Back in January 2012, search marketing firm Catalyst confirmed the classic SEO theory that rich snippet does indeed increase CTR and traffic.
Here’s what their analytics looked like:
That amounts to a 150% increase in visits and page views!
So by implementing Google’s authorship markup and getting the rich snippet to show up for their content, Catalyst dramatically improved their performance in search engines.
If you don’t exactly know what I’m talking about, let me give you an example of what rich snippet is and how it pertains to Google’s authorship markup.
Google “seo advice” and here is one of the results you will get:
What Danny Sullivan has done is claim his content, which in turn provides incredible benefits in the search engine rankings.
For instance,
- The profile picture lends instant credibility.
- If you click the “by Danny Sullivan” link you’ll get sent directly to his Google+ page.
- Click the “More by Danny Sullivan” and you’ll get a Google search page dedicated to all of Danny’s content.
Let me ask you question…
If you didn’t know who Danny Sullivan was, would you click on his link when you searched for “seo advice”? Or some of the other links without this rich snippet…even if they were higher in ranking than his?
I think you’ll probably say “yes.” And this is what Catalyst did to get that 150% boost in CTR and traffic…and so can you!
But there’s a problem
I’m a somewhat techie guy, but ever since Google launched their authorship markup project, I’ve been scratching my head on how to make it less confusing.
There are a lot of guides out there…from Google’s own guide to AJ Kohn’s lengthy treatment of it to Andy Crestodina’s short and sweet guide…
…and these guys all did a good job, but I’m still confused, which makes me think that most of everyone else is, too.
So, here’s my attempt at writing a dummy-proof guide to getting your authorship markup up and running so you can start increasing click throughs and traffic to your site.
Option one: Link your content to your Google+ profile
The first option for verifying you are the author behind content on the web is to use a verified email address.
Now, what do I mean by a verified email address? Two things:
- This email address must be the same as the website where you want to connect your contact. In other words, if your content is on yourwebsite.com, then you need to use an email address like this: yourname@yourwebsite.com.Â
- This email address must be verified in Google+ by Google. When you create a Google account, Google will send you a verification email to the email address you used. You must click that link to prove that you own that address.
A simple test to find out if your email address has been verified is to sign in to the Google accounts home page. There will be a message that says you need to verify your email address.
You can also verify your email address using OpenID. Just follow these steps:
- Use your Yahoo! Address to sign up for a Google+ account – This includes rocketmail.com or ymail.com addresses.
- Click “Verify by signing in at yahoo.com” – This will show up on the next page.
- Enter your Yahoo! email address and password – When the Yahoo! sign-in box appears, drop in your information and click “Sign in.”
- Click “Agree” – When the screen asks you to allow Google to use your Yahoo! ID to share your info and you want to continue, click “Agree.”
That’ll give you access to Google+, and then verify your email address.
Create a byline for each post on your website
Once you’ve verified your email address, your next step is to make sure that you have a byline on all of your articles or posts you want to appear with rich snippet.
Here’s an example from Softpedia:
Using the Author Box Reloaded plugin is a simple way of creating bylines on your blog, but you’ll need to follow a few steps.
First, you’ll need to install the WordPress Plugin Framework Reloaded:
You won’t need to do anything with this plugin except activate it. If you don’t install this plugin, however, Author Box Reloaded will not work.
In fact, it won’t even activate.
After you’ve installed WP Plugin Framework Reloaded, then you can install Author Box Reloaded:
After that plugin is installed, then go to your WP dashboard, click “Users” and “Author Box R3.” From there you will have two choices.
If you want your byline to automatically appear at the end of every post, then click the box labeled “Auto insert.”
Your other choice is to align your picture on the right side of the text versus the left. And by the way, make sure you’ve defined your photo on Gravatar.
Now you get to create your byline. Go to “Users,” and click on “Your Profile.”
Scroll down to the “Biographical info” text box and share some personal information.
Make sure that your byline includes a clear way of identifying you as the author of the content, such as “By your name” or “Author: Your name.”
Important: This name must match your name in your Google+ account.
And by the way, I would take it a step further and in this byline add a link to your Google+ account using this code:
After you’ve verified your email address and created your byline, your third step is to submit your email address to Google’s Authorship page:
An email will be sent to your inbox. Click that link and you’ll be done.
Submitting your email address this way will add it to your Google+ profile under the “Work” section, which you can control the visibility.
