Much like the internet itself, SEO is something which has evolved and improved over the years.
SEO is certainly not what it was five years ago or even five months ago. Google, Bing, Yahoo! and all the rest have adapted to changing trends and new technology.
SEO used to be all about what was written on websites but recently this has been joined in importance stakes by the author of the content rather than just the content itself.
Many Google results now show the authors of content including the date they were written and an avatar of the author. This is taken from their Google+ profile and there are sometimes links to their Google+ pages too. .
This makes the content stand out in the SERPS and as such could be of benefit for your website. However many websites are yet to take advantage of this.
Google also seems to give more authority in the listings for articles written by authors with lots of followers on Google+.
What’s more, Google users can link their Google+ profiles to their Twitter and their Facebook as well.
This means that Google potentially has the resources to measure an author’s authority based on the size of their networks on these platforms as well. It would appear that search is about to get a lot more social.
Setting up Avatars and Authority Links for SEO
So if you have not yet created the links between your blog and your Google+ page to display your blog content with an avatar and author name then why not set this up now, it’s really easy to do.
Make sure your blog has an author bio box and the ability for your to edit this bio box. Ig you can do this then simply add a link to your Google+ page in this bio.
When coding this add ?rel=author to the end of the URL in the code so Google knows this is the Author of the Article. Commonly people word this as “Follow me on Google+” or similar.
Next, make sure that your blog has a nice author page which shows all of your blogs in a list with your author bio on the top of the page.
Then go to your Google+ account and add a link from the “Contributor to” option to your Author page on your website.
Once you’ve done these things you should find that within a few days your author bios will begin to show up in the Google Search Results.
The Authority Cycle
It could be argued that this move by Google is simply a ploy to encourage greater use of Google+, and there have been voices who have come out and said this.
It could do a lot to encourage content curation as well based on the assumption that authors who create more content will get more followers.
These followers will lead to increased rankings which will in turn mean more visibility and the potential for even more followers.
This cycle can only be good news to Google. Google staff have already stressed the importance of fresh content in order to achieve good search rankings and Google’s freshness index is something we’re all used to working with.
How can businesses receive SEO benefit?
What this all means for businesses is that creating fresh content is more important than ever.
If you have a member of staff with a strong presence on Google+ who has linked their blog bio to this Google+ account then them writing content on your blog could bring improved SEO and all the potential financial benefits which comes with it.
So why not connect your blog bios to your staff Google+ pages and see how this helps you and your SEO.
About Emily Mace
Hi Emily,
This is just great. Setting Avatar for your site is definitely beneficial for SEO. I think author must have a profile picture. It is more effective. Thanks for the share!!
I really like Author bios, I think it’s a great way of promoting your content!
Emily Mace recently posted..AdWords Shared Budgets
This is one of the best features of Google+. It really makes your blog stand out on the search pages. Thanks for sharing Emily.
Lisa recently posted..Twitter Profile Updates and Google Changes
Agree this is one thing in Google+ I’m a big fan of
Emily Mace recently posted..AdWords Shared Budgets
Hi Emily, We set ours up months ago and it’s amazing the difference it makes. There are other factors, of course, but our search traffic is way up from before. I believe the image/avatar increases the chance of searchers clicking through, especially those that recognize your face; personalized search is helping with that.
Brian Hawkins recently posted..What Do YOU Love And Hate About Newsletters?
I really like Author bios, I think it’s a great way of promoting your content! I agree it can help with increasing clicks from search too, and I know that when I see a face I recognise it increases my engagement with a site.
Emily Mace recently posted..AdWords Shared Budgets
I think that finally today I was able to set up my authorship.
It seems that I have to wait to see it in the SERPs, but I already verified that is working.
It does take a little bit of time for Authorship to be picked up. I’ve seen sites, where all is configured correctly having to wait 10 days for the author bios to show up. Once you know it’s set up correctly it’s just a case of sitting tight and your author bios should appear.
Emily Mace recently posted..AdWords Shared Budgets
Ok, I’m a bit confused about how to get your Google+ picture to show up in the search results with your posts. Does the link to your Google+ page have to actually be on your post page or can your post page link to your author bio page (on your site) which then has the link to your Google+ page? Been trying to figure this out for weeks…
Thomas
Thomas recently posted..Losing Weight and Gaining Profits: An Interview with Cica Gajic – Developer of DietPoint
Hi Thomas
Good question. This is something we’ve been checking recently.
