Linking Website to Google+ Page

[m_j_gregory]

Hi all,

I'm not sure if this is an old feature but thought I'd share anyways. Has anyone linked their Google+ Business page to their website on the fully merged pages yet?

It seems like the most notable features of this are:

1. Ability for businesses to show in SERP's as publisher - rather than a personal G+ profile, it will be the businesses' G+ Local page
2. The business' website will become eligible for Google+ Direct Connect
3. A verified 'checkmark' will show next to the URL on the G+ Local page

If this is an old feature or the topic is already being discussed somewhere I apologize (I haven't seen the verified 'checkmark' showing next to a URL on a listing yet).

But today I found this screenshot:



which lead me to the following URL

Link to your website - Google+ Help

I think this is will be great tool to utilize moving forward, I was just wondering if anybody else has seen/accessed this option yet and what their thoughts are.

Thanks,
Matt

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hey Matt,

Great score! I'm going to try it and see what happens! Sure seems more straight forward than some of the Google documentation for things like author markup.

 

[m_j_gregory]

Hey Linda,

Sounds great! I'm going to test it out as well. If you don't mind, keep me posted on your findings if you run into anything out of the ordinary.

..and yes, the documentation is laid out pretty clearly here. Thanks for your input.

Thanks,
Matt

 

[Linda Buquet]

As usual Google's instructions are all messed up!

In several places it says to put the rel publisher code in the HEAD of the site.
I did it just like they said and it adds a visible link up in the BACKGROUND of my home page. See very top left.

Google Places Optimization - Google+ Local SEO Find us on Google+

So then I clicked the link that said email these instructions to your webmaster. And in THOSE instructions it says add the link to the body.

Wonder which is right?

Nevermind figured it out. In head it's link href not a href.

In HEAD: <link href="https://plus.google.com/yourplusid" rel="publisher" />

In BODY: <a href="https://plus.google.com/yourplusid" rel="publisher">Find us on Google+</a>

Don't know why they could not just explain it as simply as I did instead of having 3 different places to read disjointed instructions!

 

[m_j_gregory]

Good find, that is great to know. Like you said, it's confusing when they provide you differing codes to utilize in 2 different places.

For any person who tries implementing this:

In the G+ back-end (after clicking 'Link Website') they provide the code to use for the body and in the Google Help "Link to your website - Google+" page they provide the code to use for the head.

If this is incorrect please let us know. Thanks for sharing Linda, great find!

Thanks again,
Matt

 

[Linda Buquet]

I did it. Then I used the test website button it gives you right there and it tested OK.

THEN for good measure I replaced a rich snippet review on my site I'd been wanting to replace to try to get my stars back.

THEN after that I used Google's rich snippet tester tool which not only tests to be sure all is correct BUT I believe feeds your changes directly to Google since she has to spider your page to find the markup.

I usually rank #1 for Google Places Optimization. But lately I've dropped to #2. Will be interesting to see if this bumps me back up to #1. But I also did a few other things that could help ranking in the past few days so if I jump will be hard to say for sure what did it.

 

[m_j_gregory]

That's good to know Linda, thanks again for sharing, it is truly appreciated!