Rel=author?? google auth?

[tutugirl]

Thanks Matt.  I have an ecommerce site.  When you say "business page" do you mean product pages or content pages like FAQ, About Us, Terms and Conditions, etc?  Just want to make sure I'm understand correctly.

Thanks!

Angela

[pauledwards]

As far as im aware you cannot link up with your business profile on g+ - just the personal one to auth a page content?

[MatthewBarby]

Hi Angela,

Sorry, I meant the Google+ page for your business (i.e. not your personal Google+ profile).

I would probably avoid using this on individual products pages. Use schema.org markup on those pages to show product images, price, etc within the SERPs.

For your about us page, home, etc, I would use the rel=publisher to link your Google+ business page.

Hope this helps.

Matt.

[MatthewBarby]

Hi Paul,

Yes you are able to do this via the rel=publisher code. This is used the same way in which rel=author is used, however, you link it to your Google+ business page.

To verify it on Google+, all you have to do is place the link to your website within the about section of your Goole+ business page under the 'website:' section.

Hope this helps.

Matt.

[pauledwards]

Hi Matthew thanks for the advice so far. I am a little confused now. we have rel=publisher and rel=author.

I understand schema, so far on our business site we have verified our google+ page with our website by adding some code.

I have no rel=publisher and no rel=author on any pages. I have some fantastic holiday guides however. Can i benefit from using this rel=author feature or rel-publisher?

Publisher i am assuming is used for business pages?

[MatthewBarby]

Yes, the rel=publisher tag is used for pages that would be displayed giving information about your business. For example, when you search 'SEOmoz', the company profile appears on the left side. This is because they have used the rel=publisher to link to their Google+ business page.

Use the rel=author for pages that have content on that was done by someone specific, i.e. a blog post, or in your case: holiday guides. This is when you link to your actual personal profile page.

Hope this clears things up a bit.

Matt.

[pauledwards]

I want to tell users that our business wrote the content, doesn't seem to be a way to do that yet which is disappointing.

[MatthewBarby]

Yes, but it is important to understand the power of authorship toward SEO. Google is placing more and more importance around actual authors of content when they decide up search engine rankings.

My advice would be to have the content of the business authored to a relevant employee (i.e. the CEO, the blogger, etc) and ensure that they are active on Google+.

This way, you can get a headstart on your competitors and have a powerful author rank.

Matt.

[pauledwards]

Say i auth with an individual employee on google+ and get gains from it when the algo takes it into consideration - what happens if they start letting company profiles auth with content? will i have messed the pages up, or do you think i could have reverted?

Surely Google will let you eventually auth a company google+ profile with content it has written, it makes sense as a company should write trusted and quality content.

[MatthewBarby]

It certainly makes sense. We are all in the dark at the moment to exactly how it will work, however, there have been a few tests that have been done to show that page authors have a direct effect upon SEO.

I would imagine that this will be the case for business pages too, however, for the likes of blog posts, etc, (i.e. content that is made by a specific individual within the business) it is best practise to author them to the page. Google is having a big push at linking who actually created the content on websites (and rightly so!), therefore they like it when this is done. Not only this, but it can help with click-through rates within the SERPs to have this.

Matt.

[MatthewBarby]

Hi Guys,

I just wanted to add to what I have previously said as when I have dug a bit deeper into this, I have found some info that could go against what I have previously said.

You can use the rel=publisher tag alongside the rel=author tag on a webpage. With this in mind it would be a good idea to have the rel=publisher present on every page in your website to enable you to be eligible for Google's Direct Connect feature.

I found this out when looking through a Google forum and one of the Google Trend Analysts confirmed this by saying:

Hi guys

_just a few short comments: it's fine to have both a link rel=publisher and author-markup on the same page. The rel=publisher confirms that your website is the publisher of that Google+ Page; the authorship markup confirms that you (your personal profile) is the author of the content on that page. This markup can be used independently, since  the meanings are slightly different. The issue with the Rich Snippets testing tool flagging this as an error is a bug on our side and should be resolved soon (sorry about the confusion caused by that!). _Cheers__John

Just thought I would share this with you all as it might help.

Matt.