Thread: Critical 4 Local - Author Rank, Publisher & Author Markup - What you NEED to Know

David,
Thank you so much for your reply. I like it so much, I've bookmarked it and bet I'll be pointing others to it before long.

I appreciate it!

Originally Posted by Linda Buquet

Gotta love a man that knows how to ask for what he wants!

Well, I never usually get what I ask for (especially with a woman), but I've learned that it never hurts to ask (especially with a woman). LOL

And anytime, Miriam. Glad I could help. Feel free to send me a private message or email me if you need some help or guidance. That applies to anybody else on here, too.

LOL David.

Thanks for offering to help folks here!

FYI little bit of a discussion on this started on my G+ stream here.

Originally Posted by David Deering

Miriam, I believe it only applies to Google+ Business pages, although I could be wrong. But I haven't seen a way to link and verify a website to a Local page as you can with a Business page. But implementing a rel=publisher tag is very simple. You just add it under your other meta tags so that it looks something like this:

link href="https://plus.google.com/b/....." rel="publisher"/ (with the < and > at the ends; my tag was getting edited out when I kept them in the post)

Then link and verify your website on your Google+ Business page (in the Website section under the Contact Info section).

A rel=publisher tag should be added to your homepage. A rel=author tag, on the other hand, should be added to each page that you author, such as articles in your blog, and linked back to your personal Google+ page. So on my blog article pages, I add the following code:

link rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/107534960995428499496/posts"/ (again, don't forget the < and > at the beginning and end of the tag)

If you use WordPress, I'm sure there are some plug-ins out there that you can use. As you probably know, there are many benefits to using rel=author and rel=publisher tags, and word is that they will become even more important for rankings in the future. So it's best to start now.<link href="https://plus.google.com/b/....." rel="publisher"><link rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/107534960995428499496/posts">

For anyone using Wordpress then Wordpress SEO by Yoast works like a charm. There's a spot for the rel=author tag in your User Profile and a spot for rel=pub in the plugin settings menu. On top of all that it's just generally a kick-ass SEO plugin!

I dug into this some months ago and came across a great article explaining how publisher and author tags can conflict, making it far less likely for your author photo to show up in serps.

I'm posting this before reading all the articles in the OP, so I may have to edit this later if new info is given.

Here it is in a nutshell.

1. Publisher tag is placed on a single page, and on the page most frequently visited (usually the homepage).

2. Authorship then has to be handled in the same way it's handled when multiple authors contribute to the site.

---> Any articles written by Author1 is linked to a Bio page using rel="me". The single Bio page then contains a link to the G+ Profile using rel="author"

I have noticed that this doesn't test well on the rich snippet tester, but several articles I came across hold that it is the best way to handle it.

If I find those articles again, I'll share them here.

QUESTION:

For businesses with multiple locations (and multiple Google Plus Business Pages) I would imagine the Publisher tag will go on each corresponding location page, not the home page, right? Does that make sense to anyone else?

Thanks KFB!

David, my forum admin just posted another really good resource.

Matt Cutts and Othar Hansson on How to Establish Authorship

Originally Posted by KungFuBacklinks

For businesses with multiple locations (and multiple Google Plus Business Pages) I would imagine the Publisher tag will go on each corresponding location page, not the home page, right? Does that make sense to anyone else?

Hmmm, I can't say with certainty, but I would say that a site should have only one rel=publisher tag. From everything that I've read, a rel=publisher tag applies to the entire site, and attributes ownership to a particular Google+ Business page. I think that adding a few different rel=publisher tags on the same site would confuse Google and end up diluting the value of the tag. Personally, I would only link the homepage to the main Google+ Business page.

Thanks for sharing the link and the video, Linda. Apparently then, I had it backwards: if a site has an author bio page for each author, use the rel=author tag to first link the author's name to their bio page, then from the bio page, use the rel=me tag to link the author's name to their personal Google+ page. I've seen it both ways, but it's probably best to use the video's suggested method. Thanks for sharing that.

rel=me, =author?... hmmm now you have me doubting what I read lol

I'll have to review.

I see your point about publisher permeating the whole site. I don't think the rich snippet tool sees it this way if you put a sub page URL in it. I'll have to check this later.

If that IS the case, though... this means one Google Plus Business Page for the entire business / franchise... which is unfortunate. I can understand that if you're using the page for the brand, but if you're using the local business type, this doesn't make sense.

All of this discussion is reminding me why I've left publisher tags on the backburner. Authorship is much easier and seems to matter more anyway. In my own tests (though limited) I found authorship made much more of a difference in ranking, and certain in CTR since the photo grabs so many eyeballs.

Originally Posted by KungFuBacklinks

rel=me, =author?... hmmm now you have me doubting what I read lol

lol Exactly, KungFu--Google has not exactly covered all of the bases with this rel=author/me/publisher stuff in their posts. Hopefully they'll clarify things a little more soon. But unless your site uses author bio pages, don't even worry about the rel=me tag. Just use the rel=author tag to link your name or page to your Google+ personal profile.

I'd recommend just throwing in the rel=publisher tag on the homepage. It certainly can't hurt.

Originally Posted by KungFuBacklinks

All of this discussion is reminding me why I've left publisher tags on the backburner.

The whole thing is just confusing!

Isn't it confusing enough that we have to deal with “Google Places” err… I mean “Google+ Local”
err… I mean "Google+ Pages” err… I mean “Local Google+ Business Pages” err… I mean
“Merged Google+ Local Business Social Combo whatever the F* you call it Pages”