A step-by-step guide on how to set up Google Authorship on your website or blog.

Authenticate your content with Google Authorship and a Google+ profile.

Authorship will become one of the most important ranking metrics and you need to be ready.

If you have a Google+ profile and authorship, Google will be able to connect the two, which will allow them to authenticate the content you published. This is a great way to get it noticed in search results and it can also help to increase your click-through-rate, especially if you are a recognised authority on a specific subject within your field.

Authorship will soon become one of the most important ranking metrics. Though it won’t replace Page Rank, it is likely to become every bit important as it, because it will allow Google to measure the trust of a site and determine its rankings based on social metrics taken from Google+.

Below are some factors that Google uses as part of their Author Rank calculation:

• Google+ engagement level
• Authority of publishing sites
• Relative authority on non-Google social networks
• Outside authority indicators
• Avg. PR
• # of circlers
• # of shares per post
• Comments per post
• Posting frequency

Start preparing by setting up Google authorship today

How to Set Up Google Authorship

Step 1 – The first thing you need to do is set up a Google profile, if you don’t currently have one.

Step 2 - You will be prompted to add a profile image to your account. Make sure it is a clear headshot since it is what people will see when your thumbnail appears in the search results.

Step 3 – Click Continue to Google+, click ‘Profile’, and then you will have the option to edit your profile.

Step 4 – Click on the +1’s section, select the ‘Show this tab on your profile checkbox’ and click ‘Save’.

Step 5 – Go to the ‘About’ section and click ‘Other Profiles’, then select ‘Add custom link’ which will then allow you to add labels and URLs for each of your other social media profiles, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Remember to ‘Save’ when you are done.

Step 6 – Complete the ‘About Me’ section with relevant details on your occupation, employment and other information that demonstrates your expertise or interests. This is not required for Authorship, but it gives integrity to an author, which enables you to build your reputation as a respected source in your field.

Step 7 – Make sure you have an email address on the same domain as your content. If you don’t, Google does have an alternative method for linking your content to your Google+ profile. In the “About” section of your profile, add the email address, allowing Google to associate the account with your domain.

Step 8 – Once you have added your email address, visit Google’s Authorship page, and submit your email address to Google.

Step 9 – Now that you have verified your email address with your Google+ account, you should connect it to the website or websites for which you are a contributor.

Step 10 – Copy the 21-digit ID number used in the URL of your Google+ profile. You need it shortly.

Step 11 – Once you have completed the previous steps, check that the Authorship mark-up has been configured correctly by visiting the Structured Data Testing Tool.

The Authorship Process

What you need to know is that Google needs to complete a circuit of verified trust between it and an author’s published content. For you to participate in this program, you need to have two things:

1. A verified digital identify owned by Google that links to your published content (a Google+ profile)

2. Your published content needs to reference you as the author and link back to the verified digital identity Google currently supports three methods of verifying that trust.

The methods approved by Google include a 3-link, a 2-link, and an email verification method.

The 3-link method is used with sites that host content pages that link to an author biography page on the same domain. All of the content pages link to the author biography page, the author biography page links to the author’s Google+ profile, and the Google+ profile links to their biography page.

The 2-link method is for content pages that do not link to an author biography page. Instead, they usually contain a mini author biography piece at the bottom of each post. These posts link directly to the author’s Google+ profile, and the Google+ profile links to the home page of the publishing site.

The email verification method can be used when the author does not have control over author biography content anywhere in the content page (but its use is not limited to that scenario). In that case, an author byline links to an email address using the same domain name as the content page, and that email address is registered and verified in the author’s Google+ profile.

Google Authorship Resources

Google Confirms Hidden Benefit Of Authorship: Bonus Links After A Back-Button Click

Authorship can mean more than just your photo and information displayed. Matt McGee breaks the confirmed news that staying more than 2 minutes on a author-verified page before returning to the SERP will trigger additional “bonus links” from that author to be displayed.

This Hangout discusses how corporate identities and brands need to react to this shift to individual authorship and create contingency plans to handle the emphasis on individuals vs. brands as the publishers of content.

“Social is a good way to create a reputation for authors. If the reputation of content authors is transparent, it will make the whole web better.” – Matt Cutts

Share your experience with Google’s Authorship & AuthorRank in the comments below.