I wouldn’t normally blog on a Monday, but everyone’s got the cold or is travelling, and Google just announced a very important new feature called rel=standout.
The attribute works the same way as the other link rel attributes (like rel=nofollow):
- The tag should be placed in the <head> section of the source code on the page
- The syntax is <link rel=”standout” href=”URL”>
For example:
<link rel=”standout” href=”http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/google-announces-relstandout”>
You can use this on your own domain up to 7 times per week, but you can point to other domains as much as you’d like.
Google’s News service will consider this link as an indication of items that should be included in the ‘featured’ news feeds.
Some sites are also mentioning the importance of tying this in with the rel=canonical and rel=author tags for maximum SEO. Since this is a new feature and all these features require testing we’ll likely speak more on this later when we’ve had a chance to test things first-hand.
In the mean time, better start including the tag for maximum effect, at least 7 times per week.
(UPDATE: We have a lot of clients who use WordPress and they may want to know how we updated our blog so quickly. The patches we’ve applied to our blog require a plugin which we cannot endorse, and the code is very specific to our site, so it’s nothing we’d share in public. If the days pass and you don’t see a rel=standout solution for WordPress, or your blog, we can probably help but we’ll need to look at how your blog is setup to assist. I am working on a specific plugin solution for WordPress that applies the link to only ‘post’ headers, and only when a specific category/tag is used. If I get the kinks worked out it will be offered to all our WP enabled clients.)
SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 11:50 am
