Google + Tips and News on Pages + Local merging

Hello all,

Just want to get this tidbit out there in case some of you start getting questions from clients regarding merging G+ local and G+ pages. I've noticed people asking about it here and there.

It is possible to merge the two manually, but I would highly recommend you advise your clients against it doing it. It's not something that can be undone and it's so early in the game that we're going to see lots of bugs, no doubt.

The best thing to do with G+, G+ Pages and G+ Local is to optimize all 3 and be active on all 3.

G+ Profile (personal profile)

Add your pictures, add people to your circles, follow local companies.

Authorship tagging tips for WordPress users:

1. Create an "About Me" page for the business owner. On that page create a direct link to the G+ personal profile putting "?rel=me" at the end of the URL.

2. Create a sidebar widget on your page that has a small About box with a short bio and a link to the ABOUT page putting "?rel=author" at the end of the URL.

3. Go to your MENUs area in the WP backend, click "Screen Options" at the top right corner, check "Link Relationship (XFN)" option.

4. Expand the options for the menu item for your ABOUT page and put "author" in the Link Relationship field and save it.

G+ Page (business page)

Add pictures, videos, follow other companies, be sure to add your company website to the "website" portion of the About tab and to connect the two, be sure to add a link to your G+ Page on the homepage of your website and add the following to the end of the URL "?rel=publisher" If you click the "link website" button next to where you just added your website to your G+ page, you'll get some code to easily add this to the home page.

Test the connections here: Webmaster Tools - Rich Snippets Testing Tool

This testing tool isn't perfect, and will give you false readings sometimes, but if you have done all of the above, you should see your pictures in the SERPs.

I hope this helps some people.