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Whilst Google+ is the big story of the day, Matt Cutts has just posted on his wall about a blog post that may have fallen under the radar about content creators being credited on search results.
For anyone who creates and authors content, this is a great new way to be recognised, found, and to promote your work in the search results, including with a photo.
There are a couple of very simple steps to being found by the algorithm which will be powering this addition to the SERPs. Full details can be found on the Google Webmaster help pages, but in essence, all you need do is:
Add the content pages where you post content to your Google public profile, and then paste a Google + button onto those pages. Like this:
Your own content will be automatically +1′d so it should create an archive of all your content over time for people to easily access from your public Google profile page. (This profile page is going to become as important as your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter bio etc, so be warned!)
Obviously, it is algorithm driven so your position in the search results and even whether you are listed will be down to good SEO and making sure you are putting out all the right social signals too.
So, it is always a good idea to tweet all of your fresh content, and make sure that it appears on other social networks as well as social bookmark sites such as Digg, Stumbleupon and Delicious too.
We’ll be playing around with this far more in the future to see how we can improve content rankings on behalf of authors and clients to establish a wider range of listings in the SERPS. Content that is well-written should have longevity on certain subjects, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out as a traffic generator.
Google has issued a short guide for SEO and webmasters to what is allowed under their terms for webserving techniques, and also how to get premium or paid content listed in the search engines without giving everything away for free.
Certain techniques such as geolocation use the IP address or information in a cookie to serve content relevant to the user’s location. You see this with Google search, when you will generally be taken to the Google country site that fits with your current location or information from your Google account.
Additionally, this guide covers how to get premium and paid subscription content indexed under their new First Click free policy. This is very useful if you have a member only site and have been struggling to get listed under keywords which will attract new members.
However, this guide is also worth reading for anyone thinking about trying a certain ‘black hat’ technique: trying to con GoogleBot. In this instance by serving content specifically search engine optimised for the spider, and different to that which normal site visitors see. Trying to spam the search engine in the past has resulted in advanced SEO techniques being developed but it is also a risky business that can have disastrous results, occasionally long-term. There is a clear warning to check the webmaster guidelines before trying this.
We will talk about other blackhat techniques that may get you penalised in future blog posts.
