About the author page: how to optimize for search and AI
Author profile SEO. No theoretical framework. Just a practical setup guide you can adapt and use. The goal: a profile page where Google can clearly identify who this person is, what they write about, and which profiles online belong to them.
How well-known does an author need to be
No correlation has been found between how established an author is and how well their articles rank on a given publication. What matters is that the author can be identified at all: found online, with profiles that show what they do, what they specialise in, and what experience backs that up. But beyond basic identifiability, author authority does not directly drive rankings. So…
Knowledge panel for authors
If the author in question is not you but someone else, I would not bother trying to build them a knowledge panel. A knowledge panel is a reputational thing, or as people sometimes say, a vanity metric.
That said, if you want one, the two main routes are Wikidata and Google Books. Google Books requires writing a book. Check the requirements before you start. Wikidata entries for individuals get deleted for lack of notability more often than not, but there are ways around it if you study the guidelines carefully. However, if your site is already authoritative in its niche, knowledge panels for your main authors tend to appear on their own after the site and author pages are marked up correctly, with no Wikidata required.
Knowledge panel for an SEO entrepreneur
Knowledge panel for an author on an authoritative publication
Knowledge panel for an entrepreneur
If an author already has a knowledge panel, the goal is to get your publication to appear alongside their name. For that, the author needs to link to their profile on your site from their own website and from their sameAs markup. Which means you need an author profile page on your site.
Google also picks up an author’s social media posts and surfaces them in search results. When an author posts about their articles on LinkedIn, X, or other platforms, those posts appear in Google’s feed alongside their name. Like Roger Montti’s posts about his SEJ articles:
Author profile page
A separate page on your site dedicated to one specific author. It provides all the relevant information about them. Not more and not less.
Recommended page structure
- Title tag: About [Author’s Full Name]. Or: [Full Name], [Job Title] at [Company]. Or something similarly specific.
- H1: About [Author’s Full Name], or just the full name.
- Photo of the author. Check that in the code it sits below the H1, not above it. Many templates place the author image above the H1 where it becomes disconnected from the person it represents. The image should be in a proper img tag with an alt attribute. Good formats: jpg, png.
- Bio. The first sentence should follow this pattern: [Full Name] is a [job title] at [company/location]. For example: Jane Smith is a registered nurse with 20 years of experience in emergency care. Then expand from there: what she does specifically, relevant credentials, notable employers, speaking engagements, awards, how to contact her. Write in third person. If you are writing about yourself and third person feels uncomfortable, first person is fine too. Always use the full name in the opening sentence.
If there are other people with the same name online, add disambiguating details: date and place of birth, or other unique facts that set this person apart. - Links to relevant social and professional profiles. Mark them with rel=”me” or reference them in the sameAs property of the schema (example below). A credible author should have identifiable profiles online.
- List of articles by this author on your site, with links.
- Schema markup. The recommended type is ProfilePage wrapping Person in mainEntity. ProfilePage signals to Google that this entire page is dedicated to describing one person, not just a page that happens to mention someone. This is the distinction that makes it more specific than AboutPage + Person: both are valid, but ProfilePage is the more precise choice.
A real-world example of how Google implemented this for their own authors: developers.google.com/search/blog/authors. See Lizzi Sassman, who implemented this markup herself.
ProfilePage schema template in JSON-LD
Adapt to your situation. Do not fill in fields that are not represented on the author page. Data in the JSON-LD must match what is visible to users on the page.
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "ProfilePage",
"headline": "About Jane Smith",
"description": "Jane Smith is a content strategist with 12 years of experience in B2B SaaS. She writes about SEO, content systems, and editorial workflow.",
"url": "URL of the author profile page",
"mainEntity": {
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Jane Smith",
"jobTitle": "Content Strategist",
"image": "URL of the author's photo on this site or CDN",
"email": "author or editorial email",
"url": "URL of the author profile page",
"alumniOf": "Where she studied and notable employers, as a list using []",
"birthPlace": "City, Country",
"birthDate": "YYYY-MM-DD format, e.g. 1985-03-22",
"award": "Any relevant award received",
"hasCredential": "Professional qualification or certification",
"knowsAbout": ["Content strategy", "SEO", "Editorial workflow"],
"performerIn": "Conferences or events where she has spoken publicly",
"worksFor": "Current employer or organisation",
"memberOf": "Professional association or board",
"sameAs": [
"LinkedIn profile URL",
"Twitter/X profile URL",
"Instagram profile URL",
"Facebook profile URL",
"Crunchbase profile URL",
"Wikidata entity URL",
"Personal website about page URL",
"Other relevant profile URLs..."
]
}
}
</script>Only include fields that have corresponding visible content on the page. Do not add birthDate, birthPlace, or other personal details unless they appear in the bio text.
If there is no separate author page
If you have a general team page rather than individual author pages (usually embedded in an About Us page), mark up only what appears on that page. Add the employee property and list each team member within it. You will typically have a name, job title, and photo. Mark those up. It is also worth adding at least one sameAs per person linking to a relevant social profile, even if that profile is not visibly linked from the page itself. Including it in sameAs is fine.
Marking up the author in their articles
The author should be credited somewhere on the article page in some form, typically via an author box or a simple “by [Name]” line. Medical sites tend to include credentials, job titles, and a photo in the author box. This does not affect rankings but it builds trust with readers.
If there is a separate author profile page, link to it from the article. The link does not need a nofollow attribute. If there is no author page, include more context about the author directly on the article. At minimum, include a short bio and a reference to where readers can learn more about them.
How to mark up the author in the article via schema.org
Use the author property. The author can be a person or an organisation. Use Person or Organization accordingly. If there is a separate author profile page, reference it there and include only the core information that appears alongside the author byline on the article page. That is usually:
- full name
- job title
- short bio (optional)
- photo (optional)
- URL to the author profile page
If there is no separate author page, describe all available information about the author using Person schema and include the full sameAs list there.
Personal website
If the whole site is about one person rather than a publication with multiple authors, the approach is the same: ProfilePage wrapping Person in mainEntity. The difference is that the ProfilePage becomes the homepage or About page of the entire site, not one of many author pages within a larger resource.
This is what makes a personal website the primary source of truth for Google about that person. It is not just another page on the internet with someone’s name on it. It is a page that tells machines, clearly and directly: this entire page exists to describe this one person.
For a full guide to setting up a personal website so Google and AI treat it as the source of truth for your name, covering ownership, content, technical checks, and this schema block: How to Set Up Your Personal Website Correctly.
Final notes
If you have questions, leave them in the comments below. And if you want a personal website where the ProfilePage schema is built in correctly from the start, reach out to Fajela here.
