Why Google Authorship Is More Important Than Your Website

Now, more than ever, it is important to note that Google tracks your authority within your industry and will follow the trail of your footprints as you move around from place to place on the web. Then it will aggregate everything you do and put it all together. Your unique content  will ultimately get ranked by the ‘authority’ that you, the author, has, and by the value that others deem relevant in your content. This means that an author who has been well ranked by Google will help to raise the profile of any website that they are associated with.

In fact, Authorship is more important than your website because Google is now grading and ranking authors more consistently than they arewebsites. However, the one thing that has not changed is the importance of quality content; this is how you will build your authority. This means that the old methods of link building will not be as important as the credibility of the content that you author.

The best way to showcase your authority within a specific niche or industry is by associating your personal or business profile and website to every relevant piece of content you’ve ever written. Google Authorship is an easy way to connect your content through your Google+ profile and benefit from that association. If your name is listed as the author of the content, you can associate it. You may also hear people calling Google Authorship markup as the ‘rel=author’ tag or “rel=publisher’ tag.

Rel=Author ties your personal Google+ profile to individual pieces of content found online. By claiming your content with Rel=Author, you will see your head shot show up in the search engine results pages when your content shows up. Here’s an example:

Rel=Publisher ties your business Google+ page to your website. By claiming your website content with Rel=Publisher, you will see your Google+ page summary in the search engine results pages when someone searches for your brand name. Here’s an example:

Using authorship helps searchers discover great information by highlighting content from authors who they might find interesting. If you’re an author, signing up for authorship will help users recognize content that you’ve written. Additionally, searchers can click the byline to see more articles you’ve authored or to follow you on Google+.

While there hasn’t been a comprehensive study on how much additional traffic a person can receive from a photo appearing in search, but by building up your authorship, blog posts and articles that you have written will get displayed in the search engine results pages along with your author bio photo, which can increase the click through rate of your listing by as much as 150%!

Google algorithms are constantly trying to discover the best content on the web created by true authorities on various subject matters. Brands and marketers can no longer fake their way into better search engine rankings. They have to deliver compelling content in many different forms, to the right customers, at the right stage of the buying cycle. And Google Authorship is one way to do just that.

Straight from Google’s mouth, here is how to add a Google Author Tag and Google Publisher Tag to your website, as well as answers to any other important Authorship questions you may have.