Social Sheila Video: how to claim Google Authorship as a writer

Have you heard about Google Authorship? It's part of Google Plus, and it's something you need to know about if you are a children's book writer or illustrator.






You might already be a Google Plus user, although truthfully it hasn't taken off as quickly as Twitter or Facebook. One of the functions of Google Plus is to act as a social network, allowing people to share content among themselves, but it's much more than just a social platform – Google sees it as the "interconnecting fabric" among all the services it offers, from search through to e-mail, and it is increasingly becoming one of the ways Google uses to organise all of the world's information and deliver pertinent, accurate results when people search.

One way to help Google deliver accurate results is for it to determine who is an authority on certain subjects. Forbes magazine has done an excellent job of discussing the role of Google plus and Authorship in helping Google determine authority; I won't repeat their points, but you can read that article here. In short, Google Authorship allows you to tell Google you are the creator of content that should have your name on it, specifically blogs.

Google Authorship allows you to tell Google you are the creator of content that should have your name on it, specifically blogs.

If you own your own blog or are a regular contributor on someone else's blog, it's important that you claim Google Authorship via Google Plus - this will entail setting up a free Google plus ID, if you don't have one yet.

In this video I will show you how to set up Authorship, but a key step of the process is putting a Google "author" link on the blogs where you contribute. I'll show you how to put the author link on a WordPress blog, but if you are not running your own blog and instead are contributing to another blog, you'll need their cooperation to get the author link set up. You can read more about that in the Forbes article above. For those of you using Blogger, Google's own blogging platform, my research indicates that it's a one-click process to claim Google Authorship: I haven't tried this myself, but you can follow the instructions here:


Have you set up Google Authorship? Let me know your comments below.


@spacekidsbooks
Sheila Averbuch lives in East Lothian in Scotland and is currently working on SPACE KIDS AND THE SPY FROM PLANET 12, a sci-fi adventure for 9-11's. She holds an MA in journalism from Stanford University and a BA from Harvard University in American History & Literature. Sheila is managing director of the content services and social media training agency ENNclick and blogs at www.spacekidsbooks.com


4 comments:

  1. Sheila, this is SO useful, thank you.

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  2. I have actually been putting this off for ages. Gawd. Thanks for the clarity!

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  3. Thanks Jan and Candy. Candy you've not lost too much by waiting till now, because Google has made the process so much simpler now! I'd love to know whether Authorship will give writers and publishers better protection against pirate sites.

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  4. It would possibly help students regarding all those essentials and details which are indeed considered to be so important. fix my grammar mistakes

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