Your final step is to see what your rich snippet will look like on a Google search using the rich snippet tool:
You should see pieces of information:
Google is quick to point out that there is no guarantee that a rich snippet will show up on a search results.
However, keep in mind that you won’t see these results in Google search for anywhere between five to 14 days. It just depends on the time it takes for spiders to crawl your site. The rich snippet tool is to help you see what could potentially be pulled.
If something went wrong, then you will probably see results like this:
Even though this is pretty straight-forward, there are a lot of steps to miss…so if this is not working then you will need to go back through email verification…or try option number 2.
Option 2: Set up authorship by linking your content to your Google+ profile
If you don’t have an email address that matches your web domain, then you’ll need to connect your Google+ profile with your content.
The theory behind this option is simple: whatever you write and wherever you write it should connect with your Google+ content…and vice versa.
That means you need to have a byline on all of your posts that point to your Google+ account. If you haven’t yet, go back and read again how to install the Author Box Reloaded plugin to create bylines across all of your content on that domain.
In that byline you need to link to your Google+ account using this snippet of code:
Next, go into your Google+ account and link to your website.
- Go to Edit your Contributor To section in your Google+.
- Add a link to the website.
- Click “Save.”
To test to see if this worked, use the rich snippet testing tool. Again, it takes time for this to show up in search results, so be patient.
How to connect your guest posts with rich snippet
If you are a prolific guest blogger, then you’ll definitely want your content to show up with rich snippet, too.
You might think this is a little tricky to do since it’s not really your site, but it’s actually not.
Let’s take a look.
For each guest post you are required to write a byline. In that byline all you need to do is link to your Google+ account using the rel=author code:
For instance, my guest post byline could look like this:
Neil Patel is co-founder of KISSmetrics. He blogs at QuickSprout and you can follow him at Google+.
Here are some things I did with that byline I need to explain:
- “Neil Patel” is linked to my About page at QuickSprout. So is the link “QuickSprout.” Never link back to your site using your home page, otherwise you are missing out on link opportunities.
- “KISSmetrics” is sent to my company site.
- And “Google+” is using the rel=author code.
Next, from your Google+ account create a link back to the individual post where you were a guest post.
As you can imagine, if you are a prolific guest poster, then your “Contributor To” section could get pretty long. You’ll have to weigh the benefits yourself if it is worth the effort.
Conclusion
There is no way getting around the fact that there are a lot of steps behind connecting your Google+ account to your web content so that you can get the boost in CTR…
But I believe if you take the time to slowly implement these steps you can have Google’s authorship markup implemented within five to ten minutes.
Sure, the results will take much longer, but I guarantee that you will not be disappointed with the results!
Do you have any tips you can share on implementing the Google authorship markup?
This amazing course will teach you, step by step, how to double if not triple your traffic over the next 30 days.
Thank you Neil… great insight on this whole Google thing!
I’ve so far ignored Google Plus and now know I’m leaving hundreds of visitors on the table because of it.
Google is heading in the right direction and rewarding REAL content and this is great motivation to get in the G game and get moving… thanks again!
- Ken
More like they are forcing people to get on board with G+, oh well…
That is some people’s opinion.
This authorship in rich snippets (pictures and such) is completely possible using markup formats like http://schema.org/ . It is an independent standard that all search engines can use. These are already in use on Google for stars on search result pages of reviewed items but I’m guessing that Google will only be showing the rich snippets for authorship when Google+ is used. Their reasoning is probably for some verification of the author that way, but I’m sure they’re not sad about leading people to use Google+ as a result.
I’d love to have my image next to my links in search engine results but I’d prefer to not use my real name anywhere, which Google+ requires. My web presence is cool but I don’t need it to affect my career or the rest of my life. I’m probably out of luck.
But…. cheating down, holy cow, rel publisher might be the ticket. I didn’t even know that existed. That links to a Google+ Page which can be anonymous of a Google+ Profile I believe. Oh wait, now I’m reading that’s only for the overall site, and only shows up for the root. Hmm I’ll have to do more reading.
Mike, thanks for reading. Also, thanks for sharing..
Glad you enjoyed it!
If you haven’t started yet, then you should definitely get into it.
Great post Neil, been meaning to do this.
Love how you always give so much value in your posts!
Thanks
Stuart
Thanks Stuart,
I appreciate it.
Great advice, Neil. As Google is putting more focus on integrating Google Plus with their search engine, it’s important that one should use author markship.
