Google Authorship is a big deal for SEO

Ever see search results with some fool's face next to it?

Jealous?

Anyway this is a big deal and really makes your link stand out to humans....machine too, especially when owned by google.

So how do you do it? You contact me and pay me money, you idiot. Just kidding.

not.

Anyway

required step 0
setup a google + account and upload a headshot
then put in the web site address on pages you contribute to
on any pages you contribute to you need to put By Your Name

Option 1
put in google + an email address with the same domain as the articles you post

Option 2
put in google links to your google + page on every page you post and put a by reference
link will be like this https://plus.google.com/(this partt is specific your google + page)?rel=author
(Google)
on each page you should also have By Google + Page, so if your google plus page was John Doe, you would need to put "By John Doe" on each page.

Test your page to see if you did it right:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

If it still isn't working after a few days, refer to
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1306778