How to implement Rel=author Rich Snippets and Increase Click-Through-Rates
Enter rel=author rich snippets using Schema mark up text.
Rel=author mark-up allows you as a blogger or writer to personalise the content you create in search results. By using rel= author markup within your website or on sites that you contribute too, any content you create can be highlighted with an author profile pic in the search results next to your results. As you can imagine this immediately draws the eye and increases your click through rate, not to mention greatly increase your online profile.
To implement rel=author on your site, you will need a link from every blog post you write back to your google+ profile with the addition of the following piece of code ‘?rel=author’ for example I would use the following code:
<a href=”https://plus.google.com/u/0/112095238028996370183/posts?rel=author”>Neil Goddard</a>
A link to my Google Plus profile with the addition of ?rel=author . For example I have the above code in my author bio at the bottom of this post.
You will then need to edit the contributor section of your Google+ profile and add a link back to the site that you are writing for. For example:
You will also need a clear Image of your face in your Google+ profile.
If you are running a blog in which you are the only author it’s fine to include this link in your side bar or footer across the whole site. If you would like to implement this for multiple writers on one site then you will need to provide a link back to the Google + profile for each writer from each of their blog posts. In this instance I would highly recommend that you implement an author box for each writer (much like Tug’s blog) which sits nicely under their posts, from here you can link back to their Google plus pages for each individual author from all of their posts.
Finally, Google have a great little tool for testing all your rich snippet mark-ups http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