If you’re ignoring the whole Google thing, then you’re leaving few hundred visitors on table
.
Thanks for sharing your insights.
-Dev
Definitely,
You want to make sure you are taking full advantage of what G+ has to offer.
Neil – always spot on..but I need a 2nd cup of coffee to re-read! Thanks.
LOL, thanks!
Fantastic advice Neil as usual for sites that have active blogs.
What happens if you have an ecommerce site?
or a business service site like a removal company whereby the site is pretty static?
I am intersted in this too. I can see how you can do this with content like articles where there is a concrete person as an author but is there a way and if there is how would you go about using this feature with a homepage of a webhosting company or an ecommerce shopping site that does not have an author.
Good question. You can always use the image for the blog portion of those sites…. Other than that, not sure what more you can do.
How would a company, where you have staff turnover, deal with Authorship? If employees/contributors leave, is there a way to retain the “subjectship”?
You just have to keep providing quality content related to the subject.. so you have a baseline to keep moving forward.
Hmmmm, what if I couldn’t get 150% boost?
Either way you should get a boost in traffic.
Not the best advice for new sites
Thanks Neil.
My website is not on the WordPress platform.
How relevant is the content on this topic for non-WP sites?
How does one link a non-WP webpage to G+? Something with the rel=author I imagine…?
Thanks.
It should work for non-WP blogs, just follow the steps above and you should be fine.
Nice tips. Absolutely, true. Even I have witnessed increase in CTR with verified authorship.
Thanks Maninder, glad to hear it has worked for you.
Great instructions. I went through this process a few months ago and used 3 or 4 different walk-throughs to get the authorship all squared away. I am not using the author box plugin but do have my name (indicating me as the author) linking to my about page with the proper rel tags. Not sure how much it has helped since my site is still very small, but I did go from #91 in Google for my name to a high of #10 (currently at #16) using the authorship info and other techniques. (http://bluecapra.com/2012/1st-google-my-journey/)
Thanks Neil for the great info
Thanks for sharing what you did and how it worked for you.
Hope these tips help to rank you even higher.
Hey Niel, will the rich snippet work if you use the company’s logo instead of a face portrait?
Hi Neil
I just do the tips but my photo did appear in my box. Only a mystery man. The others things work perfectly. I create a profile and Gravatar.com and so on, but the box appears with no photo.
Could you help me?
Hey Luiz, I would hit up a web developer to help you with that. Sorry I couldn’t help.
Hey Eric I answer you question below. It should work.
Thanks so much for this helpful tips, definitely we will follow them, we are already using Google+ but this opened my eyes to see a better way to do it.
Great, let me know if you have any questions as you go.
Neil ! This is very true that google products are most helpful for higher ranking in google search. I am experiencing this from last few months.
We must not forget even a single google product in online promotion strategy.
These products are helpful in my opinion:
Google Snippet like Review & Rating and Authorship.
Google Discussion
Google Plus
Google Knol
Google Shop for products
Blogger
I find these google products helpful. Please share if you find any other google product which will help in our SEO campaign.
Thanks you Jugmendra,
I appreciate you sharing with everyone the products you have found helpful.
There is not doubt about the effectiveness of using Google Author markup.
I used Option 2 few weeks ago, just checked it and it’s looking great
Awesome, glad to hear it.
hmm, I tried to add my email address to google but keep getting a message that it is already used by another profile? Any idea on how i can locate that profile? Sometimes Google makes thing so complicating by connecting everything!
I am not a hundred precent sure. Try contacting google, hopefully they can help.
Rather than crediting an individual, is it possible to authorship mark to a Google+ page (company page) rather than individual google+ profile?
I’m also very interested in this. With a site like mine, it would look far better if I included the g+ site page as opposed to my own personal g+ page.
Try it out, it should work.
Hey mate,
That’s what I am going to test out now. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Pete
Hey guys, You can use the rel=”publisher” tag to link to your Company Page, so basically replace author with publisher and google will show your company page logo instead of profile+ page and thumbnail.
I have added both for a site and it appears when rel publisher and author are both published, google prefers to display rel publisher in search results.
@Neil: Thanks so much for the wonderful post, followed through every bit of instruction and it was a breeze!! However, strangely enough after I entered the author information in the WP User “Bio Info” it appears WP displayed the author box automatically. The reason I noticed this was because I had installed Author box reloaded alongwith WP framework and the Author Bio appeared twice in my posts. So I deactivated the plugin and it still kept appearing without any issues. So looks like WP is displaying author info so long as you have filled up Bio Info.. I’ve added both rel author & publisher links in the bio though.
