Authorship Markup – A Blogger’s Must Have

Have you ever wondered why some blogger’s and web owner’s images are showing on your search results page? This article will serve as your introduction on Google’s Authorship Markup and your tutorial on how to set it up but before we start here is a brief introduction.

(Let me know how to set it up… Now!)

Google Algorithm is constantly changing to provide internet users a better results page for their queries. As Google announced that they have begun supporting authorship markup (a way to connect authors with their content) the standard that determines authority and credibility have changed, Google is getting smarter about off-page SEO factors and what gives a page value.

Today the focus will be more about who authored the content rather than where it’s posted and Filipino bloggers need to catch up with these changes or be left out.

Understanding Authorship

The purpose of the Authorship Markup is to establish the author as real indivuals, and to record and rate the level of content they are providing. In a nutshell, Authorship gives Google a foolproof way of connecting a web post/page to a Google+ profile, thus authenticating the identity of the author. This idea maybe simple, but it’s ground-breaking in a blogger’s perspective because the identity of an author has been almost impossible to verify in the past – giving content scrapers an advantage.

How It is Changing the Search

Authorship Markup allows bloggers to protect their works from content scrapers, given that search crawlers will give more weight on pages’ that have indicated their ownership of the content.

Psychologically, it can affect searchers behaviour on search results page as images of bloggers will be shown and this may suggest that these sites are more reliable and trustworthy, which of course can lead to increase in SERP click-through rates and traffic.

How to Implement it

The images that will be used in Google’s search results page are drawn from your Google Profiles and will look something like this:

What You Need Before Setting Up an Authorship Markup

Google Plus Profile (with the image you want as your Authorship Image)
Basic knowledge in HTML

Authorship uses a simple line of HTML tags to connect web pages with a Google+ profile. Bloggers simply need to link both ways and use “rel=author” and “rel=me” tags.

Create a Google Plus Profile

The first step is getting a personal account set up in Google Plus if you don’t have one yet. Once that’s done, it will serve as your page for your authorship identification. On your dashboard click Google+ Profile and you’ll find your profile URL that looks like this:

https://plus.google.com/111337528819763035223/

Profile Picture- Your picture should be a good, recognizable headshot (not a logo/text).

Setting Up Your Authorship Markup

If you are using blogger create a link pointing to your Google+ Profile from your web page with a rel=author tag on the link just like this:

Google+ Google+

My About Page contains all of my social media accounts including my Google+ Profile with rel=author tag.

Add a link back from your profile page to your page that you added your rel=author tag. To do this just visit your Google plus profile and edit the Contributor To section.

Add your Blog Title and URL then Save

Test it to make sure you’re blog is verified. Put your blog url into Google’s rich snippet testing tool and see how it should display in search engines.

Pretty simple isn’t it? Now if you have problems connecting them you can drop a comment below or contact me for help.

Tagged as: Authorship Markup, rel=author, rel=me