Learn how to set up Google+ Authorship for your ActiveRain Outside blog.

For most of you, your AR Blog is going to be where people find your content on ActiveRain via Google's search results pages, but it would be nice for Google to know that you contribute to your outside blog too.  Right?  Well, thanks to some code found on a blog that Michael George wrote a while back, a little bit of poking around on my part, and some help from Bob Stewart, you'll be able to tell Google that you are a contributor to your outside blog!

You may not know this already, but we decided to make Google+ Authorship on ActiveRain a lot easier after Michael wrote a series of blogs dedicated to help us get your faces in Google's search results.  You might want to read the official ActiveRain blog about how to set up Google+ Authorship before you start on my instructions just so you have a better idea of what you're going to be doing.  I promise this blog will be here when you get back.

Now that you're an expert on Google+ Authorship and you've got your face next to every ActiveRain blog you post, let's set up your outside blog too!  Remember that step where you put your AR Blog on your list of websites you contribute to? Just do that again with the URL for your outside blog.  I recommend that you Label your outside blog whatever you've named it.  If you've claimed "www.JeffHasAnAwesomeBeard.com" as the URL for your outside blog, then you would want to label it "Jeff has an Awesome Beard", or something like that. 

The next step, and this one might be a little tricky, is to add all the HTML code to your signature in ActiveRain.  You'll want to copy the code I have posted below - word for word - and then edit the stuff between the parenthesis. 

<ul>

<a title="Add (your name here) in your circle" href="https://plus.google.com/(all the stuff in front of /posts)" rel="me" target="_blank">Find (your name, business, or team) on Google+</a>

</ul>

Go to your "Blog Settings" page on ActiveRain, and find your "Signature".  You'll see this cool little link labelled "HTML" on the editor.  Click it, and it will open a new window.  Paste the code from above into that box.  Now, let's look at what we have.  You should edit the parenthesis and everything between them as you go.  When you're done, it should look something like this:

Obviously, you don't want my stuff in your signature, so don't copy exactly what you see above.  Click on the "Update" button on the HTML window.  Save your work, and look at your signature.  I've centered mine, but you're welcome to do whatever you think looks best!

When you're done, go to: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets and paste (your outside blog URL) into the search.  If my calculations are correct, you should see "Verified: Authorship markup is verified for this page." in green letters under where is says authorship.