Google+ Authoriship Setup

Google+ Authoriship Setup Guide

By Egor Pervuninski

Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group. All Rights Reserved.

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Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group | Google+ Authoriship Setup Guide 2

Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group

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First Edition, November 2012

Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group | Google+ Authoriship Setup Guide 3

Table of Contents

Google+ Authoriship Setup Guide ...................................................................... 1

Introduction ....................................................................................................... 4

Configuring personal Google+ profile ................................................................ 5

Scenario #1: Mister James Bond has only authored a single post ................... 8

Scenario #2: Mister James Bond as a sole author ........................................... 9

Configuring Google+ business page ................................................................. 11

Testing ............................................................................................................. 15

Tips and Tricks ................................................................................................. 16

Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 17

Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group | Introduction 4

Introduction

As of 2012 Google starts to employ a personalised search and knowledge graph

technologies.

As a website owner you ought to embrace the new technology for at least one

of the following reasons:

Set yourself apart from spammers and amateurs

Establish yourself (or your marketing persona) as an expert in selected

field

Establish your website authority

Improve your search result listing click-through ratio

This report covers two authorship setups. One with a single author website

(global authorship tag) and another is with multiple authors (authorship tag on

pages).

I will call the website we are configuring the authorship tagging for a target

website.

Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group | Configuring personal Google+ profile 5

Configuring personal Google+ profile

Personal profile identifies you (or a marketing persona you use) as an

individual. Think about it as Google’s version of a personal Facebook account.

You will have a home page similar to Facebook wall with a stream of posts

from your circles (Google+ version of friend lists). You will also be able to post

videos, images and, of course, text updates.

However, the most important part of personal profile for us is a contributor

section where you can specify the list of websites you are posting to. As a

reward, Google will show a profile image under the post ranking in the search

results page.

Before you configure personal Google+ profile you need to create a Google

account. So, if you don’t have one already, head over to

http://plus.google.com and sign up for one.

Make sure you upload a headshot photo, minimum 250x250px.

To illustrate the point I’ve just created an account for Mister James Bond.

http://plus.google.com/


I am going to cover two scenarios. In the first scenario Mister James Bond has

only authored a single post and in the second scenario Mister James Bond is

the sole author of all posts and pages on the website.

Regardless of the scenario, first step is to edit your personal Google+ profile

and add a target website to Contributor To section.

Head over to http://plus.google.com, select an about page and click Edit

Profile.

http://plus.google.com/


Scroll down and select Contributor To section.

Add a link to your target website.

After that, click Finish Editing to complete personal Google+ profile

configuration.

Believe me or not, this is all that you need to do to configure personal Google+

profile. You can go ahead and add as many details as you like but this is the

only step required for linking.

As a result, you profile will look like this.


Now, let’s configure the target website.

Scenario #1: Mister James Bond has only authored a single

post

In this scenario I am going to add a new post to the blog and attribute the

authorship of this post to Mister James Bond.


As you can see, I simply added a little author reference at the end of the post

and I created a hyperlink back to Google+ personal profile page with added

?rel=author at the end.

If you put a post URL in Google Structured Data Testing Tool (see Testing

section below) you will see the verified authorship confirmation.

Scenario #2: Mister James Bond as a sole author

This is an easier scenario as all you need to do is to put a link to personal

Google+ profile to blog footer or sidebar and all pages that use the same

template will have a reference to the Google+ profile and thus have authorship

setup.

If you don’t know what to choose, I recommend you use this scenario as it is

easier to set up, you don’t need to remember to tag every page and all of your

target website pages, including the home page, might get a picture in the

search results benefits.

I’d like to use sidebar widgets, those widgets that are used to reference social

networking profiles like the following.


The Google+ link points to personal Google+ profile.

For example, I added Google+ button with a link to a personal Google+ profile

to the sidebar widget.

The result of verification should look the same for any page of the website.

Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group | Configuring Google+ business page 11

Configuring Google+ business page

Google+ business page is similar to Facebook pages feature. You can create

one or many business pages for different businesses and websites but you only

supposed to have a single personal Google+ profile.

You will be able to post videos, images and text updates to Google+ page as

well as specify your business address, hour of operation, contact email and

phone numbers. These Google+ business pages are meant to replace old

Google Places listing.

You don’t necessarily need to have a business to create a page. You may create

a page for a product or brand, a movie or a band, company or any organisation

and simply for a website.

Let’s create a page for a Jame’s website now. In your Google+ account select

Pages and Create New Page.

I normally choose Product or Brand and Website as a category. At the end of

the day you are actually going to create a Google+ page for website, aren’t

you.


On the next page, type your website title and address and agree to Google+

terns of service.


One the next page simply click Finish and then select About from the menu.

You Google+ business page is now ready. Feel free to upload a profile image (it

will not be show in the search results so you can use logos).

After you finish, last step is to link the website. So, click Link website.

Google+ will provide you with a snippet of code you need to put on your target

website home page. Do not close this window until you put the code on your

website.

I’d like to use WordPress widgets to add the code to the website but any

method will do.

Here is an example.


I copied and pasted the code to the sidebar widget.

The publisher information should appear in Google Structured Data Testing

Tool when you test your website URL.

At this stage you will have linked your personal Google+ profile as well as

Google+ page to your target website.

Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group | Testing 15

Testing

To test your set up at any time, use Google Structured Data Testing Tool.

1. Open http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

2. Type your website URL

3. Confirm that author and publisher are now verified

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group | Tips and Tricks 16

Tips and Tricks

1. Always use a link to your personal Google+ profile when you post a

guest blog post

Add a blog you are going to guest post at to Contributor To section of

your personal Google+ profile. Then, add a link with your name pointing

to your Google+ profile using rel=author in addition to any other links.

This will allow Google to establish a track record of your online activities

and improve your rank as an author. The goal is to have an established

trusted author profile so your new posts (tagged with your rel=author

link) will automatically be more trusted.

2. Carefully choose your marketing personal and photo

As a personal Google+ profile photo will likely to appear in search results

page, select your image and marketing personal carefully. Attractive girl

picture tend to increate click-through ratio on your search result listing

and official suite-and-tie or uniform images are recommended for

professional services.

Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group | Conclusion 17

Conclusion There’s no reason for you not to do it today. It is still quite new. Your

competitors are probably not using it yet. It will increase traffic without

increasing your search result position and will help you to establish your

website authority as well as a trust rank of your chosen marketing persona.

Google+ Authoriship Setup

Technology

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