In a content marketing world, image is now the king. Jennifer Reid, director at The CommsCo, explains us how applying Google Authorship to articles and posts can help boost your content
Though Google Authorship got a lot of press when it was announced in June of 2011, both its purpose and the potential business benefits it can offer have managed to evade many of us. This is in no small part down to the fact its initial set-up is not trivial, nor does it always begin functioning instantly. Setting it up is a multi-step process that is not well documented within Google Webmaster Tools, and it can in fact take many weeks before author photos start appearing beside content in search rankings. Authors also have to remember to add the ‘rel=author’ tag to each new blog post or article.
Beyond that, while the benefits for an individual are obvious, there were no clear cut apparent business benefits associated with Google Authorship.
But before you dismiss Authorship as another one of Google’s doomed pilot projects (remember Google Wave?) Follow these steps to learn how Google Authorship can optimise your content and send more traffic to your blog or website.
1. What is Google Authorship?
Using the Google Authorship tag in your blog posts and articles means that when users Google a topic, if your post is in the search results, your photo will appear alongside it.
Why is this important? Because we all know how much more traffic links with pictures get – it’s a lot, more. According to Kissmetrics’ stats on social media, photos get 53 per cent more likes, 104 per cent more comments and 84 per cent more click-throughs than plain text. In more simple terms, think of it this way: in a list of text-based search results, wouldn’t your eye be drawn to the one with the author’s photo beside it?
2. Set up Google Authorship
As this isn’t a post dedicated to Google Authorship setup procedures, I’ll direct you to Google’s help [plus.google.com/authorship]. Their documentation has come a long way since 2011, though I have along the way found many other blogs that explain the setup procedure in clearer detail. I will mention that you’ll need a Google+ account to use it, and that your email domain name will have to match your blog’s (so if your blog name is whatagreatbusiness.com, your email address will be something like [email protected]).
Google has also now provided a tool to help you test whether Authorship has been set up properly: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
3. Google Authorship business benefits
Businesses benefit from Google Authorship in the same way individuals do – if you have a blog within your company website, you’ll get more traffic to it by employing Google Authorship as a visual marketing strategy.
If you were hoping that you could use your corporate logo and have it appear in search results, then you’ll be disappointed. Google Authorship is about people, and it will be your employees who will appear in the search results when your blog’s content comes up in search results.
Don’t be disillusioned by this. Having your employees appear as themselves in search results is a powerful marketing tool. While social media tools have certainly revolutionised B2B marketing, they’ve also influenced the way in which we market – everyone has become a persona, so focus your brand on the people.
Google’s focus on linking images to content is nothing new and is a trend that will continue to grow. Twitter’s new profile pages focus heavily on images and video, and Facebook has also changed its layout to emphasise images. Google is unique in this instance because it is linking profile photos to content, but the overall message is the same – visual marketing is where it’s at.
4. Google Authorship and content marketing
If you haven’t implemented Google Authorship across your team, why not sit down to discuss it when you next look at your communications or content marketing plan? Generating unique blog content on a frequent basis is one of the biggest challenges many B2B marketers face, particularly when you’re part of a small in-house team, so why not make the most of the free tools available to you, and optimise that content to drive more traffic to your site?
Google Authorship will help you to do this and ultimately, if you’re producing high quality content consistently, it will likely prove to be a visual marketing tool that turns your website into your top lead generation tool.
