This is something that I was not looking forward to even making an attempt at, but I tried it out today, by adding a little bit of code at the top of all of my blog posts.
As you can probably see, (if I haven’t removed it), I have a link that says copyright Rowan Casey at the top of my posts now.
The link is a special link that claims authorship of that post, and links to my Google Plus profile.
It also claims authorship of the guest posts as well, but I couldn’t be bothered figuring out how to reconfigure it not to do that.
It looks like this in code: <a rel=”author” href=”https://plus.google.com/110172400710124550294″>Rowan Casey</a> and I also had to add the URL of this domain to the contributor to section of my Google Plus profile, and make that public.
How To Add The Google Plus Authorship Code To All Your Blog Posts
I used a WordPress plugin that I use for ads called Post Layout which is free, which allowed me to add that code to the top of all of my blog posts, along with a copyright in ordinary text before it. If you want to make the copyright symbol, I can’t be bothered remembering the code for that, look it up.
The way you check that it is connected is to use the Google rich snippets testing tool. This is all for me a bit like a science fiction horror movie, but having said that it seems to have worked.
People should not have to learn code to that extent to be able to claim authorship of their blog posts, articles, videos, etc.
I publish on dozens of different sites, and I cannot imagine how I could possibly begin to start adding codes like this everywhere I write, and whether I would even want to, but that’s another question.
I found out this information on a Social Media Examiner article called Google Author Tags, and it goes on for more than that, and more than I could even understand, but if you want to learn more, read that article.
I used the rich snippets testing tool, and it said that I “might” have my profile picture appear next to search results. After all of that. Thanks Google for your wonderful way of making all our lives easier!
Why am I bothering to do this if I think it’s all so complicated and annoying? Because Google Plus are the same people who own Google, and if they decide that there will be a distinct SEO advantage for the people who have this authorship code on their pages, then that’s what they decide, and there’s not all that much you can do about it.