Will be good to know if this works for everyone by default in WP or if this has worked for me due to the theme I had on.
Thank you Jennifer for sharing with everyone how that works.
Awesome, thanks Pete.
I have never tried it before, but it sounds like it is possible.
Neil – terrific post, thank you….wish I had a better way to thank you for the the helpful information you provide.. I have a question: my Google account’s “primary” email is my gmail account. I have two blogs that I am working on, and email addresses from each of the domains are listed as “alternate email addresses” on my google account. All emails are verified. Will having the emails from my blog as “alternate emails” be enough to link content from each domain to my Google+ profile? Or must it link to the primary email on my Google account?
I believe you have to link to the primary email on your Google account.
Great tips as usual Neil. Hope I didn’t miss this…but is there a way to claim content (an article) you wrote that is published on another person’s blog? When my article appears on the WSJ website, can I somehow ‘claim’ that to have this technique activate?
Potentially, in the blog post I actually break down how you can do that.
This is cool post.
Thanks Neil.
How about the same in blogger blog?
Anything more to be done other than using the Google plus plugg in in the blog?
Kindly advice.
I am a bit confused, I am not sure what you are asking.
Awesome tutorial as usual, Neil. I’ve wanted to set up authorship for months now, but was always intimidated and confused as to how to do it. It was actually extremely easy thanks to your post. Much appreciated!
Thank you Joshua, I am glad this post was able to help make it easy for you.
I’ve seen that in the SERPs, just never knew how to do that. Nice article. Do you believe that it would help in rankings SEO wise if you connect your content to Google+?
-Amir
It should help, give a try and see how it works out for you.
Thank you, Neil!! I’m pretty tech savvy but the other guides out there still confused me. I haven’t implemented the author tag because of this. This is very helpful. Thanks!
No problem, glad you found these tips easy to understand and useful.
Hi Neil,
Thank you very much for this tutorial. In the the news niche so I noticed big difference in search results because of author snippets on search results.
Question, that authorship plugin is not necessary, right? I’m looking for something more simple, minimalistic, without big profile picture.
I just want to make sure I can code the author byline my myself and it’ll still work.
It should work if you code it yourself.
Your steps are to hard. I made an article how to do it alot easier. and you need to mess with the Xml tab files.
I could do it for you for 40 bucks for those who dont know how to mess with it.
and trust me having a picture next to your listing stands out from the rest and it dose increase your traffic.
That’s a really good offer.
Most don’t realize they can verify authorship over their work through Google Plus. I’ve followed the steps provided by G awhile ago, but have yet to see authorship over my work so I have not touch on this subject myself. SO no, no tips beyond what you have already stated. Sorry!
Thanks for the comment anyways.
Really a great post Neil.
I had previously done the process of authorship other than this.
Hope now search results show me as the author.
Thanks Hrishikesh,
I hope so too, best of luck.
Very interesting feature, Neil and one that I did not understand very well.
After reading your post (and re-reading it again!), I am ready to implement it.
Marketing is so often about the little things that give one an edge and a boost to credibility. This will certainly help. Thanks again for your great work!
I agree, it is about the small things. You often have to do many little things in order to get bigger results.
The authorship of your online content is becoming increasingly important, I must implement it now! Thanks Neil
Definitely, there is not time like the present!
This is so awesome, thanks so much. But not many use Google Plus.
They should!
A very good post. I never knew that you can do so many things in order to boost up traffic and come on the first page of google. But i think the pros and experts like neil patel know what are the secrets of coming on the first page and boost traffic. Nice to know and i hope you will keep coming with good posts like these.
I will definitely keep them coming, so keep on reading.
Thanks Neil for the insightful post. I haven’t still gotten on the Google+ bandwagon and I can see I am definitely being left behind.
You should consider getting started. There are many benefits to jumping on.
Superb article Neil. Much gratitude. Got the first option working after a few tries. I really appreciate all the info you share with us, thank you.
Thank you, I am happy to hear you got it working for you.
Hello Neil,
this idea really does sound amazing and i gave it a try… stuggling for 2 days now trying to make it work, followed your instructions but still get (We could not find a link from the Other profiles or Contributor to section of your Google Profile to verify this page) message.
please help
anastasia
Anastasia, it will take some time. Keep at it, and I am sure the strategy will work. You have to test a number of options.
