So a little while back I decided to implement it on this site to see if I could get it accepted.

I’m pleased to announce that shortly after I published my last post here, my articles are finally displaying my photo and corresponding author information near them in Google’s SERPs.

This works for both logged-in and logged-out users.

It did take a while to start showing up, about a month or so after I set it up.

Way to Implement Authorship Markup

Link Your Content to Your Google+ Profile and Vice Versa

This is method I used.

1. Added a professional headshot photo to my Google profile.
2. Included a hyperlink in the contributor to section on the about page of my Google+ profile, which points to my author page on the blog. http://www.seorankings.com/author/Wes
3. Created a link from my author page back to my Google+ profile, with rel=”author” appended to it. https://plus.google.com/116663311902793804492?rel=author
4. Tested my markup using the rich snippets testing tool, and then fixed any errors.
5. Submitted and my authorship request using this form.

According to Google’s directions this is all you need to do. However, they also provide this additional tip:

If you’re very comfortable editing your site’s HTML, you can create reciprocal links using rel=”author”.

Which is a bit confusing because they don’t provide an explanation whether this is a necessary step, it just helps, or what. I’m guessing it must just some how make it easier for them to verify which articles are written by whom, because I didn’t implement it on this site and it still works.

However, I did ensure there is a hyperlink on each article pointing back to my author page that has with rel=”me” associated with it, and also a normal link from the author page back to each of the last 10 articles.

That’s a tip I picked up from Yoast on configuring WordPress to work with Authorship.

If all goes well, and you’re accepted, your author information should start showing up in Google’s search results shortly thereafter.

You can do this for multiple sites too.

Some of you may not be able to make edits to your author pages, or source code, so this process may be difficult for you to implement. Luckily, Google recently provided us with another option that looks a bit easier to set up.

Add Your Name and Email Address to Your Content

This is what they recommend for sites with multiple authors. I haven’t actually tested it myself, so I just copied their directions here exactly.

1. Sign in to your Google profile.
2. Click Edit profile.
3. On the right-hand side, click the Contributor to box, and add all the sites you write for.
4. Next, click the Work box.
5. Click the New contact info box (the last in the list, and type the email address you use for the sites you write for.
6. In the list to the left of the email address you just added, click Email.
7. Click Save, and then click Done editing.
8. Repeat for every email address you want to add.
9. On your profile, click Verify next to the email address you just added.

Google will send a verification mail to that email address. Once you receive it, open it and follow the instructions to verify your email address.

The one major issue I have with implementing it this way is that you’re now exposing your email address to spam bots and spammers. Whenever you use standard HTML to include your email address on a webpage the spam bots will quickly pick it up and add your email address to their database for sale or use.

Needless to say, you’ll likely end up getting a ton of SPAM emails after awhile.

Will Authorship Listings Drive More Traffic to My Site

It’s tough to tell for sure. There are so many variables at play. But I definitely didn’t notice any significant increase in traffic to this website, perhaps a little. However, I’m not positive which day it went into affect either.

I’m guessing it was on the 8^th of February, because that’s as far back as I can see when checking my author stats under the labs section in Google Webmaster Tools.

You can see that my author profile displayed over 27,000 times and received 1000 clicks in the very first week. And that’s with less than 100 blog posts. That’s pretty decent exposure if you ask me. It should be noted that those statistics are only a fraction of the total number of impressions the site showed up for overall. When I checked the search queries section it actually showed several times that.

Regardless of the referral visits, the impact of having my face now in front of thousands of more people, for thousands of industry related search queries, is huge for my brand recognition.

27,000 author impressions = my face in front of up to 27,000 searchers.

I almost always notice which authors show up for my searches, and I suspect many other people do too.

That’s why I recommend setting up your author profile before too many other people in your niche do to.

As soon as everyone starts doing it, it will be much harder to stand out from the crowd…

When you’re setting it up please don’t forget to add SEOrankings to your circles.

Then let me know if you have any trouble, and I’ll see if I can help you out.

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Here’s just a couple of major reasons why.

1. A few years ago Google rolled out an algorithm change known as the “Brand Update”, which affected numerous sites world-wide. Google officially named it “Vince”, but most SEOs refer to it as the Brand Update, after seeing how dramatically the search results changed in favor of brand names.

2. Next there came the Panda updates, which hit a few of my unbranded sites pretty hard.

3. Then more recently a newer version of the Google Quality Raters Handbook was secretly released, further confirming suspicions that manual reviewers are visiting our websites. So when a search quality rater was quoted saying:

“With a recognized brand name like that, it wasn’t hard to determine quality.”

I knew it was urgent for me to take a major step back and view my active projects through the eyes of an average visitor and Google quality rater.

