Now to the real problem here, don’t freak out yet; because there seems to be a bug not only in the Google Richsnippets tool, but also in the actual indexing mechanism of rich snippets in web sites. I think Google started to peddle the gas bit too soon since their developers can’t seem to keep up with the pace of their marketing of products. Come on Google! you’re better than this. Couple of days is too long in Google standards, but few weeks is way beyond comprehension.

Nevertheless, this error code has been popping out for the last couple weeks as far as I know. I confirmed it as a bug because even “Matt Cutts” website (the exemplary www.mattcutts.com ) pops out the same error in the Google Rich snippets tool. So don’t waist your time debugging your WordPress blogs, because most probably there is no error in your link set up.

Also the small author image has disappeared in SERP’s for already verified sites in Google index. Hopefully all this hiccups are just temporary and we will see our author images in Google SERP’s soon.

I have to mention though, it’s not as straightforward as it seems. Because several tools used in the process are yet to be released in a public version such as the Google Rich Snippets tool.

The WordPress theme you use will determine how editing you will have to do in the template files. e.g. If you use the WordPress TwentyEleven theme, you won’t have much editing to do because it has most of the prerequisites built into the templates. On the other hand its also advisable to utilize child themes rather than edit the template-core.

Create a Google Profile if you already haven’t

This is easy. Just go to the Google profiles page and follow simple instructions. Upload the profile picture. As per the Google requirements this has to be a clear, genuine head shot of your self only. Then edit the links box on the right hand side of the profile and include the link to your blog home page. I left the title field blank since it didn’t seem to work for me when I added a title. For the home page DO NOT check the ‘This page is specifically about me’ check-box.

Add another link to your author page within the blog. For single author blogs the usual link for author pages is HOMEPAGE-URL/author/admin/. If you have multiple authors to your blog, find out the link to your own author archives and insert it as a custom link to your profile. Tick the ‘This page is specifically about me’ check-box for this link.

Assess Template Files For Compatibility

Google Rich Snippets tool pops out warning messages when classes and attributes ain’t named according to its expectations. Its also noteworthy that it expects certain classes and attributes which are still under experimentation. The ideal structure of container classes is the one used in TwentyEleven theme by WordPress. Although it still popped out one or two warning messages, with some minor tweaking to the template it works just perfect.

For Rich Snippet data to be validated against the Google Rich Snippets tool, the structure of container classes has to be somewhat similar to:

hfeed
hentry
entry-title =
entry-content =
updated =
hcard
fn =
Rel
name =
rel = bookmark
url =
Rel
name =

Quickest way to find out; just enter the blog URL in the Google Rich Snippets Tool and hit ‘Preview.’ If there are any data displayed under the tabs “Extracted Author for this page” and “Extracted rich snippet data from the page,” (even along with few warning messages..) then by following steps below will hopefully complete the linking. But if you don’t find those tabs at all or there is no data displayed under them, then you have to make some serious changes to your theme templates. Alternatively switch to TwentyEleven or find a coder who can help you bring the templates to the latest standards.

Edit Theme Template Files or Child Themes

1. Add a text or image link to your Google profile from every page of your blog

Edit a common template for every page of your blog such as header, sidebar or footer and insert the code below in an appropriate position for the link to appear.


<?php if ( ! is_author() && ! is_page('about')) { ?>
<p><a rel="author" href="YOUR GOOGLE PROFILE URL">
<img src="http://www.google.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-32.png" width="32" height="32">
</a> </p>
<?php } else { ?>
<p><a rel="me" href="YOUR GOOGLE PROFILE URL">
<img src="http://www.google.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-32.png" width="32" height="32">
</a>
</p>
<?php } ?>

note: Please change the ‘About us’ page name and the Google profile URL as required. In my case the about us page name is ‘about’. If you don’t have one, just ignore that part of the code snippet.
What this code does is that it defines the ‘rel’ attribute on the link. On “author archives” or the “About” page, the code will insert ‘rel=”me” ‘ as the rel attribute and ‘rel=”author” ‘ on all other pages. This is a requirement from Google for the tool to properly differentiate author specific pages.

2. Edit Template Files to Rectify Warnings Received in Rich Snippets Tool

A common warning that will be received is the: Warning: Missing required field “updated.” This means the class “updated” is not found in the date container. Just add the class name “updated” to the the container of the date and/or time and the warning message will disappear.

3. Edit TwentyEleven by WordPress Theme Functions Template

If youclosely examine a blog using the TwentyEleven WordPress theme, you will notice that post meta section underneath the post title does not display the author name, although the function responsible does include the necessary coding to display ‘Posted By “author name” ‘ as well.For this to work, replace the printfline in the twentyeleven_posted_on () function within the theme functions template file (functions.php)of the TwentyEleven theme; with the following code.


printf( __( '<span class="sep">Posted on </span>
<a href="%1$s" title="%2$s" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date updated" datetime="%3$s" pubdate>%4$s</time></a>
<span class="sep"> by </span><span class="by-author"><span class="author vcard">
<a class="url fn n" href="%5$s" title="%6$s" rel="author">%7$s</a>
</span></span>', 'twentyeleven' ),

Now that all major editing is complete, check the URL in the rich snippets tool one more time. Hopefully there will be no errors displayed and your thumbnail image will be displayed in Google SERP’s alongside search results from your blog very soon.

