The rel attribute of hyperlink equals to author and the original source of the data

Question

I have news application that collect news items from other websites on the base of some defined criteria. I'm trying to increase the SEO of my website and its Google rank. I tried something like the following:

<a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28292114" target="_news" rel="author">Citigroup pays $7bn to settle sub-prime mortgage probe</a>  

In the above code I think that Google will understand it as I tell them that BBC is the author or the source of this content. Does what I think is true? and does it improves my website ranking?

Answer 1

Using Google's authorship is meant for internal use i.e a author publishes something on your website. Also BBC would not be an authorship but rather a publisher.

For citing sources you should use <blockquote> and <cite>:

<blockquote>
    <p>Source Text</p>
    <footer>
    <cite><a href="http://example.com/">Ted Baker</a></cite>
    </footer>
</blockquote>

Additionally markup only helps search engines establish what the page is about, it shouldn't be considered a major factor when ranking a website, for increasing your rankings I recommend What are the best ways to increase a site's position in Google?.

Answer 2

I would like to share you an excellent article on website authorship that recently moz shared. http://moz.com/blog/author-photos-are-gone-does-google-authorship-still-have-value-29334 you should read this post for your question.

Another thing I want to say is that if you want to do SEO, only authorship will not work. There are a lot of things you are required to do. In my opinion authorship is only 1% of all ranking factors.