Google Author Tag creation is a rather painless process if you are using the shortcut outlined below. Using the Google Author tag enables a profile thumbnail to appear in the Google search results for your web site. Below I will discuss in depth a 3 part step by step process to adding your Google profile thumbnail. In my next blog post, I will discuss how to create the Google Publisher tag and linking your Google Local Business listing so your profile thumbnail will appear in the Google Places search results and have all of your Google accounts synced together in one Google account. Exciting stuff!
Part I
- Create a Google+ Personal Page
- If you do not have a Google+ page, you can create one by clicking the link https://plus.google.com/up/accounts/upgrade/
- Once signed up and logged in, you should be on your profile page. If you are not, in the left column navigation click on the second tab that says “Profile”.
- On your profile tab, you will need to upload a headshot picture of yourself. The profile picture should be 250px by 250px.
- Next to your picture there is a blue button that says, “Edit Profile”, click on it.
- Scroll down to where it says “Contributor to” and click in the box when it changes color as you scroll over it. The Contributor to box is the second to last box right above the “Links” box.
- In this box you are going to add your web site. Click on the “add custom link” url and 2 rows will open.
- the first row enter the text on how you would like your web site to appear publicly, Example: www.LiquoriCo.com
- In the second row, enter the url of your site, Example: https://liquorico.com
- Make sure the dropdown box under the rows are set to “public” and click save to close the Contributor To box.
- Make sure you are still on your “Profile” tab on your Google+ account, as we will need the URL in your browser in a moment.
Part II
- FTP to your files of your web site
- If you are using WordPress, you will need to open your header.php file. If you do not know where your header.php file, it is in this path: /wp-content/themes/YOUR THEME/header.php
- If you are using an HTML web site, you will have to put the author tag in every page of your site unless you are using PHP within your site where you have a “php includes” line which makes pages of your site dynamic.
- Before the closing tag of the file/files you are working with, insert this line of code:
https://plus.google.com/118154499169004567319 - Save your files and upload them to your remote server
Part III
- To test everything was done correctly, we need to go to Google testing tool. Click on the url to go to Google’s Rich Snippet testing page:http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
- In the URL box, enter your web site URL, example, www.LiquoriCo.com and hit the red preview button. For an advanced look on what you should see, please click the link:http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=www.liquori.co&html=
- From there you should see in the first box for the author tag, it should say “Verified” in green and on top of that, it will show you a preview on how your thumbnail will look in the search results when Google starts to show it within the next couple of weeks.
- That’s it! You are done. If you do not get any preview or Red box which says “Unverified”, it means that you did something wrong. Go back through the steps outlined above and try again. This is the easiest way to add the author tag, there are other ways which are more complicated and time consuming.
The box under the Author box is the Publisher box for the Google Publisher tag which we will talk about in the next blog post or by clicking the link here. (Coming Soon)
