Add your profile photo in search results

Google Authorship Markup: How to add your photo into SERPs

So you wanted to add your profile photo into the results page of major search sites like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

The short answer is by using Authorship Markup and it is called rich snippet. And in Google it is done without having to write a single code.

Why bother with Authorship Markup
Aside from the obvious that it is quite cool, it also standouts out among the other results. And if it stands out you get more attention, thus you get more advantage against the competition. It also gives the impression that that search result is more credible since Google has given you authorship on that particular subject or with the article.

Many believes that with the authorship, click through rates have increased for their site. I mean, just look at this result:

Here is what it looked without the Authorship Markup

An here is with Authorship Markup

And so how did they do it?

Here is how

• You need to have a Google+ account - If you don't have one yet or even if you don't intend on using it just create one since it will be used to link your site/content and your bio/profile. If you are on Blogger, I suggest that you take time to write your Tagline and Introduction.
• Link your profile to Google+
1. Go to your site and click your about or profile page, the one that contains your personal profile.
2. Copy the URL of that (profile) page from the address bar.
3. Go back to your Google+ profile and click on About.
4. Scroll down until you see the links box.
5. Click Edit and under Contributor to click Add custom link and on Label put something like +Your Name Blog. On URL put the copied profile address. Make sure that Current contributor is selected on the drop down menu.
6. If you don't see your site listed under Contributor to add it as well by following step 5.
• Note to Blogger users - To connect your blogs to Google+, go to your dashboard and click on Google+ then on the right side will be the Get Started button. From there, just follow the instructions or you can still manually do them by following step 5.
• Link Google+ profile to your site's content
1. Add the 'rel=author' on the link of your author box (the <a href="http://example.com/profile.html/" of written by Blog Author at the bottom of the page)
2. If you have a profile page, ad the 'rel=me' on the link.
3. For Blogger users (or even if you are not) you can link your Google+ profile directly by adding '?rel=author' at the end of the URL link like https://plus.google.com/14790572345602544?rel=author.
• Test and see the result using Google's Structured Data Testing Tool. Just type in your site URL and click on the PREVIEW button.

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