Anyone who is not SEO savvy or a coder may encounter difficulty when wanting to add your Google Author Rank to your blog. There are tons, and I mean TONS of articles out there that try to tell you how to add it in a difficult way and after sorting through it myself, I thought a simplified version of how-to add your Google Author Rank to your blog was necessary.

Firstly, you must know that you need to have a Google+ account prior to claiming a Google Author Rank as it will verify your blog and help it get seen more and allow you to be recognized as an author by also putting a face to the name by adding your associated picture.

As your blog should be setup as a Google+ Business page and your blog’s URL is inputted, you will see a button that reads “link website”. This is when it gets a little complicated; a code will then appear and tell you to add it to the Head of your blog, which is great, if you knew where that was.

Let’s be honest, most of us bloggers, blog to blog. We are writers, artists and right-brained. Asking us to touch our Editor section within our theme is like asking us to do math without a calculator. Since each theme on WordPress varies it makes it even more difficult to locate. On this blog for example, I use the Intrepidity Theme which is not as straight-forward as to where everything is as perhaps Genesis does but is a great theme nonetheless.

After much hoping and wishing and copying and pasting without messing up the code. I finally found that it verified my website once I posted it within the home.php section of the WordPress editor for my theme prior to the end code.

What My Page Code Looked Like:

a href=”Your Page Generated URL” rel=”publisher”>Google+</a>

After jumping for joy and seeing the green checkmark appear on my G+ page (not profile). I then went and added the + sign before my name and hyperlinking it with the URL to my G+ profile (not page) with the ending including real=author…I know sounds foreign right?

Here is what it should look like when hyperlinking first you add +Your Name and then hyperlink it with

Google+ Profile URL HEREposts?rel=author

The Code needed:

<a href=”Google+ Profile URL HEREposts?rel=author“>+Your Name</a

Once it is clicked on you should be directed to your Google Plus Profile. You are now able to use that code in any author box or bio no matter the site you are writing on. You can see exactly what I mean by looking at my author bio below.

[NOTE: It will take a few days before you will begin seeing your image next to your writings]

You will need to preferably use an author box for the coding, since this works easiest. Secondly be sure to verify your Author Rank via e-mail and check through the Google Webmaster Tool. Make sure you follow the directions exactly.

Now Exhale.

[Google Author Rank image via 4mat]