What I realized was I was spending a lot of time on a handful of sites that looked really bad at first glance. They had no logos, no company information, and no reputability to them. Even though they are only project websites, they are making me a few bucks and I had already invested a decent amount of time in them. So I’d be very disappointed if they got dinged, some of them even further, because I didn’t take just a few moments to make them look like they’re for real.

I started thinking about the quickest ways to improve them without spending too much time or cash.

And came up with these super simple and effective steps.

1. Get a Branded Logo

It’s amazing how many websites don’t have logos. A logo is almost always the first thing a visitor sees when they visit your site. So why not start them off with a good first impression. It will definitely help your site look trustworthy and established.

Surprisingly, you can get a professionally designed logo done for almost nothing these days. I was able to get a nice one done through Fiverr for only $5 bucks!

That goes for eBook covers and a ton of other great stuff too.

2. Customize Your Subscribe Box

Can you immediately tell when you visit a website that’s using one of those Aweber subscribe box templates? If you’ve been around awhile, then surely you will spot them every time.

When you see one, what the first thing that comes to your mind? Amateurish. Not Serious. SPAM site.

It’s not that I dislike Aweber or their templates, but they definitely stand out like a sore thumb. Because they rarely match up with any website’s theme, and probably look identical to ones you’ve already seen before.

If you’re using one of them, then do yourself a for and go over to oDesk to get yourself a custom box made. It shouldn’t cost you more than $10 bucks. Or you can do it yourself if you want to.

3. Link Your Social Media Profiles

If I’m looking for a service, or any type of information, and visit a site I’ve never heard of before, I almost always look for their social media icon links. They’re usually front and center. But if I can’t find them quickly I usually assume it’s a ghostwriter or scraper website and leave it right away.

4. Add an “About Us” Page

An About Us page is another easy way to brand your website for little to no cost. Whenever you’re serious about establishing your business online, or at least giving the impression you are, you really should at least create yourself a quick About Us page. Simply write a couple paragraphs and include some company information if possible. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.

5. Include a Personal Photo

When you include a photograph of your office, staff or yourself, it can really help establish your site as an authoritative resource. Just seeing a photo of what looks like “the company” gives users a warm and fuzzy feeling. There’s a sense that someone is actually vouching for the products, services or information provided there. This can be an extremely effective tool when it comes to converting visitors. Think along the lines of “Social Proof”.

There’s really a ton of things you can to improve a website by establishing its brand. These are just a few things that I’ve done recently, which you can do right away too.

A well-branded website can almost always expect to get:

• More repeat visitors
• Higher sales volumes
• Better search engine rankings
• More pageveiws
• A favorable reputation
• Increased social shares
• More backlinks
• Higher prices
• Trust

And plenty of others too.

So I hope by now you take branding seriously, because I definitely feel a shift in the times, and am certain it’ll continue to get harder to gain momentum online if you don’t have one.

It doesn’t matter if you’re working on a company, personal or project website. It will be the best few bucks you’ve ever spent.

So what are some of your best tips for building a better branded website on a tight budget?

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The main point here is that you are in control of what your meta description states and a well crafted statement about the page can increase your clickthrough rate.

Writing a Meta Description

When writing the description it is helpful to think in terms of advertising. What is the user looking for and what will compel him or her to choose your site over the numerous others that will be displayed?  A short and snappy summary of the page with your prominent keywords (they will be in bold text) near the beginning of the description will catch a users eye.

The description should be no longer than 155 characters or you stand the chance of having the message truncated. The meta description allows you to provide the search engine with a meaningful description of your page when they are unable to automatically create one from the page content.

In the SERPs

Meta descriptions are often used when the search engine displays extended site links. It is very important therefore to write a separate and distinct meta description for each and every page on your website. Extended site links are highly keyword dependent, so to benefit most from your meta descriptions your site must have a uniform purpose and your keywords must reflect this purpose. The use of these keywords at the beginning of your meta description will increase the odds that the search engine will use the meta description as a snippet.

Social Media Usage

Meta descriptions are especially important in social media marketing such as Facebook and Google+. If there is no meta description the search engine will usually default to the first sentence used in the article and this will not properly convey what the whole article is about. The majority of marketers on social networks overlook this fact and by creating the meta description you will enjoy a competitive advantage over your competition.

Indexation

A meta description in general is one of several meta elements that provide search engines with information that helps the algorithm index and categorize the page. They are not visible to the user as they are part of the HTML document. In the 1990′s they were essential to search engines in ranking a page but as webmasters learned ways to gain an advantage through keyword stuffing and other black hat SEO techniques search engines gradually started looking to other criterion in search technology.

Today meta elements have a far less effect on determining ranking of any given page as search engine robots have become more refined in sniffing out spamdexing and keyword stuffing.

