Ever wonder how individuals are able to have their image placed next to their Google search engine results as shown below? Welcome to the new future of search engine optimization: Google Authorship.

Google Authorship has been the talk of the town for individuals and businesses wanting to rank higher and more consistent in Google search.

Google Authorship, also known as Google Rank, is the new future of search engine optimization allowing authors to increase their search rankings click-through rates (CTR).

Another upside is Google Authorship allows for ownership of content, limiting the opportunity for online piracy. Click here for more on Google Authorship.

Over the last couple of weeks, we have been overwhelmed with the number of emails from individuals and businesses trying to implement Google Authorship for their website(s).

Today’s post will be a quick and easy how-to guide to help you successfully setup your Google Authorship account. in hopes of having your image placed next to your authoritative online works.

Ready, well then here we go…

Performing some daily reading over various blogs, I saw Brian Cray’s post, Time On Site & Bounce Rate: Get the real numbers in Google Analytics, and had to share it with the Kickstart Commerce Community. 

I know many of you utilize the free web analytics tool, Google Web Analytics, provided by Google to monitor web traffic, conversion rates, bounce rates, traffic sources, and more.

Brian’s post is God-sent as it will help you to find the *REAL* Time On Site and Bounce Rate of your website.

For those not using Google Web Analytics or some other web analytics to measure the effectiveness of your website, then you are throwing away opportunity and opportunity to understand what your website does very well and what does not do very well.

Most business owners are busy with the day-to-day tasks of ensuring their customers are properly serviced and satisfied, employees are showing up and performing at an optimal level and payroll and bills are paid to name just a few.

And should the business garner most of its sales online, then all eyes are glued on ensuring the website is functional at all times and without show stopping glitches that could harm sales.

In today’s post, I will cover the common pitfalls of untidy code and how it greatly harms search engine rankings as well as potentially harms online sales.

You have a domain name, check. You have a website, check. You wait on search engines to index website, check. You have amazing traffic, *crickets*.

The above is the typical response when conversing about search engine optimization (SEO) with potential customers.

I have noticed many steps a customer can take to optimize their website. One of the most overlooked steps is the use of Google Webmaster Tools.

This value-add tool provides a website owner (a.k.a. webmaster) imperative information about their website and its overall health as Google sees it.

In today’s post, I’ll discuss the importance of Google Webmaster Tools.  I’ll also provide a very easy step-by-step, downloadable guide explaining how to use Google Webmaster Tools to complete the following:

• verify your website
• create a sitemap file for your website
• submit a sitemap file for your website

As we all know, the key to optimizing search engines is having search engines crawl and index your website.

Today, we’re going to discuss the opposite: how not to allow search engines to crawl and index your website or a specific page.

Maybe you have duplicate content throughout your website that you don’t want to delete, yet you don’t want search engines to index and penalize your website.

Or have you ever wanted to have a private page that is not visible to search engines but made available to users?

For instance, let’s say you want a quick and simple page guarding users from receiving content until they give their email.

This is a very popular online experience for those trying to build their mailing list.  They’ll offer a free resource of some sort in exchange for your email address.