We all know how important a good SEO campaign is. It is more than capable of making or breaking your online profile, and can’t be overlooked if you want to find success on your website. The one downside to this, though, is that very few people actually know what “good SEO” means. Yes, we all have the general idea: choose keywords carefully, post content regularly, etc. But the real challenge is finding how to go above and beyond the basics. Enter Google Authorship, the wonderful little tool that can help bump up your traffic by 150%. A painfully simple method of increasing traffic, it is one of the best ways you can get an edge on your competitors.

 

How It Works

Google+ is a big part of this system, if not all of it, and you’ll need an account to use Authorship. Lucky for everyone, this is easy to do, and shouldn’t cause any problems for some of the less tech-savvy people out there. After you have an account, any blog posts you put up while signed in will show your name, photo, Google+ bio, contact info, and anything else you choose to put on your profile right there on the post link.

 

 

The Effects

We’ve all seen the facts behind rich snippets, so there’s no need to go too in depth behind all of that. However, there are some important aspects unique to Google Authorship that will directly impact SEO results.

• When browsing search results, social annotations attract attention better than video snippets. Not only does this mean personal photos are more valuable than videos, it also suggests that a link’s placement on the front page is not as important if the other links don’t have pictures.

 

 

 

• Users look at links with photos for longer. This further supports the idea that someone will be more likely to click on a link establishing a personal connection. As an added note, the longer someone looks at a link, the better the chance that they will read the description, adding to the effectiveness of search snippets.

• Social annotations also allow you to further refine your SEO campaign through carefully selecting what to put in the snippet. A professional photo, bio, etc. will attract professional users. This can give you an added edge on those pesky sites holding down the top spots for your keywords, bringing increased amounts of traffic without actually increasing your rankings.

 

If you’re looking for the next way to bump your SEO to the next level, Google Authorship could very well be the best method out there. Easy to set up and even easier to use, it’s quickly becoming a staple in every great marketing scheme.