Rel="author" - This could be KickAss!
-
Google is now encouraging webmasters to attribute content to authors with rel="author". You can read what google has to say about it here and here.
A quote from one of google's articles....
When Google has information about who wrote a piece of content on the web, we may look at it as a signal to help us determine the relevance of that page to a user’s query. This is just one of many signals Google may use to determine a page’s relevance and ranking, though, and we’re constantly tweaking and improving our algorithm to improve overall search quality.
I am guessing that google might use it like this..... If you have several highly successful articles about "widgets", your author link on each of them will let google know that you are a widget expert. Then when you write future articles about widgets, google will rank them much higher than normal - because google knows you are an authority on that topic.
If it works this way the rel="author" attribute could be the equivalent of a big load of backlinks for highly qualified authors.
What do you think about this? Valuable?
Also, do you think that there is any way that google could be using this as a "content registry" that will foil some attempts at content theft and content spinning?
Any ideas welcome! Thanks!
-
I own a company and usually write my own blogs but not every time. The times I don't I pay to have them written and thus own the copy. Can an author be a company and the link point to the company about us page?
-
To anyone following this topic... A good thread at cre8asiteforums.com
-
Pretty sure both say they are interchangeable.
-
I was wondering if this is needed? Doesn't the specfication at schema.org cover this? Or would Google use the Author itemscope different from rel="Author"?
-
Right now, rel="author" is only useful with intra-domain URLs. It does not "count" if you are linking to other domains.
BUT...
In the future it might, so doing this could either give you a nice head start, or not. Time will tell.
-
I think it's a good idea and may open up some content syndication options that were discounted before...
In the past I have been firmly against content syndication - I want the content on my own site. However, if I think that the search engines are going to give me credit for doing it then I might do it when a great opportunity arrives.
-
I think it's a good idea and may open up some content syndication options that were discounted before (as per Dunamis' post) however I've not see the rel tag do much for me.
Tagging links to SM sites as rel="me" has not helped those pages get into the SERPs for my brand (though I've not been super consistent with doing it), rel="nofollow" obviously had the rug pulled from under it a while ago and I even once got carried away and tried linking language sites together with rel="alternate" lang="CC" but didn't get the uplift in other language version sites I hoped (though it was a bit of a long shot to begin with).
I'm just wondering how much value this is going to have. I still like it in principal and will attempt to use it where I can.
-
Or, the other issue could be that content sites could grab content from a non-web-savvy site owner. If the original owner didn't have an author tag, then the content site could slap their own author tag on and Google would think that they were the original author.
-
However, it wouldn't be hard for Google to have a system whereby they recognize that my site was the first one to have the rel author and therefore I'm likely the original owner. This is basically a content registry.
Oh.... I really like that. I would like to see google internally put a date on first publication. One problem that some people might have is that their site is very new and weak and content scrapers hit them with a higher frequency than googlebot.
-
When I read it, I understood it to mean that the author tag was telling google that I was the original author. (I actually thought of you EGOL as I know you have been pushing for a content registry). Now, if someone steals my stuff I wouldn't expect them to put a rel author on it. However, I can see a few ways that the tag may be helpful:
-I recently had someone want to publish one of my articles on their site. I said no because I didn't want there to be duplicates of my stuff online. But, perhaps with rel author I could let another site publish my site as long as it is credited to me. Then, Google will know that my site deserves to be the top listing for this content.
-If I have stuff that I know scrapers are going to get, I can use the rel-author tag. My first thought was that a scraper site could sneakily put their own rel author on it and claim it as theirs. However, it wouldn't be hard for Google to have a system whereby they recognize that my site was the first one to have the rel author and therefore I'm likely the original owner. This is basically a content registry.
-
This might be helpful for you, especially if you can get the syndication sites to place author tags on the blog posts.
rel=canonical might also be worth investigating.
I am also confused about this. I'd like to see more information from Google on exactly how these will be used - especially in cross-domain situations.
