Add Your Headshot to Google Search Results Pages

Google recently started displaying author information in search results . This provides a new way for influencers to strengthen their brand with search engine results page’s (SERPs).

You may have noticed it already, top influencers now have an image of themselves appearing in search engine results.

How can you add your image to Google SERP’s?

The process is very simple, though it may require a little collaboration with your web development team.

1. Setup a Google Plus profile with the photo you want to appear

It helps to already have an established Google+ profile. As google mentions in their webmaster article, “Google doesn’t guarantee to show author information in Google Web Search or Google News results.”

It’s also important to use a good, recognizable headshot as your profile photo. Try to avoid using photos with multiple people, a nice headshot of you, and you only, will work best.

2. Verify authorship of your content by associating it with your profile

There are a few ways to do this. First, make sure that the content you author has your first and last name present in a prominent area on the page.

Next, add a link to every page you author in the following format: <a href=”[profile_url]?rel=author”>Google</a>. Be sure to replace [profile_url] with your profile link. For example, a link to my profile looks like this: <a href=”https://plus.google.com/u/0/111749382468611843918/posts?rel=author”>Kevin Leary on Google+</a>.

Your link must contain the ?rel=author parameter. If it’s missing, Google won’t be able to associate your content with your Google+ profile.

If you have a web developer on staff, or a web development team that you work with, I would suggest setting this up dynamically. It’s not had to automate these links, and you want to make sure they appear on each and every page you write.

3. Add a reciprocal link back from your profile to the site(s) you just updated.

To link your website to a Google+ profile you need to add a link to it on Google+.

1. Edit the Contributor To section.
2. In the dialog that appears, click Add custom link, and then enter the website URL.
3. If you want, click the drop-down list to specify who can see the link.
4. Click Save.

4. Sit back and wait for Google to work it’s magic

After you complete the steps above the process turns into a waiting game. When I originally tested this method for “boston wordpress” it took 9 days before the change was accepted by Google, and the SERP cache was cleared. It may be longer or shorter for you depending on various circumstances.

If you would like to test whether or not you have a rich snippet on Google you can use the rich snippets testing tool that they provide.