What is Google Authorship - and why should you use it?
One of the most fundamental reasons for the phenomenal success of Google, is that they give us relevant search results. Unfortunately, it is not entirely easy to define “relevant” and Google has long been battling low quality content which is masked as relevant content. To that end Google is now laser focused on personal authority and because of that they have introduced Google Authorship. If you want to make sure that your content gets optimal visibility and ranking in search results, you should implement Google Authorship for your site or blog right now.At the heart of Google Authorship is the connection between an author's content on the web and his or her profile on Google+. Once this connection is established, content will show up far more visible and with much greater authority in search results on Google, since both profile image, name and number of followers on Google+ will be shown along with the link to the content.
Very recently Google has begun to weigh search results according to Author Rank. This means that search results with authorship will not only be more visible, but also will be ranked according to the degree of social authority - that is: the number of followers on Google+, activity on Google+ elsewhere and the amount of feedback from followers on Google+ (and elsewhere) will all count when Google determines where you should rank in search results. In other words, it is extremely important to be present, active and have good status on Google+. In the example above, I am placed as no. 2 on the first page in a search for “searchers revenge” - even though I am not by any means the worlds leading expert in John Ford’s classic western “The Searchers”, which scores of clever people have been writing huge amounts of material about.
“Authorship” for brands
Another version of this Google-feature is based on the connection between a brand's site and the Google+ page of that brand. In this case, the logo of the brand will be shown at the right side of search results together with information about the number of Google+ followers and a snippet of the brands latest activity on Google+. Strictly speaking, this is not Google Authorship (as the brand is not an author), but the basic idea is the same: increased visibility and authority in search results by linking to Google+.
Direct connect
Once a brand has linked its site to its page on Google+, it is eligible for “Direct connect”. This feature gives visitors an easy way to search directly for the Google+ page of the brand as a search for, say, “+sony” will lead directly to Sony’s page on Google+. Google is still experimenting a lot with Direct Connect and it must be stressed, doesn’t necessarily work for all brand pages on Google+ - nor for all everyone who’s doing a Google search.As you can see, both methods lead to increased visibility and authority in search results - and because of that both, obviously, have the potential to increase traffic to a site but also to build new relations to customers and clients via Google+.
How do you set up Authorship?
If you have a site with several contributors (authors), each contributor must have his or her own “About”-page on your site - but apart from that the the basic method is as follows:1) Set up a profile on Google+. Take you time to make it as informative as possible: chose a good profile image, which clearly shows a face and fill out the rest of the profile with good, informative text.
2) Edit the “Contributor”-section of the profile (on the “About”-tab of your profile)
3) Put a link to your Google+-profile from your site (or from the “About”-site for a given author) like this:
<ahref="[profile_url]?rel=author">Google</a>
Replace [profile_url] with your Google+ profil URL, like this:
<a href="https://plus.google.com/109412257237874861202?
rel=author">Google</a>
Step 3 can be done in several different ways:
Blogger
If you have a blog on Googles blogging platform, Blogger, - and if you have a Google+ profile -, you can simply click the gear icon on Bloggers “dashboard” and chose to connect Blogger with your Google+-profile. More information about this can be found here.Wordpress
There are several plugins for Wordpress, which makes it easier to set up authorship for your blog. A very popular plugin is Wordpress SEO Plugin by Yoast.“Authorship” for your brand
If you want to set up “authorship” for a brand as shown in the example with Sony, you can link from your site til your brand’s Google+-page by placing a Google+-badge on the site of your brand. You can read more about how this is done here.You can test, whether authorship is working for your site right here.
Good luck!
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