Written by Nick Yorchak. Posted in SEO Blog
It isn’t exactly hard to figure out that Google is trying to incorporate the social experience into everything online. One interesting thing they have done is allowed for a Google+ user to be a “contributor” to a blog, magazine, Facebook, Twitter feed, etc.
There is some set-up and customization involved in creating an author page and adjusting the settings in Google+ to allow Google to begin pulling and showing your author information. How Google collects this information is through a piece of html code called a rel=author tag.
It’s funny, we have become so detached from face to face interaction that it is becoming more and more important. Relationships matter, and a smiling face matters. Think about the last time you were in an awkward social situation (aka: networking). Nobody likes it, and if there is not a smiling face you recognize, there is just a sea of faces. However, as soon as you recognize someone, there is a connection, and that sea all of a sudden seems more navigable.
The sea is the search engine results page (SERP). It takes a lot of effort to figure out who those “faces” (links) really are. When you see a face, it is a signal that this person is good and credible. The same comfort level you have with a friend in a crowded room is the same type of emotion that is elicited by a picture on a results page.
Leave a comment and let us know where your eye goes in a search result or if you are using rel=author tags!
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Look at this results page for “Best Skis”. Which result is your eye attracted to?
