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1. Google+ Authoriship Setup Guide
By Egor Pervuninski
Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group. All Rights Reserved.
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2. Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group
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First Edition, November 2012
Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group | Google+ Authoriship Setup Guide 2

3. Table of Contents
Google+ Authoriship Setup Guide ...................................................................... 1
Introduction ....................................................................................................... 4
Configuring personal Google+ profile ................................................................ 5
Scenario #1: Mister James Bond has only authored a single post ................... 8
Scenario #2: Mister James Bond as a sole author ........................................... 9
Configuring Google+ business page ................................................................. 11
Testing ............................................................................................................. 15
Tips and Tricks ................................................................................................. 16
Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 17
Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group | Google+ Authoriship Setup Guide 3

4. Introduction
As of 2012 Google starts to employ a personalised search and knowledge graph
technologies.
As a website owner you ought to embrace the new technology for at least one
of the following reasons:
 Set yourself apart from spammers and amateurs
 Establish yourself (or your marketing persona) as an expert in selected
field
 Establish your website authority
 Improve your search result listing click-through ratio
This report covers two authorship setups. One with a single author website
(global authorship tag) and another is with multiple authors (authorship tag on
pages).
I will call the website we are configuring the authorship tagging for a target
website.
Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group | Introduction 4

5. Configuring personal Google+ profile
Personal profile identifies you (or a marketing persona you use) as an
individual. Think about it as Google’s version of a personal Facebook account.
You will have a home page similar to Facebook wall with a stream of posts
from your circles (Google+ version of friend lists). You will also be able to post
videos, images and, of course, text updates.
However, the most important part of personal profile for us is a contributor
section where you can specify the list of websites you are posting to. As a
reward, Google will show a profile image under the post ranking in the search
results page.
Before you configure personal Google+ profile you need to create a Google
account. So, if you don’t have one already, head over to
http://plus.google.com and sign up for one.
Make sure you upload a headshot photo, minimum 250x250px.
To illustrate the point I’ve just created an account for Mister James Bond.
Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group | Configuring personal Google+ profile 5

6. I am going to cover two scenarios. In the first scenario Mister James Bond has
only authored a single post and in the second scenario Mister James Bond is
the sole author of all posts and pages on the website.
Regardless of the scenario, first step is to edit your personal Google+ profile
and add a target website to Contributor To section.
Head over to http://plus.google.com, select an about page and click Edit
Profile.
Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group | Configuring personal Google+ profile 6

7. Scroll down and select Contributor To section.
Add a link to your target website.
After that, click Finish Editing to complete personal Google+ profile
configuration.
Believe me or not, this is all that you need to do to configure personal Google+
profile. You can go ahead and add as many details as you like but this is the
only step required for linking.
As a result, you profile will look like this.
Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group | Configuring personal Google+ profile 7

8. Now, let’s configure the target website.
Scenario #1: Mister James Bond has only authored a single
post
In this scenario I am going to add a new post to the blog and attribute the
authorship of this post to Mister James Bond.
Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group | Configuring personal Google+ profile 8

9. As you can see, I simply added a little author reference at the end of the post
and I created a hyperlink back to Google+ personal profile page with added
?rel=author at the end.
If you put a post URL in Google Structured Data Testing Tool (see Testing
section below) you will see the verified authorship confirmation.
Scenario #2: Mister James Bond as a sole author
This is an easier scenario as all you need to do is to put a link to personal
Google+ profile to blog footer or sidebar and all pages that use the same
template will have a reference to the Google+ profile and thus have authorship
setup.
If you don’t know what to choose, I recommend you use this scenario as it is
easier to set up, you don’t need to remember to tag every page and all of your
target website pages, including the home page, might get a picture in the
search results benefits.
I’d like to use sidebar widgets, those widgets that are used to reference social
networking profiles like the following.
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10. The Google+ link points to personal Google+ profile.
For example, I added Google+ button with a link to a personal Google+ profile
to the sidebar widget.
The result of verification should look the same for any page of the website.
Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group | Configuring personal Google+ profile 10

11. Configuring Google+ business page
Google+ business page is similar to Facebook pages feature. You can create
one or many business pages for different businesses and websites but you only
supposed to have a single personal Google+ profile.
You will be able to post videos, images and text updates to Google+ page as
well as specify your business address, hour of operation, contact email and
phone numbers. These Google+ business pages are meant to replace old
Google Places listing.
You don’t necessarily need to have a business to create a page. You may create
a page for a product or brand, a movie or a band, company or any organisation
and simply for a website.
Let’s create a page for a Jame’s website now. In your Google+ account select
Pages and Create New Page.
I normally choose Product or Brand and Website as a category. At the end of
the day you are actually going to create a Google+ page for website, aren’t
you.
Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group | Configuring Google+ business page 11

12. On the next page, type your website title and address and agree to Google+
terns of service.
Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group | Configuring Google+ business page 12

13. One the next page simply click Finish and then select About from the menu.
You Google+ business page is now ready. Feel free to upload a profile image (it
will not be show in the search results so you can use logos).
After you finish, last step is to link the website. So, click Link website.
Google+ will provide you with a snippet of code you need to put on your target
website home page. Do not close this window until you put the code on your
website.
I’d like to use WordPress widgets to add the code to the website but any
method will do.
Here is an example.
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14. I copied and pasted the code to the sidebar widget.
The publisher information should appear in Google Structured Data Testing
Tool when you test your website URL.
At this stage you will have linked your personal Google+ profile as well as
Google+ page to your target website.
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15. Testing
To test your set up at any time, use Google Structured Data Testing Tool.
1. Open http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
2. Type your website URL
3. Confirm that author and publisher are now verified
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16. Tips and Tricks
1. Always use a link to your personal Google+ profile when you post a
guest blog post
Add a blog you are going to guest post at to Contributor To section of
your personal Google+ profile. Then, add a link with your name pointing
to your Google+ profile using rel=author in addition to any other links.
This will allow Google to establish a track record of your online activities
and improve your rank as an author. The goal is to have an established
trusted author profile so your new posts (tagged with your rel=author
link) will automatically be more trusted.
2. Carefully choose your marketing personal and photo
As a personal Google+ profile photo will likely to appear in search results
page, select your image and marketing personal carefully. Attractive girl
picture tend to increate click-through ratio on your search result listing
and official suite-and-tie or uniform images are recommended for
professional services.
Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group | Tips and Tricks 16

17. Conclusion
There’s no reason for you not to do it today. It is still quite new. Your
competitors are probably not using it yet. It will increase traffic without
increasing your search result position and will help you to establish your
website authority as well as a trust rank of your chosen marketing persona.
Copyright © 2008-2012 Eneset Group | Conclusion 17