Three Link Attributes You Might Find Useful

Posted by Nick Stamoulis on July 12, 2009

From: searchengineoptimizationjournal

I’m not one for advocating the use of frivolous tags and attributes at every turn. Many tags that I still see in the source code of websites just aren’t necessary. Meta author, for instance, copyright dates, and such. I mean, why? How about putting such information on your web pages for human visitors to see?But there are a few tags and attributes, though not necessary, that can be helpful. Here are three attributes that you can append to your links to give them a little boost or to aid you in your on site optimization efforts:

• The first and most basic attribute is the title attribute. Just as it sounds, you give your link a title. It looks like this < href="”domain">title=”keyword phrase”>text The title attribute is just another way to slip your keyword in there and it works. I wouldn’t use it for every link. It’s best when used in moderation and works really well when your anchor text is a variation of your primary keyword; you can then make your title attribute your primary keyword so that the search engines know that the two are related. Even when you use anchor text that is not related to the on-page SEO at all, but is still relevant for that link, you can use the title attribute to draw the connection. Very useful
• The canonical url attribute is a new attribute introduced by Google earlier in the year. It looks like this rel=”canonical” and you place the attribute in the same place you put your title attribute. Use this attribute when you are linking to an URL that is a duplicate of another page on your site. It tells the search engines that the URL being linked to is the page you prefer to have indexed for that content.
• Rel=”me” is a useful link attribute when you are linking from one property you own to another or when you are linking from a social media profile to your main website or secondary website. It tells the search engines that the content on those pages are related or that the person behind the creation of those content pages are the same person. This attribute can serve to increase the search engine rankings of the pages about you that you want to rank well for your name or other reputation factors.

These three link attributes are very useful and my bet is every webmaster can use these three at some point, not necessarily on every page you create, but at least once on most websites you build.