Claiming Google+ Authorship and Publisher

Google Author Rank is a hot topic in both the content and search marketing industry. What is Author Rank exactly? While Google hasn’t officially said anything about it, Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt said this in his new book, “The New Digital Age”.

“Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”

How can you prepare for Author Rank? Claim Google+ Authorship for yourself and Publisher for your brand.

Google+ Authorship vs. Publisher Markup

So what is the difference between adding Authorship and Publisher markup on your website? It’s simple.

• Google+ Authorship links a person with a Google+ profile to pieces of content they have written. Content can be spread across multiple websites. 
•  Google+ Publisher markup links a business/brand with a Google+ page with content on their own website. It can only link one Google+ page with one website.

Benefits of Claiming Google+ Authorship

1. [FACT] Your Google+ profile picture is displayed next to content you have written on any website, making it stand out in search results.

2. [FACT] People can click on the More by… link to find more posts written by you. This means if they find a link to a piece of content you have written for another site, it could lead them to the content you have written on your own website.

3. [SPECULATION] Google will recognize you as an authority in your niche based on the content you have claimed and how each piece of linked content has performed on social media networks (tweets, likes, +1’s, etc.).

4. [FACT] You can track analytics on content you have written for any website in Google Webmaster Tools using the Author Stats area under Labs.

How to Claim Google+ Authorship for Your Content

There are two ways to claim Google+ Authorship for your content. First off, if you have an email address that matches your domain (you@yourdomain.com) and each piece of content you have written on your website is clearly marked as by you, you can log in to your Google+ account, visit the Google+ Authorship page, and enter your email address.

If you don’t have an email address on each site you write content for, you can claim authorship by adding a link to your Google+ profile to your author bios on each site you write for using the following format.

<a href=”[profile_url]?rel=author”>Google</a>

Then add each site’s link to your Google+ profile under the Contributor To section.

You can read more details about how to claim Google+ Authorship in Webmaster Tools Help. You can also use the Structured Data Testing Tool to see if Google has linked your Google+ profile to your content.

Benefits of Claiming Google+ Publisher

1. [FACT] Your Google+ page’s information is displayed next to your website, making it stand out in search results.

2. [SPECULATION] Google will recognize your website as a publisher of quality content. This can go far in preventing your website from being affected by a Google Panda update.

3. [SPECULATION] Google will link your business/brand with the authors who are linked to the content published on your website. The more authoritative authors you have creating content for your website, the stronger you will be as a publisher.

How to Add Google+ Publisher Markup

To add the Google+ Publisher markup to your website, simply add the Direct Connect link between the HEAD tags in your website’s header.

<link href="https://plus.google.com/{plusPageUrl}" rel="publisher" />

You can also do it by linking to your Google+ page and adding a rel=”publisher” to the link or adding one of the Google+ badges to your page. Adding the small or standard size badges will also help you grow your page’s Google+ audience.

Have you seen positive search benefits from adding Google+ Authorship or Publisher markup to your website? Please share in the comments!

Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/claiming-google-authorship-and-publisher-markup-for-seo/61263/