Authorship resource covering everything you'll need to know about implementation and verification of rel=author and rel=publisher markup and Authorship tools.

2. On Tuesday, June 7th 2011, Google
announced their support of authorship
markup for content. Google said the
experiment was to help searchers “find
content from great authors.”

3. WHAT IS REL=AUTHOR?
Rel=Author is HTML markup in the code of a
webpage that allows authors to associate their
content with their Google+ profiles. With this
association comes a rich snippet (for our purposes
this will be your Google+ profile photo) that appears
next to your result in Google’s SERPs (search
engine results pages)..

4. WHY SHOULD YOU CARE ABOUT AUTHORSHIP?

5. 1. Rel=Author is simple to implement
2. Based off of existing patents, it’s likely that in the near
future Google will be looking closely at established
authors to help determine authority and relevance
3. Having a snippet (your Google+ profile headshot)
appear next to your result helps to engage searchers
by adding a personal touch to how your content
appears in the SERPS
4. A snippet gives your content a certain amount of
credibility when compared with posts on a results page
lacking a snippet
5. Having your content stand out leads to more clicks
(higher CTR) which leads to more traffic and brand
recognition
6. All of these benefits can help to give your content more
opportunity for social engagement.

6. HOW DOES REL=AUTHOR WORK?
 Google needs to discover (crawl) the two
connecting signals (reciprocal links) you are
sending from your Google+ profile to your content
and vice versa.

7. In order for Google to detect your markup, place a
link pointing back to your Google+ profile in either
an author bio in your content or in the author page
on a website or blog. If you are not linking directly
to your Google+ profile in an author bio on your
post but have a link pointing back to the author
page instead, you will need a link pointing from your
author page to your Google+ profile using your
name as the anchor text in the link.

8. WHAT YOU NEED TO GET STARTED
1. Gmail account or a verified email address
2. Google+ profile
3. Content
4. Rel=Author HTML code:
<a href="https://plus.google.com/your Google+ profile ID #?rel=author">Your name here</a

9. USING THE VERIFIED EMAIL OPTION
 Google allows you to link to your content using a
verified email address (brianjensen@seo.com) for
content that’s posted on the same domain
(SEO.com).
 By verifying your email that’s on the same domain
as your content, your email will automatically show
up in the work section of your Google+ profile and
Google will add the domain to the “Contributor to”
section of your Google+ profile. Google will put a
small check mark next to your email in your
Google+ profile once it’s successfully been verified.
Having these in place will save you the time and
effort of adding it for every new post on that specific
domain.

10. WHEN CAN I EXPECT TO SEE MY SNIPPET
APPEAR IN THE SERPS?
 If your code is implemented correctly, but not
showing up in the SERPS, Google states that it
only shows authorship when it feels it will be useful
(sorry Google didn’t define useful). Otherwise, how
quickly your snippet appears depends on how often
both your Google+ profile and the website or blog
that’s hosting your content is crawled by Googlebot
- allowing Google to make the connection between
your content and Google+ profile. I’ve seen it vary
from a couple of hours to a few days.

11. HOW TO VERIFY YOUR AUTHORSHIP MARKUP
WILL DISPLAY CORRECTLY
 Google has provided us with
a free resource called the
Structured Data Testing Tool
(aka Rich Snippets Testing
Tool) which allows us to
quickly check if Google can
parse the markup and display
it in the search engine results
pages.
 Google will let you know
immediately if Authorship is
working for the page or if it
can't find markup.
 You can access this tool from
your Webmaster Tools
account in “Other Resources”

12. AUTHORSHIP & WEBMASTER TOOLS
 Author Stats –
Shows metrics for all
posts made on your
Google+ profile in
addition to content
for which you are
the verified author.
 Rich Snippets
Testing Tool, aka
Structured Data
Testing Tool.

13. REL = PUBLISHER
 Rel=Publisher offers a way for brands, businesses
and organizations to connect their websites to their
Google+ profiles.
 Rel=Publisher works by adding markup from your
website’s home page to your Google+ page.
Having this code implemented correctly allow a
snippet from your business or organizations
Google+ profile to show up for navigational queries
(branded queries) in the right navigation of
Google’s SERPs.
 Add this link to your site's home page:
<a href="https://plus.google.com/[yourpageID]" rel="publisher">Find us on
Google+</a>

14. REL=PUBLISHER CASE STUDY: STARBUCKS
 Here’s the source
code from
Starbucks’ home
page as well the
result for the query
“Starbucks” in
Google.
 In addition to extra
“real-estate.”
Starbucks will also
get a snippet next
to any content
published on their
Google+ profile in
the SERPs.

15. AUTHORSHIP RESOURCES
 Google+ Authorship & Author Rank Community -
https://plus.google.com/communities/10447442884
5467390263
 Google Authorship support -
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.p
y?hl=en&answer=1708844
 Google+ for businesses, brands, organizations
support -
 http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.p
y?hl=en&answer=1408986
 Structured Data Testing Tool –
 http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippe
ts

16. RICH SNIPPETS TESTING TOOL
BOOKMARKLET
 AJ Kohn has created a Rich Snippets Testing Tools
bookmarklet which allows you to quickly verify the authorship
markup of any live page. For those that aren't familiar, a
bookmarklet is essentially a saved browser bookmark that
contains JavaScript commands.
The first step in the process is to find the bookmarklet in AJ's
post here - http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/rich-snippets-
testing-tool-bookmarklet
Follow the instructions in the post, and drag the Rich Snippets
Testing Tool URL/script to your browser bookmarks bar. To
view whether the Authorship markup is implemented correctly
for any page, simply click your RSTT testing tool bookmarklet
in your browser's bookmark bar and the results will appear
from the Rich Snippets Testing Tool, aka Structured Data
Testing tool in a new tab, letting you know if markup has been
detected on the page.

17. RICH SNIPPETS TESTING TOOL
BOOKMARKLET

18. BRIAN JENSEN
Thanks for reading! Feel free to
reach out with any questions or just
to say hello on any my social
profiles.
Google+:
https://plus.google.com/100938619
255397146926
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/Brian_A_Jensen
LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/pub/brian-
jensen/16/414/10a/