Google Authorship has been around for quite some time now. Most bloggers I know use it because they love seeing their picture and name show up in the search results right next to the articles they write. But in reality, Google Authorship has much more powerful benefits than that. Not only are people more likely to click a link that has authorship, but Google Authorship is also a way to protect your content.
The biggest reason we recommend you take 5 minutes to set up Google Authorship is that it leads to a higher click through rate. The reasoning behind why this happens in unknown, but likely because people feel safer clicking on a link that show a name, photo and is supported by Google. Some companies even reported click through rates 150% higher after implementing Authorship. I’ve also heard feedback from a user that mentioned they uploaded a much better headshot of themselves and that even increased the click through rate. Other benefits include higher visibility and higher page views.
One thing I haven’t heard much people talk about, but I think is the best benefit of signing up for Google Authorship, is that is protects your content from being plagiarized by competitors. If you are practicing the best method, white hat SEO, chances are you are writing your blog posts with unique, detailed content. By using Google Authorship on your unique blog posts, it lets Google know that you were the first person to post this content to the web and then you are in fact the original creator. If any competitor down the road should attempt to steal your content, Google will penalize that persons sites for duplicate content
Lastly, I’ve heard some Webmasters or businesses complain, saying that when they set up Google Authorship, the notice a huge decrease in traffic. I don’t believe this for a minute. Chances are that they set up Authorship the same week Google released a new Panda or Penguin update that affected their ranking. Google’s own Matt Cutts spoke out against this saying “Authorship had nothing to do with this site’s drop. The site has been affected by our Penguin webspam algorithm and that accounts for the drop.”
In conclusion, if you are a business that is actively blogging and adding content to your website, it make sense to take 5 minutes out of your busy day to install Google Authorship to not only improve your click through rate, but also to protect your content from being plagiarized.
By Mike Fedotowsky