Really, these information is very good and nice to know about Google Authorship Markup. I will try it very soon and hope this will be beneficial for me.
Thanks, I hope these tips help!
Hi there,
This is one feature I have yet to implement, and I think I really should with the new Google Penguin update.
This guide looks less confusing than the rest I have read…
Thanks
David
I am glad to hear you found this guide easy to understand. Hopefully when you decide to implement, this guide will help in the process.
Great post with the great info Neil!
I am new internet marketer, and a regular reader of your post and trying to follow your techniques.
On my sites I am using G+, however each site is related to a unique GMAIL ID for G+; however if I would like to implement the above strategey, how would I able to, do i need to change my Gmail accounts to one email@mywebsites.com accounts, or can I simply add @mywebsitecom emails along with Gmail ID’s??
I am a bit confused, could you please guide me here?
Many Thanks
Andrew
You should be able to connect them both together.
Neil, THANK YOU for taking the time to publish this guide.
Honestly, I’ve been wondering how you get your pretty face in the SE’s like that but never took the time to figure out how. I just printed this guide out and am studying it. Thank you!
No problem David, glad you liked it.
Hi Neil! Thanks so much for this informative post! Just a quick question: What if I have over 100 sites I want to do this on? Would it be bad or raise any flags on googles end that I have so many sites that contain my content? Thanks!
As long as you do it cautiously it should not raise any flags.
Hi Neil, great explanation.
Could you talk a little bit about what you mean here?
“Neil Patel†is linked to my About page at QuickSprout. So is the link “QuickSprout.â€
*Never link back to your site using your home page, otherwise you are missing out on link opportunities.*
Thanks
Jordan
It means don’t stuff your content with links to your own site. Try to diversify your links.
Hey Niel. Thank you for such an awesome post. Could you please help me out? Will the rich snippet work and show on the search results if you use the company’s logo instead of a face portrait?
I haven’t tried it but it should work.
Thanks Niel. Took about 10min to setup (Already using Google+) with the steps in your article. Thanks for sharing.
Oh! Ensure you use this component in the link pointing to your + profile. “?rel=author” Took a couple validation tries as I forgot this.
Cheers…
Thanks for pointing that out to everyone John.
So If I have a theme enabled authors box, do I still need to download and install the Authors Box Reloaded Plugin?
You may need to. Look at your plugin settings.
thanks for the tip I implemented it and now Google Authorship Markup is added to my every post in SERPs … let see if it increases the CTR or not
Awesome, let me know how it works out for you.
For a new company WP blog that will have at least two bloggers, and possibly more. Do you recommend the commented suggestion to use rel=â€publisher†tag to link to your Company Page, so basically replace author with publisher and google will show your company page logo instead of profile+ page and thumbnail. OR, a work around to give author credit to each blogger and for the company site to benefit equally as well?
I would say give the author credit, it creates good will and they will definitely link back to you.
Hi Neil
I just do the tips but my photo did appear in my box. Only a mystery man. The others things work perfectly. I create a profile and Gravatar.com and so on, but the box appears with no photo.
Could you help me? I think my comments appear in a wrong place here, didn’t ?
Hey Luiz, your comment turned out fine here.
Amazingly useful information. I had no idea that google even had an authorship section. I knew about the important of getting google plus integrated on your website but i didn’t know that all this info you send to google should match to look credible. I am quite surprised!
Thank you,
Happy to have shared some new and useful information with you.
Thanks Neil for this great piece of advice!
Does this also work for companies instead of real persons? Such when the blogposts are published under the company name – can the company use the authorship the same way as you lined out?
They should be able to, I don’t see why not.
Hello Neil. I tried doing so with both the options mentioned above turn wise . But i am constantly facing some warnings while checking for rich snippet tool. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffbupdates.com%2F2012%2F04%2Ffacebook-smileys-new-and-better%2F This link shows the warnings at the bottom. So please sir i need your help on this . Thank you .
I wish I could help, but I am just not that technical. I would post a job on elance to see if you can get someone to help fix it for you. Sorry about that, I wish I could be of better assistance.
At last I get it. Working on my Author Rich Snippets as I type this.
Awesome, glad you have got it now.
yep i too have a new blog … google authorship helps alot in increasing the CTR….
Great, glad to hear it.
