This post contains affiliate links.
There are cycles of articles about Google Authorship for blogs and lately a new round of articles is going on in the Internet on how you should be leveraging and implementing Google Authorship for your blog or site. Now Matt Cutts from Google does a video discussing it and the benefits and reasons why it should be leveraged, rather than embed the video here I am going to direct you to the iBlogZone article which was one of the most recent ones that I read and encourage you to read after reading my own point of view having implemented Google Authorship on DragonBlogger several months ago.
I used the Fanciest Author Box plugin for WordPress which not only gives you a clean author summary profile box at the bottom or top of an article, but also does the necessary tag elements to be compatible with Google Authorship. It is a highly recommended plugin for WordPress and is only $10 for an unlimited site license which is far cheaper than most WordPress plugins.
The Google Authorship adds your profile picture from Google as well as “author byline” to articles posted on your site.
The theory is that it looks more professional and will increase your CTR ratio, and combined with a plugin like Author hReview you can have a completely optimized SERP listing for one of your articles.
One advantage of using a plugin like Fanciest Author Box is it gives site writers who list themselves as authors for your site a listing for their own articles so that your profile isn’t listed as the author byline for all articles (even the ones you haven’t written).
Now, my own experience since implementing Google Authorship several months ago is that I haven’t really seen any traffic increase or benefit at all from implementing Google Authorship. In fact I have seen an average decrease in traffic to my site by 25%+ over the past several months since implementing Google Authorship but this could be coincidence and I don’t have enough data or proof to show that Google Authorship is related to my site traffic decrease, it could be caused by ranking in the SERP going down for some of my former popular articles or simply the search traffic going away for those articles, or it could be caused by some Penguin penalty that I am unaware of.
So whether you take the plunge or have already in implementing Google Authorship for your own site, I would be curious to hear if you specifically noticed any higher CTR or traffic volumes just from implementing this change alone, or if you also had a negative traffic loss within 30-60 days of implementing the change which may or may not be coincidental.
Read iBlogZone’s article on Google Authorship Here: http://www.iblogzone.com/2013/06/google-authorship-improve-search-quality.html
Now, in one of the best articles I have ever read about a case study and comparing the effects and conclusions of Google Authorship showing that it has benefit, but not on SERP rankings I would highly recommend you read this article on Jeffalytics which is one of the best articles I have read on Google Authorship so far and a study of it’s effects http://www.jeffalytics.com/google-plus-search-authorship/
Share your thoughts on Google Authorship!
WPX Support
Latest posts by WPX Support (see all)
- What Posts and Videos Will Get Popular is Still a Mystery - December 16, 2016
- Poem: Weeping Priest - October 30, 2016
- Reflecting on 8 Years of Dragon Blogger - September 29, 2016