One-click Google ranking boost for your website

Since the launch of Google+, Google -the search engine- started emphasising social into its ranking; mostly, the top results you see are in this order (though, I’m just scratching the surface) :

1. Relevant results which have been shared by people in your circles.
2. Relevant non-social results.
3. Less relevant results, but with some kind of social presence.

You can have control over the 1st (sharing in Google+ and getting +1s) or 2nd case (basic SEO stuff), but it would take some kind of work, strategic or technical work.

It turns out, the 3rd kind is the easiest one to get -just a few clicks away; You just have to sync the post’s author with its Google+ profile. Technically, this is achieved by :

1. Adding a <link rel=”author” href=”https://plus.google.com/YOUR_PROFILE_ID” /> tag in the page’s header.
2. Edit the Contributor to section of your Google+ profile : https://plus.google.com/YOUR_PROFILE_ID/about/edit/co
3. Test everything using Google’s rich snippet tool

Easy peasy.

If you’re running a WordPress blog, there’s a neat plugin that achieves the first step quickly, even while having multiple authors on the blog : Google Plus Authorship. Just install and add the Google+ profile link on the author’s page.