First off, what exactly is Google Authorship? Most people I talk to have no idea and most have never even heard of it. So, according to searchenginejournal.com, Google “Authorship is establishing you, to Google, as the author of a piece of content that gets published on a website. In simple terms, it’s like establishing yourself as the confirmed author of your blog by using your Google+ profile. And they take your Google+ profile picture and use it as the author picture in SERPs (which stands for Search Engine Results Page). That’s pretty much it in a nutshell.”
So, why should you care about creating Authorship online? I would say the biggest reason is that is helps you build credibility and trustworthiness online. When you create relevant content online and link it with your Google+ account, your name and shiny happy face is forever connected with this content.
Just so we’re clear – If you write a blog, you are an author of content. And you should be taking advantage of this. You want brides to be able to hear your online voice. When brides read what you have to say they see you as the expert! You don’t want to miss out on the great perks that Google Authorship has for you.
Google Authorship also helps drive traffic to your website when people are searching for information. So, your blog, article, etc has a greater chance of coming up first online when you have this set up. Remember, this is a Google product, and you better believe this is connected to every other Google product.
Nerdy side note – “In 2005, Google filed a U.S. patent on Agent Rank, a system that would allow the content of expert authors to rank higher in search results pages than the content from less credible authors. In many ways, this was to be the foundation for today’s Google authorship.” -Thanks to bufferapp.com for that little tidbit.
A great perk that I should mention is that Google Authorship is free. You don’t have to feel like this is advertising that someone is trying to sell you. There is no cost to you.
Should you set up Google Authorship for yourself? Interesting question here. You might notice that I specifically asked about “yourself”. That’s because Google Authorship is designed for AUTHORS of content – meaning, actual people. You won’t set Authorship under your company name. Authorship is connected to a human, that actually wrote the content themselves.
You should consider this if you write any content online for your business. Or anyone else’s for that matter.
So, how do you do it? First, you need to have a Google+ account. Then, go here – https://plus.google.com/
You’ll need to have a picture of your face. Yes, your face! Not your kid or your dog or your business logo. They want your pretty little face. Keep in mind that this is the picture that will show up next to your authored content online. On multiple heat map and eye tracking tests the viewers eye goes straight to the picture of someone’s face, not the headline or other parts of the page, like you would think. We’re very social people and we’re attracted to faces.
Now what? How does Google know when I write something and associate it with me? Aww, good question. You can’t just join Google+ and hope Google finds you. In addition to writing your content, you have to tell Google+ the sites where you contribute, in order for authorship to work for you. To make this happen you need to edit the About section on your Google+ profile and the contributor links specifically.
It all sounds a little complicated but it’s pretty easy. And you pretty much do the work once and Google takes it from there. If you’re like us and totally geek out on stuff like this, you can go to this blog – http://blog.bufferapp.com/why-
and get more information. This is one of the most descriptive blogs I’ve found on this issue of Google Authorship, that’s written in a way that human beings (and not machine type humans) can actually understand.
Are you already using Google Authorship? What are your thoughts? How is it working for you? Let us know in the comments section below.
I love the Google Authorship concept. I’ve been using it for a while now, and I do notice that my Google+ profile picture always displays with my blog posts on a Google search.