A few days ago I published a blog post titled “Google and the value of AuthorRank” where I explain the value of this feature on Google. In this post I explain how you can set it up on your profile.
In today’s digital connected world, any way you look at it, you need to establish yourself as the leader in your industry and Google AuthorRank can help you with this. If you publish relevant and interesting content on a regular basis, it’s important to setup Google Authorship so that you can become recognized as the leader in your niche. If you have setup Google Authorship, your profile will be displayed next to the search results together with your content. This is an excellent way to establish yourself as the known author of the content piece and become known as the topic expert.
How to get started
If you haven’t set this up yet, start by creating your Google+ profile. Use a professional photo on your profile that will be displayed next to your content. After you have done this, you will need to associate the content that you publish with your Google+ profile. The content that you publish should reference you as the author of the content. Take note that even if you setup your profile correctly for Google Authorship, Google once again doesn’t guarantee to show your author information in the search engine result pages.
With Google Authorship, there are a couple of specific requirements you have to setup on your Google+ profile.
On Google+
- Upload a clear professional photo to use for your profile.
- Add your biography to your about page.
- Under “other profiles” on the about page, add custom links to your social media profiles such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
- On the “contributor” section, add links to the domains you are publishing content items on.
- Under the “+1” tab, check the box so that these can show on your profile.
- Complete as much information on your profile.
On other websites
Next you have to link your content to Google+ and there are currently two ways of doing this.
- Direct linking: At the bottom of each article you are publishing, include a mini bio with a link back to your Google+ profile.
- Indirect linking: Each article you publish can link to your top profile page on the website that lists all your content items on the domain. On this page include a link back to your Google+ profile.
Once you have setup your Google+ profile for Google Authorship and linked your content to your profile, it might take awhile before you see the changes on the search results. When I did mine a couple of months ago, it took two weeks before it was displayed.