Author Topic: Establishing authorship with Google for images on our sites (Read 10485 times)

Jo Ann Snover · « **on:** December 06, 2013, 01:43 »

A couple of site owners posted about claiming authorship for our images with Google and how to get the process to work - the reason for doing it is that supposedly it helps with search ranking plus it ties all your content together in searches (because Google can show other works by you).

After trying to follow Google's directions and getting the same errors others did I thought I'd have another go at making it work. I was able to and wrote a blog post about how - note this is specific to a Symbiostock site but could be adapted for any site:

http://www.digitalbristles.com/image-authorship-with-google/

If there are questions about it, here's the thread in the Symbiostock forum to follow:

http://www.symbiostock.org/community/viewtopic.php?id=714

Gunter Nezhoda · « **Reply #1 on:** December 06, 2013, 02:29 »

Awesome blog, linked to it if you don't mind,

http://qthecollection.com/qtalk/index.php?topic=154.msg405#msg405

Thanks

chrisroll · « **Reply #2 on:** December 06, 2013, 03:56 »

It works for me !

Thank you very much

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #3 on:** December 06, 2013, 10:30 »

Quote from: Gunter Nezhoda on December 06, 2013, 02:29

Awesome blog, linked to it if you don't mind,

Don't mind at all

djpadavona · « **Reply #4 on:** December 07, 2013, 15:31 »

Jo Ann,

I got a little lost at this part -

4. Google+ Profile link to author page While editing your profile, go to the Links section and add your Symbiostock author page URL as a place you are a contributor to.

I didn't even know there was a Symbiostock Author page. I have filled out all of my author settings, but I haven't seen instructions for setting up an author page. What am I missing?

klsbear · « **Reply #5 on:** December 07, 2013, 16:38 »

Quote from: djpadavona on December 07, 2013, 15:31

Jo Ann,

I got a little lost at this part -

4. Google+ Profile link to author page While editing your profile, go to the Links section and add your Symbiostock author page URL as a place you are a contributor to.

I didn't even know there was a Symbiostock Author page. I have filled out all of my author settings, but I haven't seen instructions for setting up an author page. What am I missing?

I've just spent the last half hour searching to figure out how to edit or customize the page and finally found it. It's an auto-generated page with the Symbiostock info but if you go to the Widgets area you'll see two areas on the right that let you add widgets and info to the right side bar and below the content.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #6 on:** December 07, 2013, 18:22 »

Quote from: djpadavona on December 07, 2013, 15:31

Jo Ann,

I got a little lost at this part -

4. Google+ Profile link to author page While editing your profile, go to the Links section and add your Symbiostock author page URL as a place you are a contributor to.

I didn't even know there was a Symbiostock Author page. I have filled out all of my author settings, but I haven't seen instructions for setting up an author page. What am I missing?

If you have an image on your site, click on your name under the image (or, another link to the same page click on the info drop down under images and click on author there). If you have filled out one of the WP fields that's looking for bio information, that is show there and under it a few more links - to Network, etc.

The URL for that page is what you'll copy and paste into your Google+ profile

djpadavona · « **Reply #7 on:** December 07, 2013, 19:27 »

Thank you!

djpadavona · « **Reply #8 on:** December 07, 2013, 19:59 »

This is great work Jo Ann. Terrific, useful blog post.

The only concern I have is for the invisible text in the footer. It seems like a great idea, but I know Google has frowned upon invisible code in the past. Mostly that had to with hidden links, but I wonder if this might fall under their scrutiny too. Anyone more versed in SEO and Google want to weigh in?

Now that we know that "by <Author Name>" is apparently an important part of the authorship equation to Google, wouldn't it make more sense to have Leo throw together a quick way to put the byline on our image pages automatically? Maybe right under the image?

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #9 on:** December 08, 2013, 00:09 »

Quote from: djpadavona on December 07, 2013, 19:59

This is great work Jo Ann. Terrific, useful blog post.

