Want to stand out in Google? Try Google Authorship

A picture is worth a thousand words. And in search, it could be worth a thousand more clicks. The Google search results are pretty stark, and mostly devoid of any sort of imagery. That is, until relatively recently when they started the whole Google Authorship thing. If you’re not familiar with it, you may have noticed that some search results listings have begun showing up with pictures in them. Those pictures are the Google+ profile images of the authors of the listings. Believe it or not, it’s actually extremely easy to make those appear for your listings too. These enhanced listings are helpful for increased search visibility, search optimization, social media visibility, etc. So, if you want to stand out, here’s how…

• Create a Google+ Profile

If you’re not on Google+ yet, then please refer to my previous post “You’re Still Ignoring Google+ Aren’t You” and get on there! First things first, if you want to enhance your search results listings with a picture and link to more of your content, you need to have a Google+ profile. So, sign up… NOW.

• Signup for Google Authorship

Now that you’re part of the fastest growing social network, head over to the Google Authorship signup.

• Add a rel=”author” link to your Google+ Profile

Now all you have to do is add a link from your content to your google profile with the rel=”author” applied. I can hear you say “Huh?”. Perhaps the easiest way to do that is to create a Google+ Badge. That page will create the code for you, all you have to do is paste it into the pages of your website. If you’re HTML savvy, then all you have to do is add the rel=”author” attribute to an anchor tag that is linked to your Google+ profile URL.

• Wait for Google to do its Thing

Depending on how often Google indexes your site, it may take a few days for your enhanced listings to start showing up. For my site it seems to take about 3 days. You can use Google’s Rich Snippets Testing Tool to check your page to see if everything is done correctly. If it is, the results of that tool should show you how your listing will appear in Google once they’ve done their thing.

Now, sit back and enjoy higher click-thru %’s until your competition figures out how to do this too. :^)