Author Rich Snippets, What Are They? Plus A Great WordPress Plugin To Take Advantage Of Them.
Author Rich Snippets help Google organize your pages and posts!
In the world of SEO and content marketing, it is very important to not only appear high in rankings, but that your displayed result is both eye catching as well as informative as to what the content is about. This will help users better identify with your search result as your message comes across before visiting the page. Author Rich Snippets also give credibility by making well organized content stand out over spammy sites and amateurs by displaying your name as the author along with your G+ profile picture. There is also information on displayed about the number other posts or pages created by the author.
Can you spot the Author Rich Snippets?
Author Rich Snippets take direction from Open Graph Protocol tags that are inserted into pages and posts.
If you are familiar with OGP (open graph protocol), then you’re more than half way there! I also did a write up about how OGP works, a post that lists the tags and even a write up about a WordPlus plugin that makes it all very easy. Feel free to reference those posts if Author Rich Snippets and OGP are unfamiliar.It will be best to know what you’re working with and exactly why you’re doing it.
How to setup Author Rich Snippets
As with just about everything on the Internet, there are multiple ways to accomplish a single goal. The same applies to Author Rich Snippets. No matter what path you take to get this done, there is one step that can not be skipped, over looked or even worked around to get your Author Rich Snippets to work…
First you must create a Google+ profile.
That’s right! In order to take advantage of Author Rich Snippets, you will need a G+ profile with your full name and a facial photo of yourself that you want displayed! You will also have to set yourself up as a contributor to your website in your profile settings. If or when your profile is setup, follow this link and enter in the website, or sites, you write for.
Take notice to the image I have to the right, it is a screen shot of Google’s search results, you should now be able to see which are the Author Rich Snippets and which are not! Which search results stand out to you? Which ones build that instant trust?
Adding HTML tags to your posts for Author Rich Snippets.
Now that your G+ is ready, you will need to add a few things to link your blog posts so that Google can clearly identify the relationship to display the Author Rich Text Snippets. This can be done by using a link to your Google+ profile, coupled with the rel=author query string parameter.
- Go to your Google+ profile and copy the URL, don’t copy “/posts” only up to the last number prior.
- Insert a link in your blog post and use the copied URL as the destination (make sure /posts is not at the end).
- Make a link using your full name as anchor text that matches the name used on your G+ profile.
Author Rich Snippets HTML Tags should look like this:
<a href=“{G+ profile URL}” rel=”author”>Firstname Lastname</a>
Mine looks like this:
<a href=“https://plus.google.com/116634598694124071705″ rel=”author”>Ryan Neal</a>
Where you actually place the link on your post is up to you, maybe use an “About the Author” section. Depending on the level of access you have, this option should work in most cases. Once you have placed your tag, don’t wait for days and just hope that it works, test it! Google has an Author Rich Snippets Testing Tool that will check the format on one of your posts. If Google returns an example of your Author Rich Snippets then everything is in order! Ok… now what most of you are probably here for…
A simple WordPress plugin that makes it easy and a one time deal to setup your Author Rich Snippets.
The plugin name Google Authorship by Mervin Praison does everything we need to make our Author Rich Snippets work. You can download the plugin from the WordPress website, or install it through the dashboard. The best part is you just need set it up one time and your Author Rich Snippets are good to go! Just set it and forget it!
The plugin places “Google Plus profile information” into your User Settings through the WordPress dashboard. Setup the plugin by copying and pasting your G+ profile URL along with your full name. Click update profile and you’re done! Now any page your create on your WordPress blog or website will be Author Rich Snippets ready!