Google Authorship
Info
WP Social SEO Pro will also add all the needed meta tags for the Google Authorship. This means, that you can have your picture beside the Search Engine listings as well as all other, by Google supported, meta tags such as Reviews, Product Offers, Business Listings, People, Recipes, Software, Videos and Events.
After you integrated that in to your site, your listings can look like the one shown in the image below:
Important
Note that there is no guarantee that a Rich Snippet will be shown on actual search results. Also not all of the Rich Snippets do directly show up on search result pages. Some of them, such as Business, People & Video will Google only use to better understand the content on your site. That doesn't mean that thy won't have any affect for your site's ranking. Google already changed its algorithm for the Authorship and how it shows up in search results. You can read more about it here: Google Authorship Changes and How it Affects You
Examples
Below are some example listings for the different Rich Snippets integration. They all have been tested with the Google Webmaster Rich Snippets Testing Tool which you can find on the following site: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
Review & Product
Recipes
Software
The plugin makes it easy to add your Google+ Profile to your site and this not only for you but for ALL your authors.
Setting Up Your Google+ Profile
If you have an account for Gmail, Google Docs, Google Webmaster Tools etc, then you already have the basics for for a Google+ Profile. To get it ready for the Google authorship markup you need to have some specific data in your profile.
1. Go and visit https://profiles.google.com/
2. Sign in to your Google account if you have one or create one. If you haven't joined Google Plus yet you will see a message from Google to join their network. See image below:
3. Upload a Profile photo. This must be a clear facial, head shot photo. Cartoons, abstract arts etc aren't allowed.
4. Then click Continue/Upgrade. On the next screens you can import your contacts if you like. You can also click on skip for those steps.
5. Fill out your personal info and click on Finish. To get out most of Google Plus, it's important that you fill out as many info as possible to make your profile look real.
After you clicked on Finish, Google will take you to your Google Plus page and show you how it works. You can go through these info if you like or just skip them all.
6. After you have done that, hover over the Home icon at the top left hand side and click on Profile and then on +1. The plus one link is located at top navigation bar or within the "More" link tab, depending on your screen size.
As you can see, the +1 tab is not shown to visitors as default. Click on the Google+ settings link. On the next page you can set a lot of different settings. Change them for your personal needs. The one you NEED to activate is making your +1 tab public to visitors to get the Google Authorship working. Scroll down the page until you can see the "Profile" section. Within that section, check the box beside +1 to get that tab activated. See image below:
You don't need to save any changes. Google will automatically update them.
7. Click on the "About" link from the top navigation bar and scroll down to the "Links" section. Within the Links box click on edit.
A new window will open where you can edit all the Links information as described below:
Other Profiles
Here you have the ability to link your Google Plus profile with other Social Network profiles you own. Add as many as possible. This adds more trust to Google.
Contributor to
This is the one which you need to add your website to get the Authorship working. If you want to connect more than one website to your profile, you can add them all here. Make sure, that the link to your Homepage is matching the URL of your website. As Example: if your site does include the www you need to use that within this link too.
Links
Here you can add links to your own Website, other Web 2.0 Sites (such as tumblr etc.) as well as links to your favorite sites.
10. After adding your links click on the "Save" button.
11. Click on the Profile button at the top left hand side and then on "Posts". Copy your Profile URL in to a notepad or other text editor file. The Profile URL should look similar to the one below:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/104060139842691064332/posts
13. Now go back to the WordPress admin area and go to your profile, Users > Your Profile
14. Scroll down the page and enter your Google+ Profile URL in to the given field.
15. Scroll to the bottom of your Profile page and click on „Update Profile“.
16. That's it. Your site is now ready for the Google+ Authorship Markup.
Authorship Settings
Within the Settings Page (Google Tab) you can set some general options for the Google Authorship markup.
Enable Google Authorship on
Here you can define for which content type you want to add the Google Authorship to. Example: If you only want to add the Google Authorship to your Posts, then only activate Posts within this option. The Plugin will then add the Google Authorship to all Posts automatically, but it won't add it to all other content types such as Pages etc.
Homepage Author
You have the ability to choose which author you want to show on your home page if you don't have a static home page. To do that, go to the plugins settings page. Scroll down to the Google Authorship Markup Settings and choose the author you want to use on the homepage. Make sure that this author has setup his profile, like we described above.
Google Plus Publisher
Enter the URL to your Google Plus Business page in to this field. If an URL is entered, the plugin will then automatically add the proper Google Publisher link to the code of your site, like:
If you don't have a Google Plus Business Page yet and want to learn how to setup one, then checkout the Google Publisher Status Setup article.