I am sure that you have at the very least heard about the authorship
markup that Google is pushing for lately. Whether this is a well
elaborated plan to “lure” people into using
Google+ or not, the fact is, they highly recommend it and regardless of whatever impact this could mean for
SEO,
I am guessing that it will eventually play its part and provide some
advantage for users that are using it, over those who don’t. Here’s an
excerpt from Othar Hansson,
Software Engineer of Google.
We know that great content comes from great authors, and we’re looking
closely at ways this markup could help us highlight authors and rank search results.
That said, and in a recent comment made by Ileane of
BasicBlogTips in my weekly roundup, she mentioned that it would be nice if there was a WordPress plugin that can make all this
authorship stuff
less confusing. Well, I don’t blame her, because it is really quite
confusing and I have spent several hours yesterday trying to figure it
out for myself. While there is no
WP plugin
that will do the job (yet), there is a vital plugin that will you will
need for this to work, specially if you have multi-authors in your blog.
Anyway, after doing a lot of research and countless trial and errors,
I finally was able to verify my authorship markup with Google. Lucky
for you, if you have not done it already, I will show you exactly what I
did to make this work, the easy way. By easy, I mean, no coding or
editing any of your CSS or anything like that. Obviously, there are
other ways to do it, but trust me, I got very frustrated yesterday, and
what I will share with you today, seems to be the easiest way to get it
done.
So, this is a two part process, the first being to establish your own
authorship markup and the second to configure WordPress to allow
inclusion of the rel=”me” and set links for your contributors or authors
in their bio. Let’s get started..
If you made any previous attempt to make this work and did not succeed, clear everything you made and start from scratch.
Create Your Google Author Markup
1) This is an optional step, but Google recommends it, so
. Make all your +1s available to the public. Go to your Google+ account
profile > account overview > edit profile. Click the +1 tab and
check “show this tab on your profile” and save.
2) From the same Google+ profile (editing mode), create a link to point
towards your site. Goto > edit profile > about, enter your Name
(same as bio in WP) and link to your site.
Make sure that you check the “this page is specifically about me” box and save. This will automatically put the “rel=me” on G+.
3) Link to your Google profile to establish a relationship between G+
and your site. You can do this by creating a G+ button and placing it
somewhere in your site (or you can create a plain text link in your
footer for example). Create your
G+ button here. Then place your Google+ profile URL, select image size, copy the code and paste it somewhere where it will be present in
all of your pages
You can see how I added the G+ on my sidebar right there on the top, right next to my RSS feed button.
4) Follow the steps on configure your site for multiple authors (next part).
Configure Your WordPress Site For Multiple Authors
This is where that “vital” plugin comes into play. As you may probably
know, WordPress removes any “rel” or html tags in the bio box, even if
you attempt to create one. Reason aside, there is a workaround, by
either editing your author.php file or installing a simple plugin that
allows you to add anything you want in the bio box.
1) Install
Allow REL= and HTML in Author Bios
(WordPress repository) and activate it. The developer warns you about
this plugin, which can be used inappropriately by your authors, so be
sure you trust them. Once installed, activate the plugin and go to your
WordPress users profile.
2) In the users profile dashboard, you will see that a new field has
been created, the “Google Profile URL”. Insert your Google+ profile id
here. This process would be the same for any other contributor or
author. Do your own first and then for your authors (if you want).
Rinse and repeat.
For other authors, you do not have to install the
G+ button. This is only required for the initial setup which is to
establish the relationship between G+ and yourself.
3) Next step will be to add the “rel=author me” in the biographical
information area. Note that I said rel=”author me” and not
“rel=”author”. The reason for this is that WordPress creates a different
page for each user and apparently the “rel=author” markup creates a
problem. Adding the “me” solves this problem. After you’ve done this, do
it for each author you have or ask them to do it for you.
Just to play it safe, add the “+” sign either at the beginning or the
end of the anchor text. See that I used +DiTesco. Don’t ask me why, but
again, Google recommends…
ou are done! Now it is time to verify if all this works. Google has a tool that makes this very easy so head over to
Google’s Rich Snippets Testing Tool,
add your URL an hit preview. If all is good you will see the green
“verified” authorship markup. If you receive an error, don’t panic like I
did. Go over the process again and ensure that you have not missed
something. Once you are verified, users will eventually see search
results that show your “photo” next to the snippet. Great way to stand
out, and if people already know you, the more likely your link would be
clicked
As I said, this is the easy way that worked for me, and thanks to
Ken Morico
who made this possible. There are other ways to do this and if you want
to try other different methods, you can try these methods from
Yoast,
BlindFiveYearOld or
SixEstate.
Update April 2012: This method, according to
several feedback I received, works 99% of the time. If for some reason
you fall under the 1% that can not make it work, please let me know by
sending me an email. I’m sure we can find a way of working together that
could be beneficial for both sides .
That’s it! Let me know if this method works for you. If you have a
different method that you can share with us, please let me know so I can
add this to the list of ways to verify Google’s authorship markup.
+DiTesco
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