15 Reasons To Claim Your Google Authorship Markup

Google Authorship is a unique markup that allows you to connect your Google+ account with your blog posts and website. When you have Google Authorship enabled, your Google+ profile picture appears alongside your website link in Google's search results.

If you haven't yet jumped on the Authorship bandwagon and claimed your markup, it's high time that you did. Here are 15 reasons why.

1. Increased Click-through Rate in Search Engine Results Pages

Standing out is almost always a good thing -- especially in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Since Google Authorship makes your listing stand out with a picture, your blog posts will get a higher click through rate.

2. Better SEO

Google loves ranking content readers value highly. By having a high click-through rate, you show Google that visitors are interested in your website's content. Consequently, Google will rank you higher the next time one of your blog posts appears in an SERP.

3. Company Branding

If you connect a Google+ business profile with your company's logo as the profile picture to your website with Authorship, then you can get your company's logo displayed in the SERPs. So, even if search engine users don't click on your listing, they still see your logo and are exposed to your branding.

4. Personal Branding

If you instead connect a personal Google+, featuring a personal photo of you as the profile picture (this scenario is far more common than the former one), you'll get personal branding benefits -- more people will see your face and be able to recognize it in the future.

5. More Google+ Exposure

When you claim the Google Authorship markup, links to your Google+ profile are displayed underneath the titles of your listings in the SERPs. There's always the chance that someone will click through to your profile page instead of your actual website, increasing your Google+ profile exposure.

6. More Google+ Followers

One of the steps in setting up Google Authorship is placing a link from a webpage to your Google+ profile. The placing of that link increases the likelihood that visitors to your website will view your Google+ profile as well, which translates into more followers.

7. Conquer Plagiarism

By setting up Google Authorship on a blog, you basically notify Google every time you publish a new blog post because the markup is activated as Google indexes your result. This gives your original content opportunity to rise to the top of the ranks, beating all duplicate copies of your content created by scrapers and spinners.

8. Increased Brand Authority

The more your face appears in the search results for niche-related keywords, the more people see you as an authority in a specific niche. This works particularly well if you appear on multiple blogs.

9. Increased Trust

All blog readers -- no matter who they are -- like to know that the content they're reading was created by a real person they can connect with, not just a faceless mask behind a computer. By showing your personal picture in the search results, you build trust & rapport with your readers even before they visit your site.

10.  Establish Yourself as an Expert

If you have any sort of a sizeable Google+ following -- for instance, the 72,000 strong one that Rand Fishkin boasts -- you can use that to your advantage to establish yourself as an expert even before visitors actually view your content. The larger your following, the more receptive to your content Googlers will be once they click-through to your site.

11. Encourage Social Sharing

By connecting each webpage on your blog with a social network -- in this case, Google+ -- you'll increase visitor awareness to those networks. That encourages them to share the post, netting you more social signals from Google's favorite social network.

12. A More Complete Google+ Profile

Direct website advantages aside, one of Authorship's lesser known benefits is a more complete Google+ profile. By filling out the "Links" section of your profile (a necessary step for Authorship implementation), your profile will look more complete to those who view it.

13. Your Competitors Might Not be Using It

If you're in a more obscure industry -- replacement kitchen doors, for example -- chances are that your competitors have not yet claimed the Authorship markup on their own websites. By doing so, you will be one step ahead of them on the curve.

14. Connect Your People with Your Brand

This benefit is especially relevant if you have multiple people contributing to your business blog. With Authorship, you can connect all your blog contributors (and their faces & personal branding) to your brand. You're putting a face (or faces) to the name.

15. It's Cool

I mean, be honest. Don't you get a kick out of seeing your face in a Google listing? It's just plain, downright awesome. Modern technology is absolute witchcraft (and I say that in a good way).

To wrap up, let's quickly review the major reasons to claim the Google Authorship markup on your blog:

• increased click-through rates in the SERPs
• higher search rank
• increased brand & personal authority in a niche

If those benefits aren't making your mouth water right now, you're aiming too low in your marketing campaign. Go setup Google Authorship now!