Why you should claim your content with Google Authorship!
What is Google Authorship?
If you are a habitual “Googler” like I am you probably noticed while doing searches that certain search results have the author’s picture and name beside it like mine do in the search results displayed in the image below. This is called Google Authorship. Google introduced Authorship around the end of 2011 and slowly more and more bloggers are taking advantage of this. What exactly is Google Authorship? It’s a way to give your search results a face and name by providing your Google+ profile headshot and your name within the search results.
What are the Benefits of Google Authorship?
- Improved Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rankings
- Higher Click Through Rate (CTR)
- Your search result stands out and looks pretty? 😛
- More benefits in this post via copyblogger.com ex: beating plagiarism, guest posts, establish your name, etc..
How Google Authorship has benefited me:
I am going to use two search terms that I get a lot of clicks from as an example. First one is “Windlight Settings” and the other is “Blog Meme” which of those search results would your eyes jump to automatically? I also noticed that because of Google Authorship, if you just google my name “Strawberry Singh” my Google+ Page pops up on the side with pictures and some recent posts on there. Authorship really makes your search results stand out and clearly shows that you are the author of that content!
How to setup Google Authorship:
- Use the Structured Data Testing Tool to see if Google Authorship has already been setup for your blog. If not, then follow the next steps.
- Create a Google+ Account for yourself, and remember to put a clear, sharp headshot as your profile picture on Google+ because that will be the image showing up in search results.
- Follow the instructions on the Google Authorship Page to link your Google+ Profile to the content you create.
- If you have a self-hosted wordpress blog, you can also use any of the Google Authorship plugins to help speed up the process.
- If you get stuck in the setup process, the hostgator blog has very simple to follow step by step instructions. They use the Yoast SEO Plugin to set it up on their blog, which is the one I use as well.
After completing all the steps, you should be able to start seeing your name and picture popping up on search results when using Google. Once you’ve done all of that, don’t forget to add a Google+ badge to your blog so people know you are on Google+ and can add you to their circles.
Benefits of joining Google+ for Second Life Residents
- Google+ has a strong Second Life community with over 1200 members:
https://plus.google.com/communities/108101615729506942183 - Google+ now has hashtags so it makes it easier to follow topics on there:
https://plus.google.com/s/%23SecondLife
I hope you found this post informative. If you have any questions, feel free to email me and don’t forget to follow me on Google+ I have a Google+ Profile as well as a Google+ Page for my blog.
» For more of my tutorials, check out my tutorials page.
I’ve been considering making a Google+ name; I wish I could just use Deoridhe Grimsdottir instead of worrying they won’t consider it my “real name”.
Thanks for the reminder on this, strangely, I’d overlooked it for my own blog! Authorship tagging is highly recommended for blogs. I’ve read some articles recently that it’s been seen to drop visits if your blog is associated for with products, a service, or a business, as opposed to your personal brand. So this is a very good use for it!
Thanks for the tutorial. I went a on G+ spree this morning and finally made myself a profile.
Deoridhe, actually Google approved my authorship and I use my SL name on there so they are ok with using pseudonyms now, as far as I know. You can definitely sign up I believe!
Canary and Sian, no problem and gonna make sure I’m stalking you both on G+ now!
I just went and added Around the Grid in to Google, as well as to Bing. A note for wordpress.com users: you can do this by requesting a meta tag from either service, and then plugging in the content part of the tag to the proper slot in your Available Tools dashboard page, under the Tools button. You can read the support page at wordpress.com for more information.
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Frustratingly Google+ do not like my name, apparently it violates their names policy. I have appealed showing them details of my Facebook, Scoop it, twitter, flickr plurk, wordpress etc accounts. I have shown them you get 12900 results by typing “Annie Brightstar” into Google search, all to no avail.
Has anyone ever successfully appealed?
I have been trying to figure out how to get my blog high in the search results listings. Thanks for posting this Berry!
Thankies! I’ve been struggling with this.
Strawberry, so far as I know Google+ goes back and forth on this, and they instituted a four days permanent ban about a year to year and a half ago. I really don’t feel like dealing with setting up a bunch of stuff on G+ when there is little to no guarantee I can protect it.
That sucks that Google+ is still doing this. I thought things were settled with all that and pseudonyms were now allowed. I guess I’ll keep an eye on my profile, make sure it’s not disabled out of the blue.
Berry, thank you, AS ALWAYS, for sharing this great info! One thing that I’d like to mention is authorship for “guest posts.” What if, for example, you’re a contributor to another site, say iRez — you can still claim authorship!
ONE:
On your profile on the site you contribute to, under the G+ box, just add “?rel=author” like:
https://plus.google.com/104082922655269707775?rel=author
TWO:
Then on your G+ profile add the site, iRez, or any other site, to your list of “Contributed to” websites.
That’s it! 🙂
Annie, Deoridhe, Berry, I *think* I know G+’s “real” policy on pseudonyms.
Back when G+ launched, Google Senior VP Vic Gundotra launched a “witch hunt” to out & ban pseudonymous users of G+. In the early days it was pretty bad. Making a G+ profile back then locked some peeps out of years of Google Docs they’d created and other basic services. G+ / Gundotra wound up launching “The Nymwars” which peeps like Botgirl and many others documented extensively.
Google later claimed to revise or ease their “real name” policy. As far as I can tell, what they did not do is change the functional nature of the policy or the code that implements it. What they did do is end the witch hunt.
Basically now, the policy exists as code, and that code is fairly similar to the “policy” / “code” that Facebook runs. If, for example, you try to make a profile on either of those sites with a name like “Vaneeesa” you will be blocked. If you say your name is “Vanessa,” you’ll be told, “Welcome to our world!”
Long after G+ had allegedly “fixed” the real name policy I finally applied as “Vaneeesa Blaylock,” the name I’d used on Gmail, Gdocs, etc, for years, and was blocked. I submitted an appeal listing all the various web links and content and the appeal was rejected with no explanation. Later still, I tried to make a G+ with “Vanessa” and was greeted warmly.
As I see it, G+ and Facebook don’t really “care” what your name is in the emotional way that we “care,” rather they simply have CODE that tries to sift out “fakes” (whatever exactly those are) and in my case, they just really hate repeating vowels, so Vaneeesa is bad, and Vanessa is great.
There’s no harm in filing an appeal, but from my limited knowledge, they’re basically rejected. The only exceptions I’ve heard of is either if you’re a Chinese dissident blogger of international repute, or if you’re an American new media type, famous enough to be known by a Google VP.
Thanks Van for the update on all this. I used your example and updated my Google+ link for irez there, so hopefully that should be working properly.
I guess we can treat Google+ like Facebook. I have accounts for my sl avatar on both, if I lose them, I guess I won’t get too worried about it. But for now it’s working for me so I’ll keep it up. I have noticed that more and more people are really starting to use Google+ and I’m getting a lot more hits from it and people are interacting there more.
Thanks again for all your input and assistance! <3
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Just an update to my reply of June 7th. This morning I opened my email and to my surprise my 3rd appeal has been upheld and I have joined the Google+ ranks
Great news, congrats Annie!
Tremendous issues here. I am very satisfied to see your post. Thanks so much and I am taking a look ahead to touch you. Will you please drop me a mail?
Impressing web site, a great understand. I could meet below for hours
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