How To Add Your Google + Profile URL & Image in Search Results

Google have just started recognising the ‘rel=author’ tag on sites which means you can use it to show your Google + profile photo and url on any google search results showing pages/posts from your site. I think it’s a cool thing because it kinda highlights your result among others..at least until everyone starts doing it! It also gives your result/business a personal edge or a bit of branding right in the results page:

Google+

Here’s how to set it up, not rocket science: Add the following line to the ‘Head’ section of your website html:

[html]<link rel="author" href="<a href="https://plus.google.com/xxx/posts">https://plus.google.com/xxx/posts</a>"/>%5B/html%5D

Where the ‘href’ url is the url to your Google + profile. Next, make sure you have a link pointing back to the site you’ve added this tag to, in your Google + profile. It should go in the About – ‘Other Profiles’ or ‘Contributor’ Section. Finally, make sure your Plus one’s are public in the Google + profile settings and that you have chosen a suitable Google + profile pic! You can test whether it’s set up right or not here – Rich snippet test. Leon

SEO Heading Structure for your Site/Blog

I’ve just recently re-coded my main site and blog to take Heading Tags into account. I thought they were added okish to begin with but an article from WordPress guru Yoast de Valk made me have another look. I’d like to try paraphrase his article here and simplify it so it’s a bit easier to digest both for me and for you.

Basically, you can endear yourself to Google and the other search engines a little bit more if you write your markup/code semantically which basically means being tidy, adding code hints and most importantly perhaps, adding the correct Formatting and Heading tags to the content you want highlighted the most/least. The idea is to make the most important keywords on the page your H1 heading, the next most important H2, and so on so when the Google bot visits your page it can then see at a glance so to speak, the most important areas and hopefully index same.

There should be only one H1 tag on a page and this should be your Page Title, Blog Title, Business name, etc..Your H2’s might be the titles of the individual sections on the page or perhaps your Article titles if you have a Blog. H3’s would be Sub-headings, H4′ s might be sidebar headings, etc..etc..

It’s important to style your headings accordingly so people too (not just Google bots!) can easily scan through longer pages of text and pick out the important parts but also that the heading tags actually contain valuable keywords. There’s no point having headings if you don’t follow both rules. If you do it correctly your page will be nicely ‘outlined’ for both search engines and real people.

Here’s a couple of screenshots from my main site and blog to explain things better and show how I’ve personally set things up.

Main Site:

Main Site Headings

Blog Headings:

Blog Headings

Leon.

Website Effectiveness

Well done on having a website for your business but is it doing what it should, ie generating hits and sales leads? Here’s a few things you should really be doing to measure and improve your website’s effectiveness if you feel its not doing anything for you: Continue reading Website Effectiveness

The SEO Implications of Moving or Changing your Website

For owners of existing or well established websites, the need may arise to make considerable changes to the site, either as a result of a New Company Name and Domain, a required Site Facelift or a change of Site Structure, perhaps with the addition of a Content Management System, or just a change of Hosting Company. Heres some things to look out for. Continue reading The SEO Implications of Moving or Changing your Website

Quoted on SEO site!

I’m proud to have a few of my words quoted on renowned Keyword and Search Engine Optimization site Wordtracker.com. My words were taken from a comment I left on an interview with Peter Kent, author of SEO for Dummies in which he lambasted Web Designers for not having a clue about SEO. I disaggreed! Continue reading Quoted on SEO site!

Website Marketing & SEO

Theres not much point in having a website unless people can find it and its bringing you business or busines leads at least. I constantly see websites or get re-design work for sites that have been built and neglected for years, with outdated design, content and copyright dates at the bottom! Continue reading Website Marketing & SEO

Website Grader SEO Tool

Came accross www.websitegrader.com which is a free online tool/website for grading or providing a search engine optimization report for your website. I like it if only for the reason that it gave my site a great score! Shows I’m on the right track at least! Continue reading Website Grader SEO Tool

Important info on WordPress comment links

I’m sad to say that following some research done just now I’ve found out that posting comments on other people blogs, (specifically blogs powered by wordpress) just so you can have a link back to your own site is kinda useless. Well on most WordPress blogs at least. Continue reading Important info on WordPress comment links