When you publish a webpage, people are not the only ones reading it. Browsers, search engines, and sharing apps also look for clues about its meaning. This lesson explains how author metadata: visible content vs machine data fits into that picture.
The Idea in Plain English
An article author should be identifiable in visible text, not only in machine-readable metadata. Use a name and, when appropriate, a useful author profile link.
You can test this using a small local HTML file. Change one part at a time and check the result in the browser before adding more code.
A Working Example
Read the sample once before copying it. Notice the element names and attribute values, then compare them with the explanation below.
<article>
<h1>Beginner Drawing Tips</h1>
<p>By <a href="/authors/maya.html" rel="author">Maya Chen</a></p>
<p>Start with simple shapes.</p>
</article>What Each Part Does
- The anchor is a link when its href points to a destination.
- An article identifies a self-contained piece of content.
- The h1 identifies the principal page heading.
- href is the URL or fragment destination of a link.
- rel describes the relationship between the current page and a linked resource.
Readers can find out who wrote the article, while structured data can refer to the same author.
Keep the example small while learning. Once it behaves as expected, try it inside a larger page and make sure the URLs, files and surrounding HTML are correct.
Try It Yourself
Try this next: create one complete head or structured content example focused on Author Metadata: Visible Content vs Machine Data, including a working example and an incorrect example to correct. Then inspect the page and explain what changed.
Common Beginner Mistakes
- Inventing an author in JSON-LD whose name does not appear on the article.
- Changing several parts of the example at once, making it difficult to see which part caused a different result.
- Choosing a tag only because its default appearance looks right, without checking whether it describes the content correctly.
Key Takeaways
- An article author should be identifiable in visible text, not only in machine-readable metadata. Use a name and, when appropriate, a useful author profile link.
- Readers can find out who wrote the article, while structured data can refer to the same author.
- Test the markup in a browser, and check accessibility and real-world behavior where relevant.