The interest in Google Authorship is rising almost as fast as the increase of usage of mobile devices to browse websites and search the internet. It got off to a slow start, but the adoption rate among search engine optimization and social media marketing professionals is quickly picking up steam.
I’m a little embarrassed to admit that when I first heard about Google Authorship it went in one ear and out of the other. I couldn’t imagine setting up yet another profile on yet another social network just so my picture would show up on a search results page.
Thank goodness my colleague and fellow Search Engine Academy instructor Nancy Wigal kept encouraging and educating me about the importance of Google Authorship and Google Plus and how they can help you achieve your SEO goals. If it hadn’t been for her I may have waited to verify my authorship or even worse, I may not have done it at all {GASP!}
In a very short amount of time I’ve gone from being ambivalent about it to borderline fanatical. I recently came across a good Quick Start Guide on Search Engine Watch, the second sentence of the article by Chuck Price was “If you aren’t on Google+, you’re on the path to irrelevance.” It might have been that sentence that tipped the scale from mere supporter to full-fledged advocate.
Simply put, Google Authorship is going through a process which includes setting up a profile on Google+ to verify your identity as an author. Or in other words they know that a real human wrote and published the content.
When I first heard about it, I thought, “Ok, so after I set up a Google + profile and now my picture might show up on a search result page, so what.” How is that going to help me with SEO?
Don’t get me wrong, I thought it would be kind of cool to have my picture associated with a piece of content but other than that I didn’t really ‘get’ it. And boy oh boy – did I totally miss the importance of Google+and why it should be part of your web presence and search engine optimization strategy.
The bottom line is that If you have a Google+ profile you’ll be more visible in search results than if you don’t have one. This started to happen as far back as 2009 (ancient history in internet time) when Google introduced Social Search, which was designed to help people quickly find publicly available web content from your social contacts. In January of 2012, they introduced Search, plus Your World, which incorporates personal results, profiles, people, and pages in search. In other words if you search on a term that someone in one of your circles has written about, their content will be far more likely to show up in your search results.
As with anything else related to SEO, there are additional variables that will be taken into account before a piece of content is considered relevant enough to display in your results, but who you are connected to and whether or not they’ve verified authorship is certainly one of them.
There are benefits beyond SEO as well, and if you’re an author of content I think you’ll welcome them.
Benefits of Google Authorship:
- Higher click through rates – statistically people click through at a higher rate on links with rich snippets
- Establish authority – a result with a headshot separates you from the back and reinforces that it’s a credible piece of content
- Keep your identity – a picture’s worth a thousand words – if you have a common name like ‘Beth Browning,’ you’ll be able to put the name with a face
- Beat plagiarism – he original author gets credit – wave goodbye to copy artists and article spinners
- Build Trust – it’s all about relationships and people and this is one more way to build trust in an on-line world
- Verify guest posts and comments – your profile follows along as you comment on blogs and publish posts on other blogs
- Elevate the value and role of writers – as businesses start to recognize the benefits, good writers won’t have to defend why they charge $100 or more for a blog post
If you’re contributing content and you haven’t verified your Google+ Authorship, don’t wait any longer – get started here now.
Join me here on Google+ for regular tips on SEO and more – I’m still learning, so let’s have some fun while we learn together – be sure to mention you read this post.
What are your thoughts about Google Authorship?
2 weeks ago I read a post on how one +1 from a strong Google Plus boosted the ranking of a website. For that to happen though, the G+ a/c must be relevant to the niche in question. So if the website was in the travel niche, the G+ a/c needs to be talking about travelling too but it shows how important Google Plus is becoming.
It is becoming increasingly important and the relevancy factor makes sense. Just like it’s important to have links from sites that are relevant to your site. I think it’s going to be fascinating to watch it all unfold!
Although I’ve known about Google+ authorship for a while, I’ve refrained from enabling it on our site http://www.onedirection.net simply because our readership aren’t really interested in much in seeing publicly who wrote each piece. I viewed us as a “collective” rather than a group of individual writers, and wasn’t sure of the effect it would have (talking seo obviously).
However, I’m seeing more and more author profiles alongside Google listings now so it seems like the time is right to enable it. Tomorrow we’ll be rolling it out fully across the site so we’ll be paying attention to any traffic changes (as we always do).
The site receives a very high amount of visitors, currently approx 1 million a month, so it will also be interesting to see the effect it has on each individual authors profile. Naturally we’ll be expecting a steady increase.
How long will it be before most search results have over 50% of listings featuring a visible author? 🙂
Chris,
Thanks for stopping by to read and leave a comment! I think you’re making the right move to roll it out – the more I read and learn, the more convinced I am it’s the way to go. The results should be interesting indeed! Be sure to stop by and share what happens. As for how long until over 50% of listings have a visible author? hmmmmm if only I had a crystal ball 😉
Cheers!
Beth
I have spent this entire weekend reading about Google Authorship and setting my web sites up for it. I even set up the sites I guess post on as well. As experts in our field we need to establish trust and I agree with your post and rationale.
By taking the extra steps to establish your credibility can help you grow your brand. I, too have been fanatical with Google Authorship and I wished I would have known and understood it earlier.
Thanks for the good post and I just Circled you on Google+.
Chip,
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your experience. I definitely believe you’ve made the right move in getting Google Authorship set up!
Glad you found the post helpful.
Headed to Google+ to Circle you back 🙂
Cheers!
That is great, in todays technological world, I think a businesses’ website is one of, if not the, most important marketing tools. Thank you!!
Why do I install Google Authorship, testing on Rich Snippets Testing Tool is ok but it does not show on Google?
Google authorship is still a work in progress, and it goes up and down. This is very common for all of us to have our authorship profile go in and out of the SERPs. As long as the rich snippets testing tool is good, your authorship will show up. Typically, it takes about a week for your authorship profile to start showing up in SERPs. It’s very frustrating, but extremely common, unfortunately.
Hi Laura,
As Nancy mentioned, it’s a work in progress.
I was nearly going crazy trying to figure out why mine wasn’t showing up. I located a section in the Google Webmaster Tools Help section is that helped – “Author information not appearing: – here’s a link
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1306778
The first sentence is: “Google will only show authorship in search results when we think it will be useful to the user.”
I’m not sure what the criterion is that determines whether or not the authorship profile to display, but my take on it (based on the opening sentence) is that it is not always going to appear.
If you’ve tested it using the tool, then you’re good to go 🙂
You have explained the concept of Google authorship very well. Keep updating us with posts like this.
Thanks for sharing my post about Google+ and SEO!