Wow, it is confusing! Thanks for trying to spell it out. I will attempt to give it a try. I would love to hear more about how to become more nimble/savvy with customizing WordPress blogs. I have my blog, Smart Marketing Basics, set up there, and have done some simply things like adding mini-apps, but the next level up seems over my head when it comes to using “code” etc. As a marketer, it would be great to become a bit more technically skilled in some of this stuff, so I can do more with my blog myself.
Thanks,
Sue
No problem, hopefully this post made things a bit more clear. Thanks for the suggestion, I will consider it for a future post.
Great article. I was confused with Google authorship and this article provide me the right track to add Google authorship. I am waiting for Google to display my image on my posts.
Thanks, I am happy to hear this post could help clear up your confusion.
thank you very much for the great post
I´m not so good at english so instructions usually are difficult to follow because I always misunderstand one line or two… but this was good instructions <3 ty
I did as you said and I get the box on my site but when I test it in webmaster I get these warnings
Warning: Missing required field "updated".
Warning: Missing required hCard "author".
Anyone here know what I´m supposed to do about it?
have a great day
misslenali
That is odd, you make want to contact a developer and see if they can help you figure out what is going on.
Thanks for the great info… I’m pretty sure we can improve on our traffic rates, etc with this (and many other tips you’ve written about, I’ve just really started getting to read although I’ve been a subscriber for a lil while now
… but I’m gonna call you out on some bad grammar
“Here’s what there analytics looked like:”
Their They’re There.
Which should it be?
Thank for pointing it out, I have gone back and fixed it.
Neil, I’ve had this article bookmarked for a few weeks and finally got around to doing it. Your instructions were straightforward and easy to follow step-by-step. I stumbled a little through the google + authorship but was able to troubleshoot. Just waiting for Google to pick it up now.
Just wanted to say thanks for another great tip and easy to follow instructions!
Awesome, thanks for taking the time to come back and read it.
Neil, Is there a quick way to publish certain posts and opt out of the author box at the bottom of the post? For example, I’m posting a bunch of articles onto a press page, and don’t really want that mucked up with my author page.
Thoughts on opting out on select posts?
Jeff
There may be, but not that I know of…
Hi Neil! Big thanks for you…
I’ve tried some tutorial about this and I got confused. None was work. In rich snippet my photo doesn’t show up.
Finally this tutorial works for me…
Thanks a lot!
Thanks Hansen, I am glad this worked for you.
This post is a wake-up call for me to fully leverage Google+by using Google authorship markup to attract visitors. I need to follow the trend to avoid languishing in the corner. Your guidelines will really help me in doing this.
Awesome, glad to hear it.
I have yet to authorize my blog.
Some people were saying this impacts the results in a negative way. I dont think so but I dont know why did they say that!
Give it a try and see how it works out for you. Let me know if you have any questions as you go.
Hi Neil,
Thank you for the detailed information.
There’s now an easier way to integrate Authorship with a site which I’ve outlined here: http://mattgreener.com/making-authorship-simple-how-to-setup-relauthor-in-3-easy-steps
Thanks for sharing, I will have to take a look.
Thanks Neil for such informative like this. I have bookmark your blog to look other info to growing up my blog. TQ
Awesome, hope to have you back soon!
i havent got around to adding the g+ but after reading this post i will be doing it today:) !
Great, let me know how you like it.
Neil, I followed all your directions to a T. However, the Author box shows up but there is no visible Biographical Info or a gravatar image inside of it… (and yes, I entered the name, e-mail, and bio info in my WordPress under Users > Profile, and then clicked Update).
Any ideas to fix this?
Website in question is: http://celebratephotobooth.com/blog
Sadly I don’t.
Very informative, thanks Neil. I will try to apply this.
Great, I hope it helps.
Hey Neil, this worked great. Used it back when you first posted it and was one of the few tutorials on this that actually worked. I just now did it on my wife’s blog.
Question: can this be done on multiple blogs using the same Google+ profile, as long as you are using the same name. Assuming your would then verify that particular email to match that domain?
It should work for multiple blogs. Don’t worry about the email matching just 1 domain.
I tryed it to create author profile. Now I rank really better than before.
Good, glad to hear it.
AHHHHH! Pain in the ass. I tried it but its not working! Coz good wont approve my name as DJ but I did put it as an nickname in my google+ account. What to do? I already appealed to change my name from Dave to DJ which is what people know mw for. Is it that? Or did I do something wrong? Thanks for the awesome post Neil!
