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Build Your Business with Google Plus Authorship and Author Rank

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Published: July 23, 2014

Blogging is one of the most effective methods of positioning yourself and your blog/website as an authority in your industry or niche. One of the features of the Google Plus social media network is Google Authorship, which recognizes and tracks writers and allows them to build trust (Author Rank) through their writing across the web. As a recognized writer of quality content, you will increase your following of loyal readers, which should lead to more traffic to your website. In addition, Google Authorship will make it more difficult for spammers and web content scrapers to steal your content and pass it off as their own.

While Google officially denies that Author Rank is presently being used in its search ranking algorithm, it’s no secret that social media signals in general are already playing a role in determining how webpages are ranked. If past history is any guide, Google will never allow itself to become dependent on third-party social signals, and will instead rely on its own Google Plus network should it ever decide to include Author Rank in its search ranking algorithm.

How Google Plus Authorship can Benefit Your Business Today

Google Plus Authorship basically entails linking your content to your Google Plus profile, which verifies your authorship with Google and helps build your brand reputation and trust.

  • As your content get +1’d and shared, it sends a signal that your content is high quality.
  • The more content you create, the more authority you build for your brand – certainly more authority than someone who simply buys 1,000 spammy backlinks in an attempt to game the system.
  • Although Google recently dropped profile photos and Google Circle follower data from the search results, Google Authorship remains a powerful force for building brand authority.

Setting up Google Authorship for your content is completely free. You’ll need to have a Google Plus profile to get started.

  • Double check your Google Plus profile for accurate information.
  • You’ll need a headshot photo of decent quality.
  • Access https://plus.google.com/authorship and follow the instructions.
  • Provide an email address on the same domain as your content.
  • Verify the authorship link that you receive from Google and you’re good to go. Include that link in everything you create for your own blog.

If you write guest blogs for third-party sites where you don’t have an email address with their domain name, you’ll have to jump through a few more hoops to setup your Google Authorship.

  • Open up your main Google Plus page and click on the Profile tab.
  • Then click on the About tab.
  • Look for the Links options and click on Edit.
  • A new box should open where you will enter the URL of the website or blog where your content will be published. This should be added to the Contributor To option, not to Links. You can add as many website URLs as you wish.
  • Add your link to your article in the author bio section by adding ?rel=author to the end of your Google Plus URL.

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