How to simply add rel=Author to your website

After reading a lot of articles on the subject of adding rel=”Author” to your website I got very frustrated in the way they were written, even Google was very wordy. So I thought I would write a nice and easy post on how to quickly and easily you can add this important Tag.

What does rel=Author do?

Back in June 2011 Google started using this tag to help people find content by Author. It essentially connects up the authors Google+ account with the article they have written. The tag has been around for a little longer but Google have started using it from then.
Have you seen peoples faces turning up in search results?

Google retrieves these photos from the authors Google+ account.

So down to it, how do I add rel=Author on my website?

There are two parts to setting this up, you first need to create a link from your website to your Google+ account, then create a link from your Google+ to your website.
The easiest way is to add a link or a button on your website, for this example I will use a button. I will also include the image of the button for you too! This will work on your CMS (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc) as well as HTML.

Create a Google+ account (if you haven’t already): Here is a link to create an account.

From your website to your Google+ Account:

You will now need to get hold of your profile number, click ‘Profile’ (from Google+ dashboard), in the URL should be a long number.

Add your profile number to the HTML code below:

<a rel=”author” href=”https://plus.google.com/PROFILE-NUMBER-HERE” title=”Find out more about the Author”><img src=”https://www.juicyseo.co.uk/jg/images/author-post/googleplus.png” alt=”Find out more about the Author” /></a>

Here is an example of a button for me:

<a rel=”author” href=”https://plus.google.com/106418152119448278421″ title=”Find out more about the Author”><img src=”https://www.juicyseo.co.uk/jg/images/author-post/googleplus.png” alt=”Find out more about the Author” /></a>

Now copy and paste the code onto your page. Simple!

Now that the link from your website is done you need to create the link back.

From your Google+ account to your website:

In Google+ select ‘Profile’.
Click on the ‘Edit Profile’ button.
On the right hand side click on ‘Contributor to’ button (it doesn’t really look like a button but just words).
Add either the single post address or even the whole website address, which ever is suitable for you. Make sure you select ‘Anyone on the web’ option.
That’s it!

Now to test all is ok Google have created a little tool, here is the link. Fill in the URL of the page you would like to test, the tool should show you what it will look like or let you know if you are missing something.

If this has made adding the Author tag nice and easy for you, please feel free to Tweet, Google +1 or Like this page or send the URL to anyone else you think this would help. All the buttons to help you out are just up there on the right. Thanks.
Here is a little video from those nice chaps at Google all about the Author code.

[youtube gG3Oh7Ues8A]

If you thought this article was useful we would be very grateful if you would ‘LIKE‘ us to share our wisdom! Thanks.

Canonicalization and when to use it

Search Engines like Google monitor the amount of links to your website, this helps them decide how important your page is for the keyword used. Therefore it is important not to share these valuable links over several versions of the same page.

The most common homepage issue on canonicalization is having in-bound links pointing to several versions of a homepage, for example: https://www.juicyseo.co.uk/jg and https://www.juicyseo.co.uk/jg. This is basically sharing the link juice between two different URLs therefore diluting the value of the homepage.
To fix this problem decide on the version you want to use, this could be decided by the commercial aspects of the website or maybe the most commonly used version in your in-bound links. You should then decide on one of the following options to combine the value of the in-bound links to the chosen version.

If you can we recommend using a 301 re-direct as this will not only combine the value of the two pages but removes any duplicate page issues. If it is necessary to have two versions of a page you can use the rel=”canonical” tag. This will inform the search engines robots which version is the most important and should receive the link value.

301 Permanent re-direct

Search engines will follow the re-direct to the new page and de-index the old website page over time and will pass existing value to new website page.

When to use?
Expired content
Moving domains
Multiple versions of homepage

Rel=”Canonical” Tag

As explained above this will keep the two website pages and inform the search engines which page is the one which should receive the value of the in-bound link. This however will NOT remove any duplicate page issues.

When to use?
Some e-commerce websites display the same content but have different URLs, for example: www.juicyseo.co.uk/bristol-seo/what-is-seo/ and www.juicyseo.co.uk/seo/bristol/what-is-seo/

How to Implement it

This is a HTML tag which needs to be located in the <head> section of your website page. You will see the <title> and <description> tags in this area too.

Using our example above you would add the following to the <head> section of www.juicyseo.co.uk/seo/bristol/what-is-seo/ as the main page is www.juicyseo.co.uk/bristol-seo/

<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://www.juicyseo.co.uk/jg/bristol-seo/” />

Benefits of Google +1 button

Google have once again had another go at creating a social networking service to challenge Facebook. With Google+ (Google Plus) and they have done a good job. I think it is a little bit of a mix between Facebook and Linkedin and can be used for both personal and business.
As with Facebook Google+ have their version on the ‘like’ button, the G+ or +1 button. However they are looked at by Google completely different.
To explain how the +1 works. When you see a website page that you like you can press the +1 button on that page. If you have a Google account this page will come up on your wall and can be seen by your connections in your circles (friends, clients etc).

More importantly for a SEO view Google have said that they use the amount of +1 of a page as one of their many signals to decide where the page ranks. So the more people who have pressed your +1 the better your web page will rank. Time to ask your friends to press the button!

If you are a business owner Google have now opened up their Google+ service to allow businesses. We have all this information and how to open your Google+ business account here.

Google+ Plus add your Business

Google have in the past stopped businesses creating accounts in Google+. This has made people ‘try’ and register a personal account in the name of their business. Google have been deleting these accounts to keep in line with their guidelines.

However this has all changed, you can now create an account in Google+ for your business.

It is very easy to do, if you haven’t already got a Google+ account you will need to create a personal one first.

Follow the easy step by step guide.

Managing these accounts is very easy, we think a much better system than Facebook.

Whilst you are creating your account why not add us to one of your circles, the button is just up there in the top right of this page.

If you thought this article was useful we would be very grateful if you would ‘LIKE‘ us to share our wisdom! Thanks.