You may have noticed that Google is now displaying authors’ information (author’s picture, name and link to their Google profile page) in their search engine results.
At the same time, there is a Google +1 button to enable web users to click and recommend the page to their Google Plus circle of friends or connects.
If you are the owner of a blog or a guest blogger, you would definitely want Google to display your profile beside the search results of your blog posts. This will enhance your personal brand.
Below is a sample of Google’s search results:
Below are the steps to set up your Google Authorship Markup:
Step 1: Open a Gmail account (if you do not have one) and create your Google profile. The link to access your profile is located on the top right hand corner of your Gmail account. Make sure you upload your profile picture into your profile page.
Step 2: Link your blog posts or pages to your Google profile. Let’s look at how it’s done if you are a single-author blog owner and a guest blogger.
Single-author blog:
The easiest way is to insert a Google Profile button either into your blog’s header, footer or any location as it will be shown on every posts or page. In the Google Profile button page, insert your Google profile URL into the box provided and then copy paste the generated button codes into the place in your blog where you want the button to appear.
Note: When you are inside your Google Profile page, your web browser will display your Google Profile URL in the URL Address box. Below is a sample of Google’s Profile URL in bold:
https://plus.google.com/112157894217757912697/about/edit/d
Guest Blogger:
If you are a guest blogger, the easiest way is to put your Google Profile link at the top or bottom of each individual post or article you are contributing. Before you paste the link into your blog post or page, make sure to switch to the HTML format. Below are samples of the Google Profile link which you can use:
<p> Author:<a href=”https://plus.google.com/112157894217757972697?rel=author”>Your Name+</a></p> or
<p> The author<a href=”https://plus.google.com/112157894217757972697?rel=author”>+Your Name</a>is a full time…</p>
Note: Using either one of the above samples, you just need to insert your Google Profile URL and your anchor text in the places shown in bold respectively. Make sure your anchor text must start or end with a plus (+) sign in order for it to work. Secondly, do not change the “?rel=author” parameter.
Step 3: In this step, go to your Google Profile page to link back to your single-author blog or individual blog posts or page if you are a guest blogger. This will confirm to Google that you are the real author of these articles. When you are in your Google Profile page, click ‘Edit Profile” which will display the following:
For a single-author blog owner, click the “Other profiles” link and insert your blog’s URL (e.g. http://yourblogname.com). If you are a guest blogger, click the “Contributor to” link and insert the URLs of your individual guest posts.
Step 4: Go over to the Google’s Rich Snippets Testing tool and test whether you have correctly set up the above. Just enter your blog’s main URL (single-author blog owner) or individual post’s URL (single-author blog owner or guest blogger) and hit the “Preview” button. You should see your profile picture appearing and the verification text “Verified: Authorship markup is correct for this page” as shown in the sample below:
That’s it. This is the easy way to set up Google’s Authorship Markup to display your author information on their search results. Do let me know if it works for your blog.
