Posted on January 31, 2013 by Joshua Duke
How to Add Google Authorship to Your Blog
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Google Authorship is becoming more and more important. Properly setup blog posts will show up in Google results with the author’s picture next to the meta description. While it doesn’t seem like much, this picture tends to draw the attention of searchers, and some reports have even shown that the Google Authorship picture increases clicks by 150%.
Google’s developing AuthorRank algorithm benefits both the blog and the author, so it’s a win-win solution. The Google Authorship snippet is easy to add if you know what you’re doing and can have tremendous effects on readership, so follow these steps and soon you’ll know how to add Google authorship to your blog.
Step 1: Verify Your Email on Google+
Let’s set up your Google+ profile first. Go to your profile and click on the About section. Make sure there is a checkmark next to your email address.
Of particular note, if the domain name of your email address matches the domain of your blog, there is a greater likelihood that you don’t have to do any more steps, but just to be sure, it’s recommended you follow the next steps as well—particularly because they aren’t hard to do!
Step 2: List the Publications You Contribute To
While the average Google+ user might have skipped over this field, there is a section under each Google+ profile to list publications that you write for. Preferably, you should link to your bio page for each blog you contribute to; however, if that isn’t an option, you can link directly to the post itself.
Step 3: Add a “rel=author” Link from the Blog to your Google+ Profile
This step is particularly important if your email domain doesn’t match your blog post. Somewhere in the blog post, either in the byline or in the author box, you need to add a “rel=author” link to your post. To do this, add the following to your bio or byline:
<a class=”https://plus.google.com/[USER ID NUMBER]?rel=author”>Your name</a>
Be sure to add your Google+ ID number. This is the unique string of numbers attached to your Google+ account, which can be found in the URL of your Google+ profile.
Here’s what my bio on this blog looks like:
And that’s all you need to do. Depending on your level of engagement on Google+, how often people share and comment on your posts, and your overall AuthorRank, your blog posts might show up more frequently in search results, and now with your Google+ Authorship established, your picture will appear next to your posts. It might not seem like much, but a simple headshot in search results can grab people’s attention and establish a visual connection between you and your readers.
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