Google Authorship Markup for Bloggers

When Google introduced its social network – Google+ last year, it also announced a few author tools that enables authors to connect to their content. Though most people have not cared about this, it is time bloggers and content creators started utilizing the Google authorship markup promoting their content.

Why use Google Authorship tool?

It helps you get credited for the content you wrote and lets appear your name and profile picture appear in the Google search results. It also helps you gain more traffic from your Google+ profile and help you get more authority for your writing.

Setting up Google authorship markup

1. Create a Google Plus profile, if you don’t have one already. If you have a Google account (Gmail/Picasa) you can easily setup a Gplus profile. Use a professional picture of yourself.
2. Create a about page in your blog. Link it to your Google plus profile. <a href=”http://gplus.to/myname” rel=”me”>My Profile</a>
3. Link your blog to your google profile. Go to your google profile page, and edit the profile to change the “Contributor To” component. Add your blog about me link to this.
4. Create an anchor tag with rel=”author” element embedded for each post your write. You can embed them in your Author bio.
5. Link multiple author pages by creating reciprocal links. For example, your posts can refer to each other similar to this: Rick has also written <a rel=”me” href=”http://foo.example.com/contributors/rickcameron”>lots of articles for the Foo Times</a>.
6.  Go to Google Webmaster tools and check if your author link is now verified in the system. Enter your link and click Preview. If your links show with you as the author, then you are good to go.

WordPress Special instructions

Edit the user profile info in your admin page and link to your Google plus page in your bio with a rel=”me” tag. Setup your theme to display author bios. This way you will utilize the Google authorship markup in every post automatically.

Google’s Matt Cutts explains on the Google authorship markup

For more information use the Google support page on authorship.