Community Bloggers 104: Verify Google authorship for your articles

The objective here is simple – To verify you as the author of the articles you have written on ITBusiness.ca using Google+. Why would you want to do this? In short, Google is making the “who” of content just as important as the “what” of content on the Web. It’s awarding credibility points for original articles written by an identifiable author that claims ownership to that article and the publication it is carried with.

Once your Google+ authorship is established, your photo and byline will start appearing alongside your articles in Google search results. Much like this:

The process will not take more than five minutes to complete. Let’s dive right into it.

Step 1: Ensure that you have a complete Google Plus profile. When readers come across your profile, they should not be greeted with empty spaces or a blank image. Fill in all the necessary details and keep a good profile and cover picture.

Step 2: Next you need to let Google know you’re an author that appears on ITBusiness.ca. Here’s how to do it:

• Click on the about button in your Google+ profile.
• Then go to the bottom and you will find a Links section. Click Edit.
• In the links pop-up window, find Contributor to and then click add custom link under that section.
• In the Label box type ITBusiness.ca and in the URL space, type http://www.itbusiness.ca
• Then go to the bottom and hit the save button.

Step 3: Login to your ITBusiness.ca WordPress account and click on profile (Just above tools on the left hand menu).

Step 4:  Scroll down and you should see space for Google+. Fill in your Google Plus account ID and then type in, immediately after it –
?rel=author

So the final result will look something like this:
https://plus.google.com/111858333154525491341?rel=author

Then go to the bottom and click update profile. That should save your Google Plus ID in wordpress.

Step 5:

Now we need to check if you have done this correctly.

Go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets . Copy-paste your article URL and then click preview. You should see the following if you have done everything correctly.

Congratulations on getting your Google authorship verified!