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  • Home /
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  • How to add an official Google+ icon/badge to a WordPress sidebar
Tags – beginner, Google+, how to, social sharing buttons

How to add an official Google+ icon/badge to a WordPress sidebar

  • By Brin Wilson
  • July 27, 2014
  • 2 Comments
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Two of the factors Google takes into account when deciding where to place your webpages in its search results are the number of followers and Google +1s your site’s Google+ page has – however, getting more of these two key metrics isn’t easy. You can of course try your luck connecting with others on Google+ through joining relevant Google+ groups, participating in Google+ Circles, mentions (mentioning other users with a ‘+’ symbol in front of their name), comments and +1ing other people’s content in the hope they’ll notice/follow you, however, in our experience, this takes a huge amount of time and effort… An easier way to get the ball rolling (especially if you already have a reasonable amount of traffic to your site) is to simply add a nice big official Google+ icon/badge (much like the one shown towards the bottom of the sidebar of this very site) in your site’s sidebar. Here’s how:

Step 1. Create a Google+ Badge

Sign in to your Google account with the same account you’ve used to set up your site’s Google+ page and then head on over to the official Google+ Badge Page. You should then be presented with a screen that looks a bit like this:

Official Google Plus Badge Page

(click to enlarge)

…depending on the settings of course, which we’ll take a look at next.

Step 2. Choose your settings

After ensuring you’ve chosen the correct Google+ User (only really relevant if you have multiple accounts), the next option is the Features setting: which asks you to choose between an ‘Icon’ (button) or a full-blown ‘Badge’ (which includes a title, an image, a follow button, a +1 button and a followers count) – note that the ‘Badge’ comes in orientations: ‘Portrait’ and ‘Landscape’.

Here’s what each looks like:

Google Plus Icon

Icon

Google Plus Badge - Portrait

Badge

(portrait)

Google Plus Badge - PortraitGoogle Plus Badge - Landscape

Badge

(landscape)

You’ll then need to choose your width (set this to the width of your sidebar – which you can find via measuring it in a graphics program like Photoshop, looking at the code or even by leaving the Google+ badge settings as the default 300px and adjusting it later if it turns out to be either too narrow or too wide via good ol’ trial and error), choose either a ‘Light’ or ‘Dark’ color scheme and whether or not you want the Cover Photo and/or Tagline shown – and then, finally, the default Language setting.

Once you’re happy you’ve got the icon/badge you want, copy the code generated – which appears in a box towards the bottom right of the window, as indicated in the following screenshot:

Copying the Google Plus Code

(click to enlarge)

Note: further customizations are possible through another interface (or by editing the code) detailed here.

Getting the badge/icon into WordPress

Log into your WordPress dashboard and navigate to ‘Appearance’ -> ‘Widgets’ and add a default WordPress ‘Text’ widget to the sidebar in which you’d like to display your new Google+ icon/badge. Give the text widget a title (if you wish to), like say ‘We’re on Google+’ for example, and then paste in the code obtained at the end of step 2.

Adding Code to a Text WordPress Widget

(click to enlarge)

Save and display!

Save the widget with the blue ‘Save’ button (bottom right of the text widget) and go take a look at the frontend of your website. Your new Google+ button/badge widget should now be displayed wherever you chose (i.e. where you placed the WordPress text widget) to show it!

That’s it – done! Easy huh?! Oh, and don’t forget to follow/+1 us on Google+!

By Brin Wilson

Founder of WinningWP - passionate about all things WordPress! Find me on Twitter.

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Comments (policy)
  1. Gürkan says:
    May 7, 2019 at 10:36 am

    Thanks for sharing :) very Helpful

    Reply
  2. Una says:
    January 21, 2015 at 2:02 pm

    Thank you so much, I was looking at how to do that for ages.

    Reply

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