SEO Tip: Implementing Blog Ownership (Display Profile Photo in Search Results)

Display Profile Photo in Google Search Results

Another feature that came with Google+ was the rel="author" markup. Implementing this feature gives neat results on your blog listings on Google search engine result pages (SERPs) since your Google+ profile photo will be displayed alongside your blog listings in Google search.

Google Rel="Author" Implementation Sample

Only a few blog writers have implemented this feature and are not aware of its importance for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with regards to trustworthiness and authority.

Implementing the rel=”author” feature requires three links:

1. A link from your blog post to your author page (About Me) using rel=”author”
2. A link from your author page (About Me) to your Google profile page using rel=”me”
3. A link from your Google+ profile page to your author page (About Me)

Here's a visual guide on how to implement this feature:

Link from Blog Post to An Author PAge

Create a link from your blog post to an author page on the same domain. This tells Google about the authorship of the posts /articles on that domain. You can use the root domain as the author page if  it has a link to your Google profile using rel=”me” as a link attribute and if it is not hosted on a free blogging platform such as Blogspot.com or WordPress.com.

A blog with multiple authors will have multiple author pages.  Each post by each author has a link that points to their own author page using rel=”author” but the author page does NOT have to be an actual author page. For individuals, a link to the author's About page is enough.

For Blogger:

1. Go to Design then Edit HTML
2. Click on "Expand Widget Templates"
3. Locate the "post-footer" section
4. Locate "authorlabel".
5. Use the URL of your About Me page in the tag block. I used my Blogger Profile URL.

               Ex.
                     

For WordPress:

1. Go to Appearance then Editor
2. Edit the "Single Post" file
3. Locate the "byline" section
4. Update the URL

Link from an Author page (About Me) to a Google profile page using rel=”me”

The second link is from the author page to the Google profile page. This link tells Google that the author of that domain is the same person as the one in the Google profile. You’re essentially claiming that Google profile as your own, which is why you use rel=”me” on this link.

The best practice is to link to the base URL of your Google profile.

https://plus.google.com/115106448444522478339

This might be a bit confusing because the base URL will default to a /posts suffix. It is further complicated by the implementation of Google+ which changes the subdomain from profiles to plus.

Don’t worry. If you’re not using Google+ yet use your current Google profile URL. Google will put in the proper 301 redirect from the old profile to the new once you’re using Google+.


A link from your Google+ profile page to your author page (About Me)

Add a reciprocal link back from your profile to the site(s) you just updated. 

1. Edit the Contributor To section.
2. In the dialog that appears, click Add custom link, and then enter the website URL.
3. If you want, click the drop-down list to specify who can see the link.
4. Click Save. 

Google Plus - Contributor To Section

Be patient after this.  Wait for Google's search listings update.

Good Luck!