Its been a while since rel="author" and rel="me" tags are in talks around SEO related sites and people. With the buzz I also couldn't resist it for too long and I just added them in my sites, just around 2 weeks ago. And, here you go it's working now, if my website appears on google search, it shows my author photo too. How cool is that? And it was so exciting for me to see that. After this it has already improved my visitor count.
So what did I do to make this happen?
Step 1:
I created a user profile page of mine and linked my name to google plus account added rel="me" attribute on the anchor. Note here, I have + (plus sign) after my name. Because it wasn't working for a while and some sites suggested to add + sign, so i added that. But still not sure if we really need that, but have nothing to loose by adding that. So, the code looks like this:
<a target="_blank" href="https://plus.google.com/103583381097797606705" rel="me">Damodar Bashyal+</a>
Also, Bill Vasiliadis, Who is a SEO Manager and runs SEO for Small Business suggested me to add google plus button on the profile page, so I added that too.
<a href="https://plus.google.com/103583381097797606705" rel="author">
<img width="16" height="16" src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/images/icons/gplus-16.png">
</a>
Step 2:
On the article page I linked author name to above profile page within the same website like this:
<a rel="author" href="http://learntipsandtricks.com/user/11/damodar/bashyal">Damodar Bashyal</a>
Step 3:
Then I went to my Google Profile page and clicked on edit profile button. Then on right side of the page I found section called "Contributor to" and adde all of my websites there and saved the profile.
Step 4:
I checked to see if I implemented everything properly or not by going to this "Rich Snippets Testing Tool" page. When I previewed my url, it showed my photo and said " Verified: Authorship markup is verified for this page."
Step 5:
May not require but still I submitted my website for Authorship request. According to Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller:
We will pick up the authorship information automatically as we recrawl and reindex the pages involved, but this can take a bit of time until it's visible. You do not need to submit either of these forms for authorship information. That said, the form linked from the help center article is useful to fill out, since it gives our team a contact person on your side should we notice something amiss with the markup on your side.
Step 6:
Be patient and wait for your smiling face to appear on google search result along with links to your web pages.
You can also check Author Stats in Google Webmaster Tools to see statistics for pages of which you are the Verified Author.
Let me know how you go. I am using Codefight CMS and it will be included in next public release version.
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Link Worx Seo posted on - Monday 29th of October 2012 08:01:03 PM