The search engines of today use a variety of criterion to establish page rank such as:

• Freshness
• Quantity and quality of content
• Number of links from related websites
• Technical precision of source code
• Click-throughs
• Page views
• Relevance
• Uniqueness

The search algorithms of today are constantly changing and evolving but this does not mean you should disregard older aspects of page development. At the very least a well written meta description will be a sign of quality and technical precision in the eyes of search providers. These two criteria do play a part in ranking and will set you apart from those who are looking for the fast track to the top.

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While doing some freelance projects for my New Year website development special, I couldn’t help but notice a trend that comes up in almost every site; keyword domains. Clients are either interested in finding a great keyword domain or already have one ready to go.

Leading SEOs and even Google’s Matt Cutts have confirmed that keywords in domain names offer benefits to search rankings. The benefits have been observed by many and even thought to be too much by some.

My personal philosophy and reasoning for using keyword domain names extends beyond this primary benefit. In this article, I will share some ideas on keyword domains and why I think everyone should consider using them.

Keyword Targeting

The #1 reason that keywords in domain names are beneficial for SEO is not because of some secret Google algorithm, it’s simply that other web properties will link to your website using the keywords in your domain or business name.

• Business Name – It’s 2012 and the domain name should now be an essential part of naming any business. I’m sure you’ve heard that picking a domain name can be frustrating. Many business owners are not familiar with keyword tools or the domain industry for that matter. This leaves an opportunity for those in-the-know to gain a significant competitive advantage using keywords in their domain.

• Generic Domains – These are the “Holy Grail” of keyword domain names, representing the exact match term(s) and nothing else. Generic domains are typically highly valued and sought after virtual real estate. However, it is still possible to acquire them on the aftermarket or speculate on new and emerging industries. Generic domains can provide tremendous boost to SEO efforts.

• Long-tail Domains – Opportunity awaits those willing to venture into the territory of longer domains. Three word domains are fast becoming commonplace and are being used to rank for exact match phrases, products and services. Developing one or more long-tail keyword phrase domains can set you up to receive consistent targeted leads from organic search traffic for those terms.

You can use the popular Google AdWords keyword tool to discover high search volume / low competition keyword phrases that may be available to register as .com domains.

Branding

It’s true that brandable domain names can work just as well as purely keyword domain names; a previous post covered all those details. As mentioned in the editorial, keywords can also play a part in the branding process.

• Keyword + Brand- Using a keyword connected to a unique brand identifier is a great strategy for those on a budget or in a somewhat crowded niche. These domains can be easier to find and may help you along the brainstorming process of naming your business.

For example, a Raleigh Catering company could find SEO benefit using a domain like RaleighCateringPros.com. The Pros suffix is relevant to the business, but will not be searched for by new customers. However, over time, the site will gain backlinks which include the phrase “Raleigh Catering.”

• Short Links – Many businesses and publications are beginning to use their own custom domain names as link shorteners. This can potentially provide additional SEO benefits through social network sharing as articles propagate through the web.

Keywords provide instant recognition which is great for usability, advertising and marketing. They also bring preconceived expectations, so be sure to deliver with relevant content.

Remember that domain names are essentially your cornerstone for SEO. You’ll still need to work hard to optimize you website, it’s content and engage in a constantly changing social web.

Do you use keywords in your domain names? Are you struggling to find a viable domain? Please leave a comment below to share your experience using domain names for SEO.

Using Domain Names as the Cornerstone of SEO DotSauce Magazine

The DPS provides an operational outline of all the details on how CIRA plans to develop, maintain and manage DNSSEC deployment. CIRA is inviting comments on its DPS. Interested parties can send their feedback on the DPS to cira_dnssec@cira.ca.

“CIRA is committed to providing Canadian Internet users with a safe, secure and trusted online experience,” said CIRA’s President and CEO Byron Holland. “DNSSEC is the next logical step in securing DNS services and protecting Canadians online.”

DNSSEC is an important set of extensions that provide an extra layer of security to the domain name system (DNS), the system the Internet uses to translate your domain name from its commonly used URL into its numerical Internet protocol address.

In addition to the DPS, CIRA also launched an online knowledge centre dedicated to DNSSEC, available at cira.ca/knowledge-centre/technology/dnssec. The knowledge centre includes resources for Canadians to learn about why DNSSEC is important and how CIRA plans to implement it.

At its core, DNSSEC is a set of Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) specifications for adding origin authentication and data integrity to the DNS and is implemented through public key cryptography into the DNS hierarchy. What results is a more secure connection for the end user.

This CIRA news release was sourced from:
www.cira.ca/news/news-releases/internet-security/

To register your .CA domain name, check out America Registry here.