An important part of SEO is using proper markup to help the search engines understand the contents of your page. We will discuss the rel attribute, what it means, it’s defined types and how we can use rel="author" and rel="publisher" for SEO.
Which Tags can have a “rel” Attribute
Searching through W3.org’s html 5 specification I found that the rel attribute is present in links.
What are Links?
According to W3.org’s links page on the html 5 specification links are as follows:
Links are a conceptual construct, created by a, area, and link elements, that represent a connection between two resources, one of which is the current Document.
So there are three elements that are links, and hence can have a rel attribute:
- The
linkelement (a document metadata tag) - The
aelement (a text-level semantics tag) - The
areaelement
You can also conceptually list them as follows:
- Link Elements in the
headlink
- Link Elements in the
bodyaarea
What is the “rel” attribute?
To make things simple, rel stands for relationship and the value of that attribute indicates the relationship between the document the link is on and the document/resource being linked to. That’s really all there is to it, but I will give the definitions as given by the W3 specification for the sake of being rigorous.
The “rel” attribute in the “link” element
According to W3.org’s HTML 5 Document Metadata page rel is as follows:
The types of link indicated (the relationships) are given by the value of the rel attribute, which, if present, must have a value that is a set of space-separated tokens.
The “rel” attribute in the “a” and “area” elements
According to W3.org’s HTML 5 links page on rel is as follows:
The rel attribute on a and area elements controls what kinds of links the elements create. The attribute’s value must be a set of space-separated tokens.
Defined Link Types (Values of the “rel” Attribute)
W3.org’s Link Types section gives us the defined links in the HTML 5 specification:
| Link type | Effect on… | Brief description | |
|---|---|---|---|
link |
a and area |
||
alternate |
Hyperlink | Hyperlink | Gives alternate representations of the current document. |
author |
Hyperlink | Hyperlink | Gives a link to the author of the current document or article. |
bookmark |
not allowed | Hyperlink | Gives the permalink for the nearest ancestor section. |
help |
Hyperlink | Hyperlink | Provides a link to context-sensitive help. |
icon |
External Resource | not allowed | Imports an icon to represent the current document. |
license |
Hyperlink | Hyperlink | Indicates that the main content of the current document is covered by the copyright license described by the referenced document. |
next |
Hyperlink | Hyperlink | Indicates that the current document is a part of a series, and that the next document in the series is the referenced document. |
nofollow |
not allowed | Annotation | Indicates that the current document’s original author or publisher does not endorse the referenced document. |
noreferrer |
not allowed | Annotation | Requires that the user agent not send an HTTP Referer (sic) header if the user follows the hyperlink. |
prefetch |
External Resource | External Resource | Specifies that the target resource should be preemptively cached. |
prev |
Hyperlink | Hyperlink | Indicates that the current document is a part of a series, and that the previous document in the series is the referenced document. |
search |
Hyperlink | Hyperlink | Gives a link to a resource that can be used to search through the current document and its related pages. |
stylesheet |
External Resource | not allowed | Imports a stylesheet. |
tag |
not allowed | Hyperlink | Gives a tag (identified by the given address) that applies to the current document. |
As you can see there are quite a few defined types and author is one but not publisher.
“author” Link Type
W3.org’s entry on the author link type is as follows:
The author keyword may be used with link, a, and area elements. This keyword creates a hyperlink.
For “a” and “area” elements
For a and area elements, the author keyword indicates that the referenced document provides further information about the author of the nearest article element ancestor of the element defining the hyperlink, if there is one, or of the page as a whole, otherwise.
On one document there may be more than one article section. For example, multiple forum posts may exist on one page, each one can be demarcated using the article element. Having an a or area element inside one of the posts with a link type of author would indicate that the link is to somewhere with more information about the author of the current post.
If the forum has threaded posts, meaning posts can be in reply to other posts, you may get several articles as children of another article. In that case the link would be assumed to be related to the author of the closest article (the current post).
The following is an example of how you can attribute a post:
Post by <a href="/author/ahmed-amayem" rel="author">Ahmed Amayem</a>
For the “link” element
For link elements, the author keyword indicates that the referenced document provides further information about the author for the page as a whole.
According to the specification, link elements are supposed to be in the head section. So it makes sense that an author link type on a link element would indicate the author of the whole page.
The following is an example of attributing the whole document to an author:
<link rel="author" href="/author/ahmed-amayem" />
“publisher” Link Type
The publisher link type is not defined by the HTML 5 standards. It is used specifically by Google to link your brand page to your website, by linking to your website page/pages to a Google+ page.
Google instructs to use the a element as follows:
<a href="https://plus.google.com/{+PageId}" rel="publisher"></a>
However, we found that using the link element in the head element also worked:
<link href="https://plus.google.com/{+PageId}" rel="publisher" />
SEO and the “author” Link Type
Google Authorhsip (discontinued)
This was the link type used by Google to link authors of a post/page to their Google+ profile. It allowed Google to display their picture in the top results. Though it was a cool feature, Google authorship has since been discontinued.
Using rel=”author” After Google Authorship
Is there any use in actually using it?
Even though Google authorship has been discontinued … for now, the author link type is a defined type according to the HTML 5 specification. Having it in your markup adds more information for search engines to use and I think that’s a good thing. Might as well keep it.
SEO and the “publisher” Link Type (Branding)
Google uses this link type to link your Google+ brand page to your website. It helps Google know your brand and determine the relevancy of your site to user search queries.
Even though it is not a defined link type, since this feature is currently supported by Google, I highly recommend it for SEO purposes.
