“#1 on Google = 34.35%, #3 on Google 11.42%, #6 – 5.05% of traffic” Chitika
As you can see from the quote above, being #1 on Google is worth at least 6x as being #6. Or is it?
The study from Chitika was done mainly with your ever day search results, found for random searches in Google made my millions of volunteers participating in the study. (You can check out the study and the results HERE .)
But as time goes on, so does Google`s march on world domination. The engineers keep on tweaking the algorithm and adding/testing new features daily. Some stick, but most of them never see day light (or at least never catch the eye of any users, because they stay at the “pilot” stage).
One of the best upgrades, coming out of the Googleplex in the past couple of months, is most definitely the implementation of the rel=”author” feature. I have used this feature to double, if not triple my conversions without gaining any higher rankings in the search results. Anyone can replicate this process so read carefully and pay attention to detail.
It is not pronounced Relauthor as some Nordic beast from Lord of the Rings, but just the html code for relationship (rel) from a link (placed before the command) to “author” (that would be me in this case).
What this feature does is connect your blog post/page or any piece of content on your blog, with your Google+ account. Why would it have any impact on my conversions, you might ask. The picture bellow should enlighten you, at least a bit if not the whole way.
If the bells are not ringing yet, let me help you bang them.
The human brain (hopefully connected to a pair of working eyeballs) is naturally attracted to images more than plain text. By adding an image right next to the title, description and url of your post, you are tremendously increasing the amount of eye balls plonking down to your #5 ranking, prior to checking out the #4, #3, #2 or even #1 search result.
It’s a well-established marketing/psychological method of attracting ones attention with proper ad/picture/video placement on a particular page. In our case it’s the only picture out there, if there are no Youtube movies ranking on the same page as well.
It is your job to keep the title and description as engaging as possible, so that the user will even want to click your result in the first place. It also helps to have your main keywords (the ones you are targeting) in the both meta features, to insure that they are bolded, which makes them pop-out even more.
How to get the picture next to the search result?
It’s a simple 3 step process, which will not take more than 15 minutes of your time to set up.
STEP #1 – Create an “About me” page on your blog
If you haven’t already, I would suggest creating an “About me” (about us, about) page with a short/long description of yourself or your company. I suggest creating a page with a url structure of www.yourblogname.com/about/
That’s it for step #1. You will come back to your “About” page at the end of step #2.
STEP #2 – Create a Google+ account
If you are not familiar with Google+, I urge you to go to http://plus.google.com and check it out. It’s a social network, very similar to Facebook. It has all the bits and bobs such as sharing pictures, activities, status etc. with your friends. NOTE: You don’t have to use the Google+ account in order for the picture to work.
The first thing that is to have an avatar/profile picture set up. This is the picture that will show up next to the search results.
The second thing is to link your newly created Google+ account with an “About” page on your blog. It could be about me, about us, about XYZ. In my case it is http://buyseech.com/about/ .
The way to do this is to log into your Google+ account go to Profile -> Edit profile -> Other profiles -> Add custom link (this is where you insert your URL pointing to your about page).
You should also have a return link pointing to your Google+ profile on that same “About us” page. Feel free to check out my “About” page on http://buyseech.com/about/ and find the “Google+” link. You must create a back-n-forward link ring in order for it to work.
The html version of my link:
To your online success, Buyseech @ <a href=”https://plus.google.com/103888400512181371901″ rel=”me” target=”_blank”>Google+</a>
That’s it for STEP #2
STEP #3 – Link your posts to your “About” page with rel=”author”
So you have done all the grunt work and all that is left to do is to link your existing, as well as new content, with your “About” page. You must do this in every post in order to get the picture next to the search result of the post. If you check out any of my posts you will see, that I end almost every post with the phrase “To your online success, Igor Buyseech”
The Igor Buyseech part is hyperlinked to my “about” page. The html code for the link is exactly as shown below:
To your online success, <span style=”color: #0000ff;”><a href=”http://buyseech.com/about/” rel=”author”><span style=”color: #0000ff;”>Igor Buyseech</span></a></span>
You can of course change the color of the text, but other than that it should stay exactly the same.
That’s it!
STEP #4
Yes, there is a step #4, which I did not mention before, because its not actually a step, but more of a “sit”. The only thing left to do is to sit and wait, because it could take a few weeks, if not months for the pictures to start appearing. Somebody must manually check your image, so that it complies with Google`s TOS.
Once granted, you will instantly get the picture with the first cache of your new content.
P.s.: All the links should be DO FOLLOW!
Hope you implement this fabulous tweak to your SEO arsenal of tricks.
To your online success, Igor Buyseech
