How does Google know who wrote this?

The answer is Google Authorship – a nifty feature that lets authors (like you) be connected to the content they write in Google search results.

It’s a useful thing for authors because a) people are more likely to notice and click on a result with a face next to it and b) if people consistently like your stuff, your stuff might be ranked more highly in their personalised search results in future.

So how do you do it?

There’s a slightly different method for Blogger and WordPress users – and the bad news for WordPressers is that it’s a wee bit harder. But it’s not TOO taxing, we promise.

 

Instructions for Blogger

Step 1: Create a Google+ Account

If you don’t have one, create a Google+ account, and complete the profile section fully. Upload a full face photo that is recognisable – Google won’t display arty shots, logos and the like, in most cases.

Step 2: Connect Google+ to your Blog

In your Blogger dashboard, click on Google+ and you’ll be invited to switch from your Blogger ID to your Google+ ID. Tick ‘I agree’ and ‘switch now’

Step 3: Check your contributor status

Go back to your G+ profile and you should see that your blog has appeared – look in the ‘links’ section of your profile. 

Step 4: Check it worked

The Google Rich Snippets site is a handy way of checking that what you did worked. Type your blog URL, or the URL of one of your posts into the box and click ‘preview’. You should see something like this:

Step 5: All done!

Don’t panic if your picture doesn’t appear in search results right away – it can take several weeks. Providing the rich snippets tool isn’t picking up on problems, you should see your picture appear eventually.

 

Instructions for WordPress

Step 1: Create a Google Plus Account

If you don’t have one, create a Google+ account, and complete the profile section fully. Upload a full face photo that is recognisable – Google won’t display arty shots, logos and the like, in most cases.

Step 2: Add your G+ profile to your blog user account

When your account is set up, make sure you put the URL of your G+ profile into your WordPress user account, which is accessed in your blog dashboard. You can find the URL of your G+ profile by clicking on profile – it’s the one that looks a bit like this: plus.google.com/lotsofrandomnumbers/posts?

Step 3: Add your blog link to your Google+ profile

In your profile, you can tell Google the address of your blogs, and any other sites you regularly contribute to. Add your blog home page, or author page, if you have one.

Step 4 (the easy version): Verify your Authorship by Email

In your G+ profile, add an email address that uses your blog domain, such as [mail]@[yourblogname].com. G+ will send you a link to click on, to verify that you own that email address. Providing you have a byline on all your posts that matches the name on your G+ profile, you should be all set.

Step 4 (the less easy version): Create an Author Box/Page

Maybe you don’t own your own domain, or don’t have email for your domain. Maybe you do, but the computers hate you and this step didn’t work. Don’t panic. We have an alternative, which basically relies on your adding the rel=author tag to your content. The best (read: easiest) way to do this is with a plug-in such as AuthorSure, which creates an author page on your blog AND adds the required tag to your posts.

Step 5: Tag your whole blog

If your blog only shows partial posts with a ‘read more’ tag you may find the Author plug-ins don’t work on your blog homepage.

The solution here is actually pretty simple – just add a simple link somewhere on your blog (ideally the header, footer or sidebar) that contains a link to your G+ profile that carries the rel=author tag

I put a simple copyright statement in my footer and made my name into a hyperlink to my G+ profile, using the rel=author tag. The code for this is pretty straightforward – just pop it into a text widget:

All content strictly copyright <a href=”https://plus.google.com/117079763782826581726/posts?rel=author”>Sally Whittle </a> 2009-2013

Step 6: Check it worked

The Google Rich Snippets site is a handy way of checking that what you did worked. Type your blog URL, or the URL of one of your posts into the box and click ‘preview’. You should see something like this:

Step 6: All done!

Don’t panic if your picture doesn’t appear in search results right away – it can take several weeks. Providing the rich snippets tool isn’t picking up on problems, you should see your picture appear eventually.

Writing on other websites:

If you are guest posting on another blog, you probably won’t have an email address from that domain , and you won’t be able to add friendly plug-ins either. So what can you do?

The easiest way to solve the problem is to ask the blog owner to include a biography of you alongside the post. Somewhere in the bio, include a sentence along the lines of Find Sally Whittle on … and then add the code below, which will make the word Google+ into a tagged link to your G+ profile.