is somewhere on the page of the
content you create.
A byline at the end of your content is favourable (eg. “By Cam Wilkes”).

3. Make sure the name you use in your content (eg. “Cam
Wilkes”) matches the name on your Google+ profile.

4. To stop abuse of the Authorship association (so people
can’t assign authorship of content to others), there are 2 ways to verify
content authorship.

A. For content being published on your own domain (or a domain you have control over):

1. Make sure you have an
email address on the same domain as the domain you are publishing content to
(eg. cam@pureseo.com – pureseo.com)

2. Make sure your name
appears in a byline on the content page/blog post (eg. “By Cam Wilkes”), making sure it matches the name on your Google+ profile.

3. Visit the Google Authorship page and enter your email address (this email address must be from the same domain as your content eg. Content published on pureseo.com – email address
assigned for authorship = cam@pureseo.com. Also, the email
address field on this page will only ever be visible if you are logged into Google+) . Although you will need to always add your “By ….” Byline to your content, you will only ever need to enter your email on the Google Authorship page once. Your email will show up the ‘Contributor to’ section of your Google+ Profile – you can change the visibility of your email address < by following that link.

B. If you don’t havean email address with the same domain as your content (guest blogging etc.)

1. Create a link from your content to your Google+ Profile using the following
code:

<ahref=”[profile_url]?rel=author”>Google</a>

Replace [profile_url] with you Google+ profile URL, for example:

<ahref=”https://plus.google.com/u/0/114726780770583019690?rel=author”>Google+</a>

If your link doesn’t contain the ?rel=author parameter, Google won’t see the connection between your content and your Google+ profile.

2. Place a reciprocal link from your Google+ profile to the website featuring your content (just the domain is fine – you don’t have to link to specific pages on the domain).
2a. This can be done by going to the ‘Contributor To’ section of your Google+ profile and adding the domain that contains your content (you should only need to do this once for all content posted on that domain).
2b. Decide on the visibility of your link and save.

To test your markup and make sure it’s working, use this Structured Data Testing Tool.