Google authorship is a great way to add a layer of personal branding to your posts and hopefully increase the click-through rate of those posts when they appear within Google’s SERPs. In this post I’m going to talk about the importance of Google authorship(verifying yourself as the official author of content with Google), and how to do it.

Importance of Google Authorship:

Say you do a Google search for “Search Engine Optimization Tips” and you see the following two results at the top of the page.

Result 1:

Result 2:

We all know that one of the main benefits of using WordPress is that it has a fantastic community of developers and a vast amount of plugins to fit every need. With the total number of plugins eeking ever closer to twenty-thousand, there is sure to be a plugin or sidebar widget to out there to do what is it that you want done.

However, sometimes you want more features, more flair, and something a little more unique in your site’s sidebar.  That is why I have put together this list of great premium sidebar widgets. The are all relatively inexpensive and can add a more custom feel to your website or blog. As always, please feel free to share any other widgets that I may have overlooked in the comments sections. 

Who’s Online?

Who’s online is a great sidebar widget to display to your readers exactly how many other people are on the site. Many popular blogs like Business Insider use similar tools to show the same information. You can also use it on your admin section for a quick current traffic reference. It is basically a much cheaper, with less features albiet, option to ChartBeat.

Cost: $5

In WordPress, there are widgets and menu items that you need to know the Page IDs to include or exclude certain pages. It is not as easy as one might think to find those Page ID numbers. Below are two ways to find the numbers that you are looking for:

1. Navigate to the ‘Pages’ area in your WordPress admin menu and scroll your mouse over a page. In some browsers, the hovered item URL will be displayed in the bottom left hand corner of the browser window or in the browsers navigation bar. The Page ID is the number after ‘post=’. If it is not, proceed to the second option.

2. If your browser does not display the URL by following the steps in the first option, you will have the open each individual Page to view its page ID. The page ID will be displayed in the same format as in option number one but will be in the broswers navigation bar.

We are going to be posting another article on how to have your widgets be ‘include’ instead of ‘exclude’ to make it easier if you want to feature just a few pages. It is a much easier option than going through and entering each individual Page ID if you have a lot of pages.

One of the best features of building a site on the WordPress platform is the flexibility and the ease to add new functions through plugins and widgets. Everyday there are new plugins, updates, and functions released, so it is important to stay up on the most recent add-ons that can benefit your site.

The WordPress plugin directory now features close 19,500 plug-ins and 300,000,000+ downloads. With that many choices, I am here to help you sort through the trash and present you my favorite plug-ins for 2012. I am not going to rehash the same plugins that every other post discusses like Yoast’s SEO plug-in or the Disqus comment system. Although those are great choices, I going to try to shed some light on the less mainstream.