Rel=author?? google auth?
-
Hi everyone, i need some help with this rel=author and google auth which has come into place. Some questions:
1., I write a blog on our e-commerce site, do i need rel=authort?
2., i write on other sites do i need rel=author
If so is there an easy way to implement this, i know it links in with the Google+ profile but i am confussed as i keep seeing different ways to do it.
I've also been told to do good auth, what is this? ive been given a piece of code to use in my site to auth it? is this worth it?
Any help really appreciated
-
Hi Guys,
I just wanted to add to what I have previously said as when I have dug a bit deeper into this, I have found some info that could go against what I have previously said.
You can use the rel=publisher tag alongside the rel=author tag on a webpage. With this in mind it would be a good idea to have the rel=publisher present on every page in your website to enable you to be eligible for Google's Direct Connect feature.
I found this out when looking through a Google forum and one of the Google Trend Analysts confirmed this by saying:
Hi guys
_just a few short comments: it's fine to have both a link rel=publisher and author-markup on the same page. The rel=publisher confirms that your website is the publisher of that Google+ Page; the authorship markup confirms that you (your personal profile) is the author of the content on that page. This markup can be used independently, since the meanings are slightly different. The issue with the Rich Snippets testing tool flagging this as an error is a bug on our side and should be resolved soon (sorry about the confusion caused by that!). _Cheers__John
Just thought I would share this with you all as it might help.
Matt.
-
It certainly makes sense. We are all in the dark at the moment to exactly how it will work, however, there have been a few tests that have been done to show that page authors have a direct effect upon SEO.
I would imagine that this will be the case for business pages too, however, for the likes of blog posts, etc, (i.e. content that is made by a specific individual within the business) it is best practise to author them to the page. Google is having a big push at linking who actually created the content on websites (and rightly so!), therefore they like it when this is done. Not only this, but it can help with click-through rates within the SERPs to have this.
Matt.
-
Say i auth with an individual employee on google+ and get gains from it when the algo takes it into consideration - what happens if they start letting company profiles auth with content? will i have messed the pages up, or do you think i could have reverted?
Surely Google will let you eventually auth a company google+ profile with content it has written, it makes sense as a company should write trusted and quality content.
-
Yes, but it is important to understand the power of authorship toward SEO. Google is placing more and more importance around actual authors of content when they decide up search engine rankings.
My advice would be to have the content of the business authored to a relevant employee (i.e. the CEO, the blogger, etc) and ensure that they are active on Google+.
This way, you can get a headstart on your competitors and have a powerful author rank.
Matt.
-
I want to tell users that our business wrote the content, doesn't seem to be a way to do that yet which is disappointing.
-
Yes, the rel=publisher tag is used for pages that would be displayed giving information about your business. For example, when you search 'SEOmoz', the company profile appears on the left side. This is because they have used the rel=publisher to link to their Google+ business page.
Use the rel=author for pages that have content on that was done by someone specific, i.e. a blog post, or in your case: holiday guides. This is when you link to your actual personal profile page.
Hope this clears things up a bit.
Matt.
-
Hi Matthew thanks for the advice so far. I am a little confused now. we have rel=publisher and rel=author.
I understand schema, so far on our business site we have verified our google+ page with our website by adding some code.
I have no rel=publisher and no rel=author on any pages. I have some fantastic holiday guides however. Can i benefit from using this rel=author feature or rel-publisher?
Publisher i am assuming is used for business pages?
-
Hi Paul,
Yes you are able to do this via the rel=publisher code. This is used the same way in which rel=author is used, however, you link it to your Google+ business page.
To verify it on Google+, all you have to do is place the link to your website within the about section of your Goole+ business page under the 'website:' section.
Hope this helps.
Matt.
-
Hi Angela,
Sorry, I meant the Google+ page for your business (i.e. not your personal Google+ profile).
I would probably avoid using this on individual products pages. Use schema.org markup on those pages to show product images, price, etc within the SERPs.
For your about us page, home, etc, I would use the rel=publisher to link your Google+ business page.
Hope this helps.
Matt.
-
As far as im aware you cannot link up with your business profile on g+ - just the personal one to auth a page content?
-
Thanks Matt. I have an ecommerce site. When you say "business page" do you mean product pages or content pages like FAQ, About Us, Terms and Conditions, etc? Just want to make sure I'm understand correctly.
Thanks!
Angela
-
Hi,
Yes I would do this for your website's main inside pages. Make sure that when you use rel='publisher' that it goes to a business page and not to a user page or it won't work.
For example, the one I use on the Wow Internet website is:
Hope this helps.
Matt.
-
I've set up Google authorship but is it a good idea to set up publisher markup too?
-
Hi Paul,
My advice would be that you don't want to have rel=author on your e-commerce pages, i.e. for product pages. You should have different schema data for those pages to let Google know that it is about a product, the price, etc. You can check most of this info out at http://www.schema.org
With regard to how you actually go about setting up the rel=author to your Google+ profile, you can check out this blog that I wrote on the wow internet blog.
I would stick to using this on blog posts and information pages on your website, i.e the homepage, about us, etc.