The only concern I have is for the invisible text in the footer. It seems like a great idea, but I know Google has frowned upon invisible code in the past. Mostly that had to with hidden links, but I wonder if this might fall under their scrutiny too. Anyone more versed in SEO and Google want to weigh in?

Now that we know that "by <Author Name>" is apparently an important part of the authorship equation to Google, wouldn't it make more sense to have Leo throw together a quick way to put the byline on our image pages automatically? Maybe right under the image?

It isn't invisible in code terms - it's white and white text is visible in the most literal sense

In an earlier version of my site where I had a gray footer, I had gray text the same color. If you know it's there it's selectable and technically - to Google - visible.

You can set display visibility off and they say they don't want that - which is why I took the route of visually invisible but to a piece of code, visible.

But with some very small changes to content-image.php it could be that the existing author name under an image could be used and I'm looking into the hcard and hatom requirements to see if that can be handled too. Haven't finished that part though.

I don't know anything about SEO either

You can read a post about some code changes to add hcard information to image pages here

http://www.symbiostock.org/community/viewtopic.php?pid=8399#p8399

cathyslife · « **Reply #10 on:** December 08, 2013, 14:28 »

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66353?hl=en

An explanation from Google themselves.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #11 on:** December 08, 2013, 18:08 »

Thanks

I may look at moving the widget-based text into the main body of the image page as I already made modifications for hcard classes. It's just easier for more people if changes can be made without modifying php files

CrackerClips · « **Reply #12 on:** December 08, 2013, 18:28 »

Thanks for the blog post Jo Ann! I used your guidelines to successfully set up google authorship to my site. As I have a google+ business page, I linked using that and it worked just fine. One thing I did change was I did not hide the link to my author profile. I placed it in a text widget in the "image page bottom" section and that seemed to do the trick. I don't think google likes hidden links or text.

Using the google tool you mentioned I did get a couple errors noted in the Extracted Structured Data area under author: "Error: At least one field must be set for Hcard. Error: Missing required field "name (fn)". Not sure what those errors refer to.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #13 on:** December 08, 2013, 19:25 »

Take a look at this thread in the Symbiostock forums which will fill you in on that.

~~http://www.symbiostock.org/community/viewtopic.php?id=714~~

That forum post evaporated along with all the others for about 6 weeks, but I think all the important data is the blog post which I updated.

CrackerClips · « **Reply #14 on:** December 08, 2013, 20:37 »

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on December 08, 2013, 19:25

Take a look at this thread in the Symbiostock forums which will fill you in on that.

http://www.symbiostock.org/community/viewtopic.php?id=714

Thank you!

Nikd90 · « **Reply #15 on:** December 17, 2013, 12:09 »

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on December 08, 2013, 19:25

Take a look at this thread in the Symbiostock forums which will fill you in on that.

http://www.symbiostock.org/community/viewtopic.php?id=714

Thanks a lot. I am trying without proper image. Will post if that works. I want to keep the image on google+ , twitter and on website same

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #16 on:** January 16, 2014, 01:32 »

Couple of things. dreamstime supports Google authorship and a couple of sites let you connect to your Google+ profile, and I've written a blog post about what's going on there:

http://www.digitalbristles.com/getting-our-names-with-our-images-in-the-search-wilderness/

Also, here's where things are with my code changes that removed all the errors in structured data with Symbiostock sites as the updated pages have been crawled by Google (click for full size):

It started out with every page having an error, and we're now nearly done with the errors as the crawl catches up

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Author Topic: Establishing authorship with Google for images on our sites (Read 10485 times)

Jo Ann Snover

Gunter Nezhoda

chrisroll

Jo Ann Snover

djpadavona

klsbear

Jo Ann Snover

djpadavona

djpadavona

Jo Ann Snover

cathyslife

Jo Ann Snover

CrackerClips

Jo Ann Snover

CrackerClips

Nikd90

Jo Ann Snover

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