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Google authorship mark up does require specific data in the profile which you will probably not have added when setting up your basic account following the instructions above so this guide will walk you through setting up your profile for authorship mark up.
You have 2 options to manually set up authorship of your content with your Google – profile, I have added a third which is recommended and makes use of a FREE word press plug in
Option1
Link your content to your Google+ profile using a verified email address. (If you don’t have an email address from your domain please use option 2)
Check that you have an email address (for example, levy@wired.com) on the same domain as your content (wired.com).
Make sure that each article or post you publish on that domain has a clear by-line identifying you as the author (for example, “By Steven Levy” or “Author: Steven Levy”)
Visit the Authorship page and submit your email address to Google in the box provided. Click signup for authorship and you will be directed to your Google + profile page.
https://plus.google.com/authorship
Submitting this form will add your email address to the Work section of your profile, which by default is viewable only by your circles. You can keep your email private if you wish. It will also add a public link to the domain of the email address to the Contributor to section of your profile.
Here you can see my work email and my domain has been added to this section, David Henry’s Marketing Blog
No matter how many articles or posts you publish on this domain, you only need to do this process once.
To see what author data Google can extract from your page, use the structured data testing tool http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
Copy any of your URL’S and paste in to the tool above, if everything is set up correctly it will display your image in a mock result.
Here is my example below; if everything is set up correctly you will see the search result and the status of the author as Verified
Option 2
This is the option you need to take if you don’t have an email address with a domain and you are using a free account like Gmail or yahoo etc.
Create a link to your Google+ profile from your webpage, like this:
<a href=”[profile_url]?rel=author”>Google</a>
Replace [profile_url] with the Google+ profile URL, like this:
<a href=”https://plus.google.com/109412257237874861202?
rel=author”>Google</a>
Your link must contain the ?rel=author parameter. If it’s missing, Google won’t be able to associate your content with your Google+ profile.
Add a reciprocal link back from your profile to the site(s) you just updated.
Edit the Contributor To section.
In the dialog that appears, click Add custom link, and then enter the name of the website under label and the website URL.
If you want, click the drop-down list to specify who can see the link, unless you have any particular concerns regarding privacy, select public
Click Save.
To see what author data Google can extract from your page, use the structured data testing tool.
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
Copy any of your URL’S and paste in to the tool above, if everything is set up correctly it will display your image in a mock result.
Option 3
Use the free word press plug in Author Sure which is included in your download (Recommended)
Download the Author Sure zip file and save.
From your word press dashboard upload the zip file and activate.
Setting up the plug in
On your Word Press site go to “Your Profile” page and enter the URL of your Google+ Profile in the box next to the Google+ icon
On Google+ click on your Profile icon then click the Edit Profile button then click in the “Contributor To” section and add a link to your Author page on your Word Press site – your author page URL will be something like http://www.site.com/author/user
Verify a few of your posts on the Word Press site by pasting their URLs into the Rich Snippets Testing Tool,
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
If the tool says they are verified then your pages are eligible for display of author information in the SERPs
If you would like more help in setting up this plug in please visit the site directly, they have great info and free video tutorials here
http://www.authorsure.com/free-video-tutorials
So you have 3 methods to set up your Google + profile page to work with rich snippets which if set up correctly will ensure your image is displayed on
all of your search results. (Very powerful)
All of your new content published either independently or from your word press blogs with the plug in installed will pass author rank credit and link to your Google + profile page.