Want More Clicks from Google? Use your face with Google Authorship

This past year Google has released a few features that significantly affect how search is done. Various Penguin updates have disrupted SEO efforts across the board and done all kinds of damage to search engine rankings. Maybe you aren’t ranking number one anymore. Well, there are still ways to get more traffic even if you aren’t ranking on the top.

Google Authorship

Google has introduced a way to link an individual person to websites and articles. Having a sense of ownership gives one great pride as well as demonstrates a personal feel to the internet. If you have a Google+ account, you can easily link your website to your name and have your face show up in search results. Google will take your profile picture from your Google+ account and stick it right next to your search result.

Increasing Search Engine Click Through Rate

It is proven that search results that have the image of an author to the left of them are easily clicked on more than even the top search results. The added personal feel attracts users to them by peaking interest at the image rather than the top of the page. With Google authorship, you are easily able to compete with the top spots on the search results page even if you aren’t on the top of the page.

Setting up Google Authorship on your Site

There are a few ways to set Authorship up on your site. The easiest way by far is to simply add your website email address to the contributor area of your Google+ account. To do this follow the steps below:

• Get your website email address ([email protected])
• Make sure you are logged into Google+
• Make sure each of your articles has an author byline that clearly states your name
• Visit Google’s Authorship page and submit your email address.

That’s it! You will need to verify the email address and everything to get your Authorship officially setup. After that, your profile will show that you are a contributor to your website and your search results will have your face next to them. You only need to do this process once since you have your email address linked to your profile!

If you don’t have an email address from your website, you can still link Authorship up with your account but it takes a bit more work and you will need to do so for each and every article you write. Google provides a good description of how to do that here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1408986&expand=option2

If you aren’t sure whether your name is linked or not, try this tool out from Google. It will display all kinds of information about your website including what Google+ accounts are linked to it.