In the past several months, content marketers have been buzzing about Google+ authorship, a new feature that allows content creators to claim authorship of their online content and link it to their Google+ profile page. Then when their content shows up in search results, a thumbnail of their photo appears next to the article like this:
Here’s how you can sign up for authorship.
Having your photo appear in search results next to the title of your content has a few key benefits:
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Recognition. Popular online writers like Seth Godin or Ramit Sethi have instant visual recognition to their readers. Even if your following is more niche, users may begin to recognize your face over time. Seeing your photo next to content you created could prompt them to click your link over someone else’s.
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Credibility. Content mills and scraper sites have diluted some of the quality of online content, but a photo helps you rise above less credible, lower quality content. It demonstrates that you’re a real person who has taken the time to carefully craft your content and build an online following. As you can see above, the snippet includes the size of your Google+ following so that provides additional social proof of your authority.
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Visual appeal. Search results that include an image are more visually appealing and more likely to generate a click through than those without images. Research backs this up. According to Curata’s 2012 Curation Habits Report, curated articles with pictures get 47% more click-through activity than content without pictures.
It’s always a good idea to claim authorship of content you’ve created from scratch, but what about pieces you’ve shared from third-party sites? Is it fair to have your photo appear next to an abstract you’ve shared? Curated content is more of a gray area. After a conversation with Lee Odden of TopRank at the Content2Conversion conference in New York, here are some guidelines I came up with.
Here are some examples of when it’s fair (or not) to claim Google+ authorship:
In the example above, the intro paragraph is basically an abstract of the piece being curated with little additional commentary. It also includes the same title, so it would not be fair to claim authorship.
In this example, the curator quotes from the original article and links to it at the bottom but includes several paragraphs of original commentary about why the original argument is wrong. It also features a different title than the original piece, so it would be fair to claim authorship.