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Integrating Your WordPress Site With Google+

There are two sides to the Google+ coin: making it easy for readers to share your content on GooglePlus … and having your Google+ profile show up in search results. We’ll tackle both here. This post assumes you already have a Google+ profile.

Sharing content on Google+

For this, we’re going to turn to a plugin. The Google+ Plugin is a standalone sharing option for adding the +1 that is Google’s corollary to a Twitter’s Tweet buttonand Facebook’s Like button. It is only one of the many plugins available. You probably want a more robust sharing plugin. Check out the granddaddy -> JetPack.

Linking your WordPress site with your Google+ profile

Google can use header information to link authorship with a Google+ profile. Because Google is privileging search results for people with Plus accounts, this is a “must do” act.

To incorporate this into your WordPress site, for single-author sites, edit your theme’s header.php file.

Put this code snippet inside the <head> tag:

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Of course, you need to use your own Google+ profile link, not mine.

If you are using a WordPress.com site or don’t have access to your header.php file … Google suggests simply linking to your profile from a webpage. My suggestion would be sidebar or about page.

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<a rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/108740570618849247850/">GooglePlus</a>

The final step is linking your Google+ profile back to your WP site; do this in the Contributor To section of your profile.

By Kathy E. Gill

Digital evangelist, speaker, writer, educator. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles! @kegill

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