From Smart Solutions
If you use Google a lot, you’ve probably seen Google Author show up on your SERPs. As a matter of fact, one study noted that about 17% of queries will result in at least one Google Author post showing up. Webmasters in every industry are realizing the benefit, and adding the Google Author tag to their posts.
Understanding the Google Author Tag
As seen in the images below, inserting the Google Author tag gives you a picture next to your link on the SERP. By inserting the HTML tag into your site, you’re telling Google that you’re the author of the article, and to link your Google+ profile to it.
You’ll need to have a Google+ profile in order to make this work for your website, as well as embed a bit of HTML code, something like what we have below:
<p>By <a href=”https://plus.google.com/115191960720554241960/
?rel=author”>Your Name</a></p>
By linking your Google+ account to your website through that code, and verifying a domain name email, your picture will show up next to your blog or article listings on Google’s SERP, as well.
The Benefits of Using the Google Author Tag
By inserting this tag and going through the trouble of getting verified by Google, you get a huge result—increased visibility on Google’s SERP. Instead of an all text listing, you could have a photo next to your link—your photo.
Individual websites have shown increases in organic search click through rate from 38% to even 150%because of Google Author tags. They’ve proven their worth, and are resulting in a lot of extra traffic and conversions.
This code is easy to apply, so don’t let any confusion about HTML stop you from inserting it! If you have a website with us and would like to use Google Author, contact us and let us know how we can help you!
Thanks for using my article as a reference. I am still working on getting authorship markup for a corporate website using the rel publisher tag. No luck so far. The Google Plus profile we are using has a logo instead of a profile pic and it is set up as a “page” as opposed to a normal G+ author profile. If anyone has some insight into this I would love to hear it.
@ May 10th, 2012 at 17:21Happy to use it as a reference! Thank you for the information. We hadn’t thought about pages as Google Authors – I don’t think Google will make it to easy for us on that front, but it’s definitely worth looking into! Keep us posted on your findings!
@ May 15th, 2012 at 07:26So far no luck with getting my business page with Google Authorship markup…
@ May 18th, 2012 at 10:26