Even if you only have a very basic understanding of HTML and SEO, there are a few tags and attributes that are pretty common. Most people will know about rel=nofollow, for instance, as well as the alt and title tags that can be associated with images.

When you use these tags and attributes appropriately, you can gain some pretty significant SEO benefits. One attribute that many people neglect, though, is the rel=author tag that can be attached to the link in an author's byline. For instance, you'll see the author link for my name with every post on this blog.

A recent post by Jill Whalen talks specifically about this. She's saying that while the most powerful thing to do, from a Google SEO standpoint, is to link the author name (complete with the rel=author attribute) to a Google profile page, it can also be linked to an internal author page that, in turn, likes to the Google profile page.

She goes on to discuss five reasons why you should implement this code, one of which is that it helps your content stand out. Google can better understand that the various articles you have posted around the web are actually coming from the same author.

And that's exactly how Jill has taken advantage of the attribute. The search engine results page not only lists relevant content for the search term, but it also immediately brings up content that is written by the same author. That brings credibility and power to your name, which should hopefully also help from an SEO perspective.

Do you use the rel=author tag on your sites? Do you think it's worth the extra effort to go through your older archives to retroactively include the attribute?