Yes I believe they do - I've changed a name once and it changed nothing except the name.  I do recall the 'you can only do this once so get it right' warning.

Also, I believe you can only change it once.

I've attached a screenshot of what you should be looking for.  You need to go to your dashboard -> users -> all users -> then select any user.

There should be several fields including your bio area...as per the attached.  Mine is filled in with my google plus proifle.

Something I forgot to mention is that your user will also need to add themselves as a contributor to the blog on their Google plus profile.  I have attached a link to my google plus profile.  If you check out the about section you will see about two thirds down a section where is says 'contributor to'.  Here you add the url to the blog.  This links the two.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/101142923283224674423/about

1. You need to link the blog to the G+ Profile

2. You need to confirm in G+ that you are truly a contributor to that blog (or you could add any old superior influencer)

That should be it.

g+jpeg.jpg

You don't need a plugin to set up authorship for multiple authors.

All you need is that all your authors have a Google + account.

If you go into Users in wordpress and set up your users/authors. ( I presume you already have these users set up as authors if they are already writing content?).    When they are set up as an author, you go into the user profile and add their Google+ profile link into the section on their profile where is says Google + Profile URL.  You do this for each author on the site.

Then, when any author writes a post, they just need to ensure they are writing as their user profile name (i.e. they are logged in as themselves) and that should cover it.

The admin can change the author of a post by doing a quick edit on the list of posts - when it drops down there should be an 'author' section where you can select a list of authors.  This list is your users and each of these need to have their Google+ profile url added to their user profile in wordpress.

Hope that makes sense!

Thanks Mark - Would you be happy with a dofollow branded link, or err on the side of caution with a nofollow link?

I agree I like to see them there, but I'm wondering how Google would view these links given the irrelevance of them on the actual site?

What are your thoughts on SEOs and web designers putting their own links in the footers of client sites.

For the sake of argument, lets assume that the client is happy for the link to be there. I'm referring to the SEO merits of the link being there from an 'irrelevant' website.

My belief is that this goes against what Google is looking for and that these are irrelevant links and likely to be picked up and penalised.  That's what I believe!

However, I see lots of sites offering SEO services that have dofollow links from their client sites, using exact match anchor text and they are all ranking highly.

Is it just a matter of time before Google sniffs them out and penalises them for it?  Or should I be going through my client sites and adding myself a dofollow link in the footer? (with their permission of course).

The highest ranking sites in any UK city do this.  If you search SEO Manchester, SEO Leeds etc and find the top ranking sites and check them out on opensite explorer, they are all using a disproportionate amount of dofollow backlinks form client sites.

If you have several duplicate pages (with the exception of location), I do think you run the risk of being penalised for duplicate content.

Does each local area actually have a branch or is it all run from one location, with all the additioanl pages being written to garner the local belief that the service exists as a 'local service'?  I've seen businesses do this and it doesn;t feel right to me.  I agree with the previous poster that you'd be better building a national brand that services different parts of the country rather than making it look like you are a network of branches.

If your client does have several branches/franchises, I'd be tempted to make every page unique and about that local service.  Use images specific to each location and title and alt tag accordingly.

Very helpful answer thanks (even though it wasn;t me who asked the question!).  If a forum allows lots of low quality dofollow backlinks, e.g. in signatures, would they be penalised?