Hope this helps,
Matt.
-
Apologies for the delayed reply - I've just spotted your question.
Rel=author is really easy to implement on your own site or on guest posts.
1. You have to make sure you are a contributor to the website you're writing for and that you have a link to that site on your Google+ profile.
2. Then, you have two options - the meta tag or a rel="me" part of a link which credits you for the post.
There are good number of guides on the web - two good ones are here
http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/how-to-implement-rel-author
http://www.pr2020.com/blog/claim-your-content-how-to-set-up-rel-author-tags
I'm afraid I can't advice on 'Good Auth' but if you have a decent blogging platform you should be able to get a good plugin to help you with implementing rel=author.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How important is Google Plus - Specifically for B2B Small Businesses?
Our traffic is about 300 visitors a day in a small industrial niche. We have 89 wonderful facebook followers (all friends and no customers) and basically social media is of no interest to our audience. The same is true of all our competitors - we all have twitter accounts, FB accounts etc and they are resolutely ignored by our customers. [For a combination of Industry Sector, Language, Culture, Business Culture and Job Role] That's not the question though 🙂 No one has any Google Plus followers either and no +1's on pages. So if I get 10 +1's on a page will that make any difference? Would 50? Would 500? How much effort should I put in to this? As we are not an e-commerce revenue isn't tied directly to website traffic but there is a correlation. So is it worth spending a bit of time to develop a 'natural distribution' of +1's and then reach out to my contacts to get them to plus 1 me? That is I use lots of different google accounts, with different IPs on different pages at different times and slowly build Or do i just say that this part of the SEO approach is of no benefit and I ignore?
Social Media | | Zippy-Bungle0 -
Best way to create content in Google Plus to help SEO
Hi, I would like to know what is your experience about how to create content for Google+ in order to improve your SEO. I mean, tips like content length, opitmization, links, hashtags, and so on... What do you think? How would you integrate this strategy with the other ones (facebook, twitter, blogs, etc.) Thank you.
Social Media | | teconsite0 -
Google Plus - Using Personal Account or Google Apps Business Account?
Hey Everyone, I've been wondering for the longest time if I should use my Google Apps business account google plus profile or just continue to use my personal google plus profile. MY personal account is what I am currently using. Does it really matter? Thank you for your input!
Social Media | | TShak0 -
How to get Google+ Reviews directly on your website?
Greetings Mozzers, I'm wondering if there is a way to get a Google+ embed on a website for visitors to easily provide Google+ reviews without having to leave your site? Hard? Easy? Doable? Good Idea? Any direction or education on this matter would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
Social Media | | MonsterWeb280 -
Google+ Doesn't Show my Post Title
When I create a new blog post and link to it on Google+, the thumbnail & description are correct, but the HTML title it pulls in is just the company name. I have the proper HTML title tag and OpenGraph tagging on the page too, but lately (last 3 posts) it just shows company name: Here's an example. It used to work on the first handful of posts, but the last 3 or 4, it just show the "Company Name" next to the thumbnail image & above the description. <title>Some blog post title - Company Name</name></p> <p>...</p> <p>...</p> <p><span><meta </span><span class="webkit-html-attribute-name">property</span><span>='</span><span class="webkit-html-attribute-value">og:title</span><span>' </span><span class="webkit-html-attribute-name">content</span><span>='</span><span class="webkit-html-attribute-value">Some blog post title - Company Name</span><span>'/></span></p> <p> </p> <p> </p></title>
Social Media | | nbyloff0 -
Google+ Business page just not showing :-(
Good morning from Pollen level moderate wetherby UK pass me another Benadryl Plus wetherby UK Having jumped into the world of Google plus my objective was to create a business page that would appear when the Google+ serp is clicked on. Unfortunately my labour & toil has not paid off 😞 Having created a Google+ business page & set it to default ( I think ) it still points to the vanilla Google+ page. Below is my frustration chartered in three sraeps http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/serp-google-plus-link-step-1jpg.jpg http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/google-plus-landing-page-error-step-2.jpg http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/business-page-built-hodgson-plus-step-3.jpg So my questiuon is please - "How do i get the business page to be the default everytime a user clicks on the Google + link in the SERPS?" Any insights welcome 🙂
Social Media | | Nightwing0 -
Do you think Google +1 can hurt rankings?
More on established B2C sites (not blogs/forums)? For example, a client has the #1 ranking for the kw with the highest exact match volume in their vertical and sitelinks. Is it better to keep things status quo and not give Google the data or potentially introduce a new signal to Google that might be negative if CTR is not high enough?
Social Media | | MatomySEO0 -
How do you believe Google's +1 service is going to affect SEO? What can we do?
So Google just announced the +1 button, which is there answer to Facebook 'likes' button: http://searchengineland.com/meet-1-googles-answer-to-the-facebook-like-button-70569 http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/30/google-plus-one/ They should begin showing up now on Google US. If you aren't seeing them, you can turn them on here: http://www.google.com/experimental/ I want to know? What affect do you predict these are going to have? Is there anything we can do from an SEO point to begin leveraging +1 right from the outset?
Social Media | | Tom-Anthony1