DJ
I am not 100% sure… I would contact Google.
*google
Neil,
does it have to be your author profile or can it be your company publisher profile?
At present I have mine set up as publisher and it tests ok via the snippet test tool, ie theinfo and pic are there.
However no author info shows up when I do an actual search.
I read from Google that it’s ok to have both I’m beginning to wonder if author is better.
It should be your author name… not your company name. If you use your company name, I think it will be harder to get it approved.
Neil-
I appreciate your guidance. But I’m somewhat skeptical about investing in a strategy along a narrow-channel Internet product.
I’ve seen too many strategies crash and burn because the sponsor decides to tweak it, sell it or pull the plug.
If you have done all your SEO groundwork, and have time to invest on incremental improvements, then at least you have a fall-back position if your incremental work becomes a dead end.
Try it out. You may not get a 150% increase but authorship can’t hurt. I think that is something we can all agree upon.
Neil,
This is an AWESOME Article. I am always impressed with the exactitude that you are able to communicate an idea or set of directions through a blog post… Very Helpful, very informative and always actionable as well…
Just great stuff and I always learn from your information. Keep it coming please. Thank you!
Matt Ortolani
Thank you Matt, I appreciate the kind words.
Hi I have done this for my website too, but there is no such hike in traffic. I guess t depends on site to site, we cant make a generalize statement that it increases the traffic.
Thanks
Dhanesh Mane
Thanks for sharing, it may not give you such a drastic increase but you should be seeing some increase.
Been slapped by G so this timely advice from you is most welcome.
Many, many thanks
Regards
Russ
I hope these tips worked out for you.
Excellent post here, utilizing Google Plus for your website can be a key source of traffic and help with search engine results !
Definitely, thanks for reading!
Thanks Neil, great guide!
Thanks Peter, glad you liked it.
I remember that back last year I had my image appearing alongside my search results. Unfortunately I cannot remember how I achieved this and to my dismay it disappeared after about 3 months.
I’ll give option 2 a try
Thanks
Great, let me know how it works out for you.
In fact I ran with option 1 but had limited success, it has taken such a long time (Non Techie) I will return to it later.
One question though, I followed your lonk and created my Gravitar but how do I load it to my WP site.
Thanks
Russ
I am not sure… I don’t use Gravitar myself.
Great tips Neil. Thanks for this awesome post.
Im happy to say that I may have found a blog that is worth following!
I’ll see you on another post here on quicksprout (-:
Have a nice day
Awesome, looking forward to it.
I just created a new design blog and was seriously struggling implementing google plus with my blog.
Thanks for this great post
Glad you found this post helpful.
How do i know this is working? I did all as said, and in snippets it says verified all seams fine but when i search Google i don’t see my profile connected to my search results and also there is no any kind of boost.
Thanks!
It takes a few weeks. If you don’t see it in a few weeks, then something was done wrong. :/
Anyway, I decided not to be Google’s sheep and do everything as they want and destroying my page just to get a few new visitors.
If they had at least one reply to a message or offered the possibility of contact after all these years. Or at least that my manner to one of the “reconsideration requests” is not always an automated message I might think once more but at the end this for me is just another screw-up!
I spent more time working for Google things than for my project.
Thanks for the tip Neil. Does this only work if you have a big network on Google+, or does it help make you relevant regardless of whether you are connected to the person searching?
Hi Neil,
Hope you are having a great day!!
What is your opinion about author picture versus publisher logo for Google Authorship markup on a website about pets?
Best regards,
Joe
Hello!,,Fantastic advice Neil as usual for sites that have active blogs.Thank you for such an awesome post./.
Great article,
but i want to know is there a plugin available for wordpress through which i can connect my Google plus account with my content.
For all of those looking to have a hands off experience with this in WordPress, check out:
http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/
This is an awesome plugin and it handles Google authorship!
THanks for providing the link Tim
sorry, where do you add the profile code???????
you wrote:
And by the way, I would take it a step further and in this byline add a link to your Google+ account using this code:
Ideally within your html head tag.
Hi Neil,
Is there anything to show why Google would decide to drop the rich snippet – i.e my profile picture from their search results. I had it all working great, and now it’s not appearing at all. done all the tests and it’s technically working, Google is just choosing to ignore.
thanks
Nope. They stated that it may not always show up… but it is weird to have it disappear.