Google is always looking for way to enhance search results for users – and for this reason Google is now promoting is “authorship tag”. In plain English, this meta tag is used to verify the author of an article or other piece of web content, and thereby supposedly improve the search engine ranking for that piece of content.
Normally a business should have a Google Plus Business page. In order to create a Google Plus page for your business, you first need to create a personal Google Plus page. As with Facebook you first create the personal page, and then create the business page – these two pages are separate entities even though your personal profile controls both.
Once you have a personal Google Plus page, the goal is now to link this personal profile page with the posts on your website. As with many things Google that are relatively new, setting everything up is a bit messy and the steps do change (as it is with Google), but unless you want to handle the technical end of it, your web developer or SEO person can handle it.
I, David Wank, have a Google Plus personal profile.
And Short Hills Design, LLC has a Google Plus page (my business).
(Feel free to click and join my circles in either profile or in both!)
I have linked my website, www.shorthillsdesign.com, so that every time I post a blog article on the site, Google recognizes that the “David Wank” who wrote the article is the same “David Wank” who owns the Google Plus profile. Moving forward, my posts should get some type of preference in search engine results because I’m now a verified author. In addition, my articles should show up with my picture next to them – an addition that is said to increase click-through rates.
Becoming verified with Google’s authorship program is a great way to get more use out of your new and existing web content (albeit with a complex setup mechanism). Of course you need to have a Google Plus page first, and a blog on your site, but once you have these two parts in place, using the authorship tags may give your blog posts a big boost.
