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What if there was a way to light up everything you produce and put it on the
Internet, and it becomes the single most clickable item on Google's search results
page?
That's the learning I have for you today
on the BrainyVideo broadcast.
Hi, I'm Steve Washer, author of The Video Brain and creator of Audience Builders
Blueprint and master of video presence.
If there was ever
any question as to whether the human brain is fully formed by the age of
16, I present this as evidence to the contrary.
That's me.
And I used to wonder why I wasn't popular in high school.
In fact, about the only thing I did learn in high school
is that it was run by the iron law of popularity.
And evidently I'd broken it.
I couldn't wait
for high school to end.
So I started college a year early. And ohh, college was
so different.
Nothing was based on popularity.
Getting ahead was all about merit
and if you studied hard, you moved up.
I loved it. I won every scholarship, aced every class, got to be the big man on campus.
Life was sweet.
I could not wait to graduate and take on the world.
Then I found out something that the popular kids already knew--
that life
after college was just one big
high school.
And then, along came the Internet.
It was kind of like
college.
You could move up the ladder just by being yourself and
by merit.
Well, that seemed cool.
But while I was thinking it over,
the popular kids rushed in and all of a sudden the Internet became about
backlinks and bot views and
spinning articles and useless, crappy, superficial information
just to trick Google into thinking you were even more popular. Bummer.
It looked like the iron law of popularity was going to win on the
Internet as well.
Then one day, Google said,
"Enough! From this day forth,
we're gunna look at you like we did when we were all in college.
If you've got something useful to say,
how 'bout we give you a tool to make sure everyone knows it's you?
And if you want to send your content to 400 other places, that's cool with
us.
We'll see that you originated this content on your own website
or ours.
Yeah, we know popularity is important,
but from now on, we're gunna measure it in
relevance, not views.
And if you apply our special tool
to all your content, we'll help you improve your rankings." Whoa, yeah baby!
So, do you know about this special tool that makes all your content stand out?
Most of the social media teachers I asked about it couldn't even help me find
the tool.
And once you find it, it's very confusing to set up and apply, and there are alternate
paths to getting there, and the path you choose
could have an impact on how you get found. Okay, okay, okay.
But now,
if you produce something halfway original,
even if it's just pointing to something original that someone else created,
you'll have a decent chance of getting noticed by people you're trying to reach.
Let me show you what I'm talking about.
Here's a typical list of results.
Now, how would you decide which one to choose?
But looky here--
Now which one would you most likely click on first?
This is called a rich snippet. And it also lets you write up a cool
description of the content, instead of,
you know, one that trails off mid-sentence.
This also makes your videos light up better than any video site map ever
could. And,
it will give you the one thing that's even better than popularity,
the one thing that the popular kids really wanted desperately anyway--
authority.
And it's okay, Google wants you to have it, or they wouldn't have given us the tool
which is called the Google Authorship ID.
The great thing is that if you have a message to the world or are willing to
put yourself in front of the camera,
this is the single greatest development in social media since the launch of YouTube.
It will also change the way rankings are displayed in the future.
It will not be about pure popularity anymore. It will be about authority
and relevance.
And I know people say that's what it is now, but it's really more true in the
aspirational sense.
But soon it will be true.
And that's such good news for anyone who wants to make a ding in the universe.
And the more of us who use this tool,
the better off it will be
for everyone.
So if you haven't yet claimed your Google Authorship ID, please put this
near the top of your to-do list. At this point, it doesn't even matter if you
don't have a website. You can base your authorship out of your Google+
account.
So the first step is to start a Google+ account--that you can do on your own.
But getting to authorship is more involved than I can show in a brief video like this,
so I've asked my friend Ken Manesse,
a Google+ evangelist and super expert,
to walk you through the process of getting your own.
Because here's what I've found--
even though the geniuses at Google will tell you how simple this is,
unless you're also an SEO geek, this is not a simple process.
It took me months to wrap my head around it,
and in the end, I still needed someone to walk me through it.
It just gets confusing very fast,
and no one knows how to explain this to you in a way that makes sense.
But Kenneth does know.
And I'll be there to ask the silly questions that will ensure we all know
how to get this done.
By the way, there's nothing for sale - consider this one of my regular Tuesday
productions, only a little more expanded.
The time and date is posted below, and yes, the show will be on permanent
replay here so that we can all look back and say hey, remember when
we didn't even know what Google Authorship was?
Look, I know that deep down inside everyone wants to be popular, but unlike
high school kids,
we now understand that real popularity is earned through
authority.
Join us next week and discover how to earn your authority faster than you ever
thought possible.
In the meantime, I invite you to join my circle on Google+ and I will join
yours.
Let's each help our whole community become more
influential
For transforming awkward kids into cool kids,
I'm Steve Washer
with BrainyVideo.com