AuthorRank - A Guide to Showing Your Face in the Google Search Results

Move over backlinks, there’s something big on the SEO front. It’s called AuthorRank and if you haven’t heard of it, listen up. Web marketers have been buzzing about AuthorRank for quite a while already, but lately the number of people talking about it has grown exponentially. In fact, late last month, Google rolled out a new Structured Data Testing Tool. The new testing tool shows what structured data like authorship, recipes, product review, events, music or people can be extracted from a webpage and how it shows up in the search results.

Here's an example of how Google extracts structured data from a recipe.

Here's what is displayed in the search results.

To use the tool, simply enter the URL or html you'd like to test and click preview. Google will show you useful data like whether you've verified your authorship or publisher markup or implemented other structured data for recipes, events or reviews.

AuthorRank will make search better.

AuthorRank is going to make search results more reliable by identifying credible sources on the web. Simply put, AuthorRank helps authors publicly connect their content to the websites or blogs their work appears on.

This is an exciting change in the world of web marketing because it forces content creators be more transparent. AuthorRank helps eliminate web scrapers that may try to take content and pass it off as their own.

AuthorRank levels the playing field because it increases the visibility of otherwise lower ranking and less powerful sites. Most people assume that higher ranking sites offer better information. This is not always the case. With AuthorRank, content is tied to an individual and the individual’s credibility.

So, how can you leverage AuthorRank?

1. First, you’ll need a Google+ profile.
2. Add a photo to your Google+ profile. Be sure to use a good quality photo. This is the photo that will appear next to your posts in the search results. If you have a social media presence built up on another social media platform like Twitter, consider using the same profile photo.
3. Fill out the “Contributor To” section of Google+ and add your websites and blogs.
4. Take the plunge and use Google+. Authorship ties in social at an individual's level. Social is more important than ever. Your circles and how people interact and share your content influences your visibility.
5. Establish authorship by linking your online content to your Google+ profile by using something called the rel=”author” tag. If your site or blog is in WordPress, there are some good plugins that make linking your content to your Google+ profile a piece of cake. We like a plugin called AuthorSure, written by Russell and Elizabeth Jamieson of DIYWebMastery.com.
6. Write content that people want to read.

After linking your Google+ profile with content you’ve written, you’ll see your author bio and profile appear in the search results.

This extra information within the search results usually helps increase click-through rates because people are more likely to click on a link that includes a photo.

Authorship may be the new backlink. If a website has a lot of good quality links coming from a variety of sources, it tends to rank higher. If Google is truly concerned with ranking good quality sites higher, wouldn’t it make sense to look at who owns the content?

By connecting authors with their websites and blogs, Google gets rid of the people anonymously gaming the system in order to improve online visibility. This change further discourages black hat SEO tactics like writing shallow content because AuthorRank links the individual with the spammy content. Marketing a website or blog becomes more transparent and less anonymity the web better for everyone.

If you’d like to find out more about how you can benefit from AuthorRank on your own site, contact ArcStone today.