Google Authorship Part 2: How To Get It & Where It’s Going

Lindsey WeedstonBlog, Online Marketing, Website SEO

google plus authorship

Last week, we introduced you to Google Authorship and the benefits of getting your picture on a search engine results list. You’re probably wondering how you can get in on it. Luckily, Google makes it easy.

 

How To Get Your Face On the Search Engine

Even if you have a Google+ account already, there’s no guarantee that your face will appear next to your article title on the search engine results page. You have to work for it.

Step 1: Check for a Google+ account

There’s a good chance you already have one. If you use Gmail for your work email, Google Drive for document sharing, or pretty much anything else Google, you’ve got Google+. All of these services are connected into one account.

All you have to do is set up your profile. Google will walk you through this process. The most important parts are going to be your profile picture, which should be a nice, professional headshot, and the “Contributor To” section. Add your company website and any other sites you regularly write content for.

Google Plus Logo

Step 2: Verify your email

If you’re blogging on a page with the same domain as your email address (for example, I blog on stevensonadvertising.com/blog and have the work email lindsey@stevensonadvertising.com, simply go to the Google Authorship page and enter your email address to verify it. You’ll need to have your Google+ account set up first, and it also helps to have a byline on each blog post with your name, which should match the name in your Google+ account.

Step 3: Link your content

If you don’t have an email address with the same domain as your company website, there is another method you can use to get Google Authorship working for you. Using the rel=author tag in each piece of content you publish will link them back to your Google+ account. You can find detailed instructions here.

If you’re using a WordPress blog, there are plugins you can install that will do this for you.

Step 4: Make sure it’s working

Ever the helpful search engine giant, Google has an easy and free testing tool that you can use to see if Google Authorship is working for you. If it’s not, it will tell you what’s missing and provide more tools and instructions to help you get where you need to be.

 

Will It Always Work?

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Just like everything else Google creates, Authorship is regularly being tweaked so that it better serves Google’s customers. This month, Moz talked about the recent reduction in the number of search results that include the Authorship photo. It appears that Google has simply tightened up the rules a bit so that their stamp of approval wasn’t awarded to webpages based on “superficial” factors like tags.

Moz suggests simple fixes like ensuring that the link to your Google+ profile is working correctly and getting a few social mentions. Even if you do everything right, however, they caution not to be surprised if Google Authorship doesn’t always work for you. Google will most certainly be tweaking it again in the future.