Setting Up Google Authorship – A DIY Guide
Setting up Google authorship mark-up for your website’s content is an issue that many of our clients come to us with questions. Once you have done it a few times it is really very simple so below is by step by step guide to setting up Google authorship markup for your website content.
1. Create a Google+ account
If you already have a Gmail email you can log straight in to Google+ with that email and continue with the set up.
If you do not already have a Gmail account you will need to create a Gmail email or Google account (which by the way forces you to create a Gmail email) and then proceed to set up your Google+ account.
If you are creating a new account make sure that you add your existing email as the email of the website that you want to tie your authorship to.
2. Set up your Google+ profile
Add as much detail about yourself as you can. Make sure in the skills and expertise section that you reference the website’s subject area as an area of your expertise.
3. Link your content to your Google+ account
The easiest way to do this is to add your website email address to your Google account within the “work email” account section of your Google+ profile.
Then you need to edit the website code on your site so that all content can be attributed to an author. The authors name as stated in the Google+ account must be shown. So for example: Author: Stephen Avila or By Stephen Avila.
For the last step you need to verify your association with the website. If you created a new Google account under step 1, above, then you will have received an email from Google to that email asking you to click the link in the email in order to verify that it is indeed your website email account.
If you already had a Google account then simply add your website email to the “alternative” email section within your Google+ profile.
Once the above steps have been completed you can expect to see your Google profile image appearing alongside content attributed to you on the website.
To get the most out of Google Authorship you then need to start building up your authorship rank. I will produce a follow up guide for your team covering this.