We hear lot of webmasters, especially novice marketers, talking about getting onto the first page of Google. But soon you will find out its not difficult as it seems to rank on the first page for fairly low competitive keyphrases. After a while you start thinking, why you aren’t getting that many visitors, having ranked your site on the first page for several keywords or phrases.

Having your site ranked on first page of search engines will only guarantee impressions, remember. Getting people to click on your listing is totally in your hands. Getting the first position in search engines means nothing if you don’t have a RELEVANT and a PERSUASIVE title plus a quality excerpt to go with it.

We are so used to implying CTR with ads and revenue. But the concept is very true in getting more visitors to your site from existing natural search engine traffic. This is the new level of search engine web marketing.

Google webmaster central has a comprehensive analysis broken down to each and every keyword that gets traffic to your site. If you haven’t been using these Google tools and you have a website that gets a reasonable flow of traffic from natural search optimization, then you are leaving traffic (and money Given that your website is business oriented…) on the table, unattended. Its like you refuse get paid for months of hard labor.

Suppose you have a website that ranks on top position for a keyword that is searched for 1000 times a month on avg. But does it matter how many impressions it gets, if you only get 100 – 300 or so visitors for that particular keyword. 10% – 30% CTR… Well for the top position this is ridiculously low. In this case all you have to do is concentrate on improving the CTR for your SERP, in other words put the icing on the cake, paint the outside wall of your home or finally get what you deserve for your efforts.

Go through the list of keywords sorted by impressions high to low and look at what exactly is displayed in SERP for those keywords.

1. The title -
   • See if its relevant to the keyword or keyphrase. If the keyword addresses a particular problem, make sure you imply within the title that your content has possible solutions.
2. The excerpt
   • This SERP excerpt must entice the user with a glimpse of your content as such that the user is tempted to click on the link in order to get more. If you have a quality title to go with a persuasive excerpt, then  you can beat the top competitor by occupying the second position in search engines.
3. Competitors
   • Analyze the competition with great care. Because if you slip, your competitors will bag the fruits from your garden.

So now another task has been added to natural search engine optimization. This is a whole different level in search engine web marketing. Because this is what you do after you get on the first page for your keywords.

If you are new to blogging for money (or just blogging as a hobby), you will soon discover the urge to get laser targeted traffic to your blog. Here’s why… In order to make money from your blog, you need people buying, clicking and interacting on your blog. Any method of blog-monetisation requires TARGETED-traffic flowing in from around the internet. This is where most start up bloggers give up.

See I’ve emphasized ‘TARGETED’ traffic instead of just blog traffic. This is very important. If you think of paying for your blog traffic, then you need to be certain that the traffic you get is interested in the topics you write about in your blog. Yes this is a numbers game… But quality of the traffic matters most.

Free search engine traffic is what almost the entire blogging community is after. Free traffic you get from search engines are highly targeted to your content and best of all it’s completely free. So the competition for high traffic keywords are obviously very high too. Even low profile, less competitive keywords are not easy to rank for. Having said that, if you don’t rank within the top 3 at least for a couple of low profile keywords or keyphrases, the chances are you get only a zero to few visits a day. If you are still not convinced, then read this: Why Do You Need To Rank Within The Top 3 Positions?.

Now you know the importance of being at the top positions in SERP (Search Engine Results Page), ideally within the top 3. I’m not going to talk about all the SEO aspects that you need in order to get your blog posts ranked highly in a consistent manner. Instead I will show you how to get do follow backlinks to your blog posts the smarter way. Do follow backlinks are the most influential aspect of SEO towards better ranking in search engines. The more you can get the better, but one important thing. Do yourself a favor and please don’t try illegitimate backlink building tactics as this will only get your blog banned from search engines, specially Google.

Article directory submission is a popular method to get some quick backlinks. But this works best when you create unique, quality articles that gets placed in various article directories. Since you might not have all the time needed to run a successful article campaign, what if you can find a way to place few articles you create in a network of blogs that are awaiting your content? Wonderful isn’t it? I said many blogs are awaiting your free content, so it’s only a matter of giving out well written content to them so they will keep on wanting your content. The beauty of such a system is that many number of sites would link back to you even if its a single article that you would create and distribute.

So your search ends here. No more do you have to read hundreds of SEO articles to improve your SERP rankings and blog traffic.

Enjoy and share! Don’t forget to give a link back to this post from your blog, if you found this information useful.

Contextual Links

Here’s what we already know

• Ranking within the 1st page in SERP’s get more traffic
• Ranking within the top 3 increases the traffic flow by many fold

But what are the actual percentages of the clickthroughs? The following data derived from AOL seems to indicate some online user behaviors that might be helpful to many online entrepreneurs.

According to some analyzed data from AOL, a research has produced some astonishing results about the clickthrough percentages of SERP positions. Nearly 90% (89.69%) of the clicks are made from the first page. Even more intriguing is that 42.30% of the total clickthroughs are made towards the number 1 position. Only 11.92% and 8.44% clickthroughs have gone towards number 2 and 3 positions respectively. (Source: redcardinal.ie)

Frightening ha…?

The rest of the entries that count up to millions would only share a meager 37.34%. Even from that a chunky 27.03 is shared by positions 4 to 10.

Summary:

Positions 1-3   : 62.66%
Positions 4-10: 27.03%
Positions 10-Final entry : 10.31%

This little finding makes it ever so important to be within the top 3 in SERP’s at least for a handful of keywords / keyphrases in your niche. The only way forward is to do extensive keyword research and have a solid backlink strategy to improve on SERP rankings.