-
I actually have similar questions about this. The company I work for hosts a blog that is also syndicated across 4 to 5 other websites. The other sites have bigger reach on the web and our blog isn't getting much direct traffic out of this. I have a feeling adding the author tags to our content will eventually pay off to show that the content is being originated on our site and then syndicated. I am interested / excited to see other ways this will be used. I think its a great fix for the scraping issue and will hopefully prevent needing panda updates X.X
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why my Domain Authority (DA) is Decreased
Hello, I would like to know how the changes in domain authority is considered by MOZ? Domain Authority for my this domain https://factohr.com was 14 and it is decreased to 13 in this week. Though i have a very decent and good links going over to all my pages howcome my DA is affected and decreased. As its regularly being updated and has a high quality traffic! i would like to know the reason behind decrement in DA and is there any connection with redirection of .com domain? How can i increase DA for my website?
Algorithm Updates | | MyMoz710 -
Thousands of duplicate website links at "Who links the most" in Google webmasters. Any risk being duplicate website links pointing to website?
Hi all, As I mentioned some days back here, our duplicate website got indexed a month back. Unfortunately there are links to our original website. I noticed that thousands of links are from our duplicate website at "Links to Your Site". Will this hurts? Now we have blocked the duplicate website getting indexed. What to do to remove these links from "Who links the most"? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Do I need to track my rankings on the keywords "dog" and "dogs" separately? Or does Google group them together?
I'm creating an SEO content plan for my website, for simplicity's sake lets say it is about dogs. Keeping SEO in mind, I want to strategically phrase my content and monitor my SERP rankings for each of my strategic keywords. I'm only given 150 keywords to track in Moz, do I need to treat singular and plural keywords separately? When I tried to find estimated monthly searches in Google's keyword planner, it is grouping together "dog" and "dogs" under "dogs"... and similarly "dog company" and "dog companies" under "dog companies". But when I use Moz to track my rankings for these keywords, they are separate and my rankings vary between the plural version and singular version of these words. Do I need to track and treat these keywords separately? Or are they grouped together for SEO's sake?
Algorithm Updates | | Fairstone0 -
Directories and Domain Authority
I read all the time about how directories have very little weight in SEO anymore, but in my field, a lot of our competitors are propped up by paying for "profiles" aka links from places like martindale-hubbard, superlawyers, findlaw, nolo, Avvo, etc (which are essentially directories IMO) yet all those sites have very high DAs of 80 and above. So, are links from these sites worth it? I know that's a vague questions, but if Moz's algo seems to rank them so highly, I'm guessing that's reasonably close to what google thinks as well...maybe? Thanks for any insight, Ruben
Algorithm Updates | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
How do I control the "link-tree" part of the SERP results?
Hey Mozanarians 🙂 Is there a way to change the pages that are shown on the "link tree"? (e.g. see bellow picture)
Algorithm Updates | | DanielBernhardt
Lets say that I dont want the "career" page to show on the "link tree" can I do that? Thanks and lots of love!
Daniel Bernhardt BLo9KSr.jpg0 -
How important is Social Media for building domain authority / Google rankings? Are there any cases?
I really would like to know if someone tested the importance of Social Media for Google rankings.
Algorithm Updates | | Seeders
Are there some sites who build authority only by doing good social media?
Ofcourse, I know it is all about the mix (content, linkbuilding, social media, etc.) but how important is it?
I know many sites who rank good without any form of social media, but I do not know any sites who do only social media and rank high. I hope there are some good cases which give good insight. ps. I know it becomes more and more important...0 -
301 or rel con ?
OK should I use 301 or rel can for a page that has a mox authority of 50 (PR5) and some links into it? Do I do it to the home page or do I do it to the revelant page? If I rel con or 301 using a php script in the header of the page do I leave the content on the page or do I remove everything? This is in response to last friday. Do I 301 all the pages to the top 5 pages that have been getting all the traffic, or do I leave some if most of them are or marketing?
Algorithm Updates | | jdcline0 -
Were you affected by the "Farmer Update?" What are you doing about it?
I woke up on Friday morning to see that my traffic from Google on Thursday was down 30% on one of my sites. Traffic hasn't bounced back, and I'm wondering why I've been lumped in with the content farms. My site only has original, high quality content. It has a great link profile with tons of links from .edu page, and I've always played by Google's rules. I can't understand why my site has been negatively affected, which makes it hard to do something about it. Right now, the only thing that I can come up with is to work really hard at building more links. Were you affected? What are you doing about it?
Algorithm Updates | | WillyF0