SEO: Google™ Authorship & Publisher Verification (depreciated)

by | Jan 4, 2015 | SEO | 13 comments

google authorship markup results

Notes for 2015. The importance of this is depreciated since of course it was misused.
Google +, with it’s ability to ‘verify’ the existence of a real person and offer all Google products within a couple clicks, is a white hat SEO‘s dream come true.

If you manage many Fb pages for small to medium sized business[I manage +/- 20], you know how the changes over the last year have greatly reduced the page’s worth as a marketing tool. It seems goog has been watching the neverending stream of complaints directed at Fb, especially from a mid size business perspective, and have gone ahead and made their social network a super alternative. Alternative is the right word because Plus is actually quite different than Facebook.

google authorship markup resultsA good way to start using Google plus for SEO is adding authorship and publisher markup on your web-pages. This may prompt Google to display your Google plus profile picture on search results pages next to the links that highlight  your work. It may also prompt your business page logo to be shown on search results pages as well. !!! Come on, which link are you going to click, the link with the verified picture next to it or the hundreds of other nameless faceless results?

Publisher Markup. First thing to do is add the publisher markup to your homepage. This is easy, it’s just tweaking a link to your business page. My business page url is https://plus.google.com/104197066146444489949 and all I must do is add ?rel=publisher to the end for…

Example: https://plus.google.com/104197066146444489949?rel=publisher

You can also get an official google widget that will accomplish this. Navigate to your Google plus business page, click the gear located toward the top right of the content area under the header image, then click get started. Under connect your website > get the badge.

Authorship Markup. Verifying authorship of a page is a similar process but first add links to the websites you contribute to from your Google plus profile under the “About” > “Contributor to…” heading. Then link to your Google plus personal page from any article or web-page you authored. My Google plus personal profile is https://plus.google.com/109114557514899329043/ and all i must do is add ?rel=author to the end of the link like so

Example: https://plus.google.com/109114557514899329043?rel=author

After adding this markup to your pages you can test it’s validity with the Google Structured Data Testing Tool.  That page is also used to check Schema. – Stephen James Hall

[schema type=”person” name=”Stephen James Hall” orgname=”Netometry ” jobtitle=”Web Coordinator” url=”https://urlmd.com” description=”Blog post about Google authorship & publisher verification as it relates to SEO.” country=”US” email=”[email protected]” ]

 

13 Comments

  1. akira1424
    akira1424 on March 13, 2013 at 1:07 am

    Nice article! I’ve used Authorship Markup for a couple of weeks now and it looks great in the search results

    • stephen
      stephen on March 13, 2013 at 5:12 pm

      Lee, that pic next to your link is like a bullseye to a consumers eye. Especially when you’re the early adopter. 🙂 Well done bro.

      • akira1424
        akira1424 on March 13, 2013 at 5:21 pm

        Yes it looked nice! It only seemed to last a few days then someone suggested it should just be a picture of me as Google uses face recognition or something. I could really do with someone setting it up properly or advising me on what to do. Am I right in saying you cant use a company logo?

        • stephen
          stephen on March 13, 2013 at 9:20 pm

          You can use the company logo on the business page, then use the rel “publisher” markup. The easiest way to implement is go to your google plus business page, click the settings gear icon, click get started. Under connect your website, get the badge, put it on your home page. Make sure you don’t have any “author” markup outside of the blog otherwise the author pic may override the publisher pic. I used a rel publisher link right in the top menu bar of this site and urlmd.com/sites

          I could remove those now that the widget is on the site but I truly like + so I dont mind sending people over to it.

          • akira1424
            akira1424 on March 14, 2013 at 2:33 am

            Thanks for the reply!

            Does your logo show using this method?

          • stephen
            stephen on March 14, 2013 at 4:40 pm

            I’ve only seen netometry a couple times but my authorship markup is kicking in all over the place. My fav is “seo services pricing”. With Arron Wall on bottom of page 1 and Bruce Clay on page 2? 2 legends.

  2. stephen
    stephen on March 14, 2013 at 4:49 pm

    Hey Lee, I’m looking over your site and I’ll organize a few WordPress focused posts you need to check out. Start with https://urlmd.com/seo/wordpress-menu-seo/ or google “wordpress menu seo” 😉 Your main nav is missing title attribute.

    • stephen
      stephen on March 18, 2013 at 3:41 pm

      I noticed you made some changes, nice.

      The black nav box at the bottom of the home page… half the likns have title attributes, half don’t. If you hover on a link and a little pop up box with text appears, it’s good. Otherwise, try to add it if possible.

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