Improve your Website Ranking with Google+ and Google+ Authorship

Chances are, you are already have a website with great content and are optimizing your website with keywords related to your content. And you probably already know that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps your page rank and allows your website to show up higher in Google search results. How can you further improve your SEO? The next step is building a visible online presence through a profile page on Google+.

Google+ is not only a social network like Facebook, but it’s also a great way to build natural links and increase your social impact with each post you write, person you follow or comment you make. Each post you make in Google+ is like a mini-blog with its own URL and re-shares help to increase your authority. The more people who engage with you and share your posts and links, the greater your online reputation will become.

Google is looking at boosting authority through authorship. Matt Cutts, head of the Google Webspam team, recently spoke at Pubcon in Las Vegas. He confirmed that when it comes to search results and visibility, authorship is becoming more and more important.

What is Google Authorship?
Google Authorship is a way of linking an identity to an authorship profile. Put another way, Google Authorship puts a face to a name—your Google+ profile image shows up next to your search results. Google Plus authorship provides you with a higher visual profile in search results. Articles and links submitted by verified authors can help keep spam out of Google searches.

As for the future of social media and authorship as a ranking factor:

Matt Cutts: "I would concentrate on the stuff that people write, the utility that people find in it, and the amount of times that people link to it. All of those are ways that implicitly measure how relevant or important somebody is to someone else.

“Links are still the best way that we’ve found to discover that, and maybe over time social or authorship or other types of markup will give us a lot more information about that.”

While there are many factors that contribute to a page rank, the path seems to be leading towards Google Authorship and authority. Stay ahead of the game, improve your authority & online presence with Google+.

How to Setup Your Google+ Authorship So Your Picture is in The Search Results
Setting up your Google+ Authorship is relatively easy. Follow the steps below or contact Pixo for help with setting up your Google+ Authorship.

Step 1: Setup your profile on Google+. To create an account go here. A good tutorial on how to properly setup your account can be found here.

Step 2: Verify your email address on Google+. Google wants to know that your account is legit. Make sure you’re using an email address with the same domain as the domain of your blog.

Step 3: In the Contributor to section of your Google+ profile add the website that you want to be listed for authorship for. So if I’m an author for the pixoinc.com blog I would put in the URL for that blog.

Step 4: Link from your content pages to your Google+ profile page and include your name as the link. From the byline or author box at the bottom of your post, link to your Google+ profile, adding “rel=author” in the link.

• If you have a bio page on your site, link to the bio with “rel=me” in the link.
• If you don’t have a bio page on your site (or if you’re having trouble getting authorship to work), link directly to your Google+ profile with “rel=author” in the link.

See the example links below at the bottom of all of Pixo's blog posts as an example.