Complete Guide on Google Authorship Markup
Google introduced authorship markup on search results to help users discover great content more easily. Google wants to highlight content that is written by authoritative experts in their respective field and pages that provide valuable information.
Consider this: You are searching for information on content marketing for startups. There are nearly 43,000,000 search results discussing content marketing for startups so how do you cut through the noise and find the best results?
The results on first page might be relevant to your query, but there is no guarantee that the same page is written by an expert. A search engine shows results on the basis of algorithms and there are so many situations when the entire system may fall flat on its face.
How Authorship is Shown On Google Search Results
When you search for a keyword on Google, you might see a few highlighted results as shown below:
The highlighted results are accompanied by an author thumbnail on the left, while the popularity of the author is revealed by the his Google Plus circle count. This is another way Google results can standout and provide relevancy before even being clicked.
How to Add Google Authorship Markup on Your Website
The "standard" way of adding Google’s authorship markup is as follows:
1. Create an author page on your website/blog and provide detailed information about the author on this page. If your blog has multiple authors, you should create separate pages for each author, rather than adding all the author bios on a single page. While it won’t hurt to have all the author bios listed in your site’s official “about” page, you should create separate author pages for each author.
2. Every author should have a Google Plus account. On the author page, add a link to the author’s Google profile (or Google Plus profile) using the rel=”me” attribute.
To be more clear, you should use the following HTML code on the source of an author page: <a rel="me" href="http://plus.google.com/YourGooglePlusAccountNumber/">Anchor Text to your Google Plus profile</a>
The anchor text used above, is not a very important factor but it makes sense to use something relevant (e.g “Connect with me on Google Plus” or “My Google Plus profile”).
Note: Do not use the rel=”nofollow” attribute in this link. You must allow Googlebot to crawl this link.
3. Now you have to link your article pages to their respective author pages on your website. On every article page on your domain, add a link to the corresponding author page using the rel=”author” attribute.
Here is the HTML code: <a rel="author" href="http://yoursite.com/authorpage.html/">Author’s Name</a>
4. This is important. Have the authors upload a good, recognizable headshot as profile photo on his/her Google Plus profile. Next, they should edit their profile and add a back link to the author page on your domain.
Here is how you add the link from your Google Plus profile to the author page on your domain:
Some points to note:
- You can always add links of multiple author pages on different domains from a single Google Plus profile or Google Profile. No need to create or use multiple Google accounts.
- No HTML code should be used in your Google Plus profile. Add the link in plain text.
5. Finally, head over to the Rich Snippets Testing Tool and check an article page on your domain. If everything is in order, you should see your author thumbnail and a verification message at the bottom of the page. Here is an example:
Here is a pictorial representation of the entire author markup procedure:
Lastly, here is a brilliant video where Matt Cutts and Othar Hansson discuss the classical way of adding authorship markup on your website:
Check out our 8 Ways to be a Trusted Author In Google’s Eyes to get your Google+ profile showing in Google SERPs.
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Have you added Google Authorship Markup to your website? If so, how has it affected your traffic? Have you been able to measure any changes in click-through rates via Google Webmaster Tools?
Thanks Keso for the image.