According to the advice given by Matt Cutts on this subject, as long as your Author Bio page links to Google+, and your Google+ page links back to this author bio page, then you should be fine. The only other rule is to link to the bio page from each blog you write.
As long as you do this, then you should be fine
Emily
Emily Mace recently posted..Vertical Leap ranked seventh in the Wirehive 100 League Table
Thanks for the quick response! That’s odd – I believe I have it set up like that but for some reason (even after waiting 2 weeks) the picture still doesn’t show in the search results…
Thomas
Thomas recently posted..Losing Weight and Gaining Profits: An Interview with Cica Gajic – Developer of DietPoint
Hope you don’t mind, Thomas but I took a sneaky look at your site
to see if I could help.
(after the 10 days or so Google takes to get it’s head around it.)
Looks like the URL which links to Google+ isn’t quite right. At the end of the URL there’s a ” then a space before the ?rel= which is set to “me”.
Google+ only accepts the code if it is all part of the URL and rel must be author and not me. So your URL would be a href=”https://plus.google.com/u/0/117402982709492049127?rel=author”
If you update the Google+ URL to be this it should work fine
Hope this helps get this working for you
Emily
Emily Mace recently posted..Vertical Leap ranked seventh in the Wirehive 100 League Table
Thanks a lot for the help! Just fixed that – had that in there from some other tutorial lol. Hopefully now it will begin to show up in the next few days. Thanks again!
Thomas
Thomas recently posted..Losing Weight and Gaining Profits: An Interview with Cica Gajic – Developer of DietPoint
Pleasure, hope this is up and running soon for you Thomas
Emily Mace recently posted..Vertical Leap ranked seventh in the Wirehive 100 League Table
I have this, Emily :
href=”https://plus.google.com/106659136125531770661?rel=author”
Do I have to add u/o/ after plus.google.com/ ?
Because I tried, and it does not work the link that way.
Thanks for your advice!
(Right now I have verified my authorship trough email and it is working :
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets )
Hi Erik
I’ve tried your link and it works fine, so no. Some URLs on Google+ seem to have the /o/u on them and others don’t
I hope this helps
Emily
Emily Mace recently posted..SEO is prevention as well as a cure
Thanks a lot Emily!
I really appreciated your help and efforts!
Thanks for this look at Google+ for business. It’ll be interesting to see how SEO evolves with the added social media of the internet giant.
Robert Koenig recently posted..Lindsay Lohan Strikes Again — Strikes a Pedestrian, Actually
Sounds promising, I’ll try this out to my profile. Google has always something new for SEO as well as the technology.
Giselle R. recently posted..About Hauser Brothers Cladding Corp.
I’ve heard a lot of good about Author bios, it’s a great way to promot your content! and can help increase clicks from searches too, faces implant an impression of someone/their business for us that stayts deep in our memories.
Hi Emily,
I haven’t actually setup my site for Google+ as of yet as I never realized that it mattered a lot at this point. In the past months, I only concentrated in increasing my following both on Twitter and in FaceBook. After reading your post however, I think I’m finally set in opening up my Google+ blog account. I only hope that it is not hard to get followers.
Hi Emily, thanks for your tips.
Unfortunatelly Google blocked my personal Google+ account and I don’t know why and what to do. Of course I sent reconsideration request, but without any result. And my Google+ page profile is working correctly.
Any tips about it?
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Hi Chris
I’ve not come across someone’s personal profile being blocked before, so apart from a reconsideration request or setting up a new account (which I don’t think Google would actually like) there’s not masses here which can be done.
With regard to reconsideration however, there are things to consider, as with an SEO reconsideration
Sounds like you don’t know why you were blocked, so I’d suggest looking into the terms of service for Google+ and making sure that you are complying with those rules. I’d try and delete any posts which might not be complying before you ask for reconsideration and then when you do email Google, explain what you’ve done and that you won’t make that mistake again.
I hope this helps and sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.
thanks
Emily
Emily Mace recently posted..SEO is prevention as well as a cure
Thank you Emily,
You gave a great idea for linking up the blog with Google+. Also having an author’s bio in the blog would be really helpful. Thank you for this post!