Home topics technology technology-social-media Digital Social Media Strategy Digital Why Google authorship should be your top priority Kate Toon February 26, 2013 Google introduced authorship markup in 2011, but many small businesses have yet to understand its importance. If you’re still wondering what all the fuss is about, read on for some helpful pointers. First, this quote from Google’s former CEO, Eric Schmidt from his upcoming book The New Digital Age : “Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.” So, do you want your business to be anonymous and irrelevant? No, I thought not. Put simply, you can boost your website’s rankings by using Google authorship . What is Google Authorship? Google’s aim is to identify high-quality sources of original, expert content – which is a good thing for everyone. To verify your digital identity Google asks that you link your published content back to your Google+ profile . How do I set up Google Authorship? First you need to connect your Google+ profile to all the websites where you publish content. This means that whenever an article or blog post you’ve written appears in Google’s search results, your profile will be displayed. Visit Google Webmaster tools and follow the set-up instructions. What next? After your Google Profile is set up, all the content you’ve previously