Google’s rel=”author” meta data and Knowledge Graph

Google are no longer happy with just indexing the internet by keyword relevance. They have now, with the launch of Google Knowledge Graph started indexing the internet in terms of contextual relevance.

This is a huge reason for bloggers and content owners out there to start using the rel=author meta tag. What this tag does is essentially tell the Google Bot who the author of the page is and allows the Google bot to categorise it along with other content written by the same author.

Blog authors must just note that the rel=author tag must point to a page on the same domain. In other words http://example.com/content/webmaster_tips could have a link to the author page : http://example.com/authors/jonathanhouston

Knowledge Graph will be using these bits of information to create a contextually relevant image of who you are. This is critical if you are embarking on an Expert Positioning strategy. You need to build up a collective image of your work and who you are.

From an online reputation point of view, this is also incredibly helpful for the same reasons – you are building up an image of yourself with a weight of healthy articles that you have written.

Authors must be more vigilant than ever to ensure that they are not scraping content from other websites and passing it off as their own. The rel=author tag shows that you accept this content as your own and could have some serious legal ramifications down the line if the original author finds your scraped content.

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