Anyone trying to establish a online presence is always trying to improve their search engine rankings against the dozens, hundreds, or thousands of other websites competing for attention in that same niche.
While there are many different ways of doing this (see our previous articles on SEO), one of the easiest ways to improve the quality of your results is to link your content with your google+ profile. When you do this, google often will (typically) add your profile photo, name, and a link to your google+ profile within the search result.
This has many benefits:
- Your photo makes the result stand out more against normal results.
- The link to your profile makes it easier for them to find more of your content.
- More real estate in your search result listings can result in higher click through rates.
- There is evidence showing that users clicking on links by a given author will see more results from the same author if they return back to the search results page for that same keyword.
- If users circle your google+ profile, you’re content will bubble up higher in their search results while they are logged into google.
- Whenever you help google by providing it with data that can help it accurately index your content, the more google trusts your results and will ensure that your content continues in its search results.
In short, there are only benefits in linking your profile and your content.
Instructions
Google has made the process very easy. Simply create a google plus profile, upload a recognizable headshot, add an authorship line on every piece of content on your site, and then verify your content using one of two methods.
Once you’ve done this, you can confirm that google is able to confirm your authorship and other structured data by using its testing tool.