Google Authorship was introduced a few years ago and has been steadily growing in popularity with bloggers and other online content producers. Recently, Google has made it even easier for those using WordPress to automate authorship– meaning, if you’d like to see your name and photo up in lights, so to speak, the process is even easier.
What is Google Authorship?
Essentially, Google Authorship is Google’s way of identifying the author of a piece of content – a factor it takes into consideration when determining the quality of a post or online article for search results rankings. It was created to allow writers to claim their content, like Charles here, while enabling search engine users to find more content written by the same writer.
Google Authorship is beneficial for online content producers, because the higher the quality of the content you produce, the more enhanced your author authority will be. This means the ranking of your posts could be positively impacted by your authority as an author or blogger, rather than determined solely by your website’s authority. It can also help establish credibility as an online content author, which is especially important for bloggers looking to build their audience.
As a Google Author, your content will be displayed in search results alongside a profile photo.
Become a Google Author
While the process has been somewhat confusing up until now, a new partnership with WordPress means bloggers and users of WP as a CMS can automatically claim their content by connecting Google+ with their WordPress profile. If you haven’t yet signed up for Google+, take a few minutes to create an account now.
I tested the process for myself to see just how easy it is, and found it took a matter of minutes.
Connect WP with Google+
First, log into WordPress and then click the Profile tab in the right-hand navigation of the Dashboard. Open a new tab and log into your Google+ account, and then copy your unique Google+ identification number from the address bar. Paste your ID into the Google+ field in the Contact Info section of your profile, and hit the Update Profile button.
If you get confused, your Google+ ID should look something like https://plus.google.com/u/0/123456789101112131415/.
Add the site/ blog you contribute to
Next, go back to your Google+ profile, and click the About tab in the top navigation. From here you’ll see the people in your circles and all of the other information you’ve decided to include in your account. In the Links box, click Edit, and then click Add custom link under the Contributor to sub-header.
Name the source you contribute to, add the URL of the site, and then select whether you are a past or current contributor, before hitting save.
Verify
Finally, you can test that you’ve completed both of the above steps properly by using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool, which will do the checking for you. I tested a link for a recent post I wrote about Multilingual WordPress Websites, and the online tool confirmed authorship was working correctly.
Given that I’d looked into setting myself up on Google Authorship a few months ago and been scared off by the coding and authorisation process required, I was pleasantly surprised at just how simple the process now is for WordPress users.
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Google Authorship and WordPress orginally published on WP Themes
