Previously, we discussed the two simple steps needed to set up Google Authorship, and now we’ll highlight the 5 Easy Steps to Setting Up Your Google Authorship (Please see the slideshow for reference):
Step 1: Create a Google+ Profile: If you don’t already have a Google+ Profile, click here to create one. If you do have a profile, then sign into your Google+ account.
Step 2: Add Friends and Get Social: If you’ve just created your Google+ Profile, or haven’t logged into it in a while, you’ll see a screen prompting you to add friends based on the contacts you have in your Gmail account ( or connected Yahoo or Hotmail accounts ). When you’re done, click “Continue to Google+”.
Step 3: Edit Your Google+ Profile: Inside Google+, click “Profile” on the left-side menu. Inside of your Profile, click “About” from the top menu, and from there you’ll see the People you’re connected to, the Story of your life (for Google+ purposes, it’s a brief bio that includes your tagline, an introduction, and bragging rights), as well information which includes your work history, education, and other things you’d like to share with the general public and your circle of friends and connections on Google+.
Step 4: Add Links to Your Content: As you continue to scroll on your Profile, you’ll get to the “Links” section which lets you add your other social networking profiles, in addition to any other links you’d like to highlight, including sites you contribute content to. Google may already provide you with some options for public pages to connect if you have a Twitter or YouTube account. If so, you can click the “+” and add them to your Google+ profile. Under “Contributor To”, you can add all of the websites that you contribute to as an author, but be sure that your name is the same as your Google+ profile, and that you’ve included your Google+ profile URL somewhere on that site or Author’s page.
Step 4.5: Adding Content Via the Google Authorship Form: If you have access to an email on the domain of the URL that you’re attempting to add as a Contributor (e.g. Examiner@KindraCotton.com, as in the slideshow example), you can use the Google Authorship Submission Form to sign up with that email. Google will send you a verification link, and once you click it, that domain’s content will be added to the “Contributor to” section of your Google+ profile and the email address you used will be listed on under your “Work” contact information.
Step 5: Verify Your Google Authorship Is Working: Use the helpful Google Structured Data Testing Tool to verify you’ve followed these steps correctly. If you’ve been successful, you’ll see a message that says “Authorship is working for this webpage”. If you get a message saying it isn’t working, check the error messages to find out what needs to be fixed. Need more help? Try these tips.
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