Several emails were sent to me regarding Google Plus Authorship and asking me if I should try it out. I did not have enough time right now to study how I can utilize its potential, but maybe in a week or two I can come up with a more critical review about its features.
For those who are not yet familiar with Google Plus Authorship, it is how Google puts those little photo bylines in its search results. If you produce high-quality content, this little application can help boost your search result rankings and increase the number of clickthroughs you receive—and all you need to do is spend five minutes configuring it.
How to add Google Plus Authorship? Well, first, which is also one of the primary reasons why I'm delaying my eagerness to adopt this feature in my blog is that you need a Google Plus (Google+) account. Unlike other social media network, Google will insists that you use your real name. You can't use nicknames or pseudonyms.
For Google Plus authorship, Google also wants your profile picture to be a recognizable headshot. You can't use a full body shot, a non-identifiable picture, or even a cartoon picture of yourself. This is considered one of the many reasons why people still preferred Facebook over Google Plus.
Google also requires a way to identify that you wrote the articles you want to use with Google Plus Authorship.
Google offers two options:
a href="https://plus.google.com/1234?rel=author" My Google Plus Profile /a
(just enclosed the above line with the proper < and >)
You need to replace 1234 in the example above with your actual profile ID number. To find the ID number, just look at the URL for your main profile page. Make sure that URL doesn’t include any other question marks or the ?rel option won’t work correctly.
This special link won’t work on its own; you will also need to update your Google Plus profile Contributor section to include the website on which your article appears.
To add a site simply go to settings in your Google Plus, then choose account, then click on the link "edit profile" under your profile picture.
Press on the edit link to add a site. See the big screenshot below.
If you use the email option, then all you need to do is visit http://plus.google.com/authorship, log into your account, and enter the email address which corresponds to the site you write for. Google will send you a verification email and, if it works, you won’t need to add any special links to each page.
Whichever method you use, you will need to make sure each page includes a byline—that's literally a line which says "By [Your Name]". This was shunned by many bloggers who are trying to earn from pre-written sponsored posts because this will literally cut down on some of their potential income source.
The byline doesn't need to include a link—but it must include your name exactly as it appears in your Google Plus profile. (Google may be smart enough to deal with small differences, such as an abbreviated name, but Google's documentation doesn't promise this.)
Google has also provided a tool which helps you test your website for Google Plus Authorship and other structured data which helps Google create better search results. You can find the tool at: https://google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
To use the tool, simply paste in the URL of one of your articles and press enter. Google will download the page, show you how it appears in a search result, and check it for structured data.
If you setup authorship using an email address, Google will ask you to paste in your Google Plus address to finish checking the page for Google Plus Authorship. If you used the special HTML link method, then Google will already have all of the information it needs, so the tool will tell you immediately if your authorship has been verified.
You can also use the same tool to check for other structured data on your website—what Google uses to create its rich snippets.
For those who are not yet familiar with Google Plus Authorship, it is how Google puts those little photo bylines in its search results. If you produce high-quality content, this little application can help boost your search result rankings and increase the number of clickthroughs you receive—and all you need to do is spend five minutes configuring it.
How to add Google Plus Authorship? Well, first, which is also one of the primary reasons why I'm delaying my eagerness to adopt this feature in my blog is that you need a Google Plus (Google+) account. Unlike other social media network, Google will insists that you use your real name. You can't use nicknames or pseudonyms.
For Google Plus authorship, Google also wants your profile picture to be a recognizable headshot. You can't use a full body shot, a non-identifiable picture, or even a cartoon picture of yourself. This is considered one of the many reasons why people still preferred Facebook over Google Plus.
Google also requires a way to identify that you wrote the articles you want to use with Google Plus Authorship.
Google offers two options:
- You can verify that you have an email at the domain name where the article is published. For example, if I want to use Google Plus Authorship with my articles on Tips4PC.com, I can simply use my Tips4PC.com email address.
- You can add a special HTML link pointing to your Google Plus profile and then add your site to your Google Plus profile.
a href="https://plus.google.com/1234?rel=author" My Google Plus Profile /a
(just enclosed the above line with the proper < and >)
You need to replace 1234 in the example above with your actual profile ID number. To find the ID number, just look at the URL for your main profile page. Make sure that URL doesn’t include any other question marks or the ?rel option won’t work correctly.
This special link won’t work on its own; you will also need to update your Google Plus profile Contributor section to include the website on which your article appears.
To add a site simply go to settings in your Google Plus, then choose account, then click on the link "edit profile" under your profile picture.
Press on the edit link to add a site. See the big screenshot below.
Whichever method you use, you will need to make sure each page includes a byline—that's literally a line which says "By [Your Name]". This was shunned by many bloggers who are trying to earn from pre-written sponsored posts because this will literally cut down on some of their potential income source.
The byline doesn't need to include a link—but it must include your name exactly as it appears in your Google Plus profile. (Google may be smart enough to deal with small differences, such as an abbreviated name, but Google's documentation doesn't promise this.)
Google has also provided a tool which helps you test your website for Google Plus Authorship and other structured data which helps Google create better search results. You can find the tool at: https://google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
To use the tool, simply paste in the URL of one of your articles and press enter. Google will download the page, show you how it appears in a search result, and check it for structured data.
If you setup authorship using an email address, Google will ask you to paste in your Google Plus address to finish checking the page for Google Plus Authorship. If you used the special HTML link method, then Google will already have all of the information it needs, so the tool will tell you immediately if your authorship has been verified.
You can also use the same tool to check for other structured data on your website—what Google uses to create its rich snippets.
No comments:
Post a Comment