Growth · GEO and AI visibility · 02
Author and credential profiles
Author and credential profiles give every expert who signs content a real, verifiable identity: a profile page with credentials, licenses, affiliations, publications and a headshot, Person structured data, consistent external profiles, and authorship markup on every page the expert signs. They are needed when content is published without named authors or with names the engines cannot verify, when the organization’s expertise lives in people the web has never heard of, when professional or regulatory rules require named accountability for published advice, or when an authority content program is starting. The profiles produce the pages, the structured data, the external consistency and the authorship connection that let retrieval systems attribute content to a credible expert, which is one of the signals they weight most.
Scope
What the review covers.
- Expert selection and credential verification
- Profile page content: credentials, affiliations, publications, areas of expertise
- Person structured data with sameAs links
- External profile consistency for each expert
- Authorship markup and bylines across the site
- Maintenance as credentials and roles change
Deliverables
What you receive.
| Deliverable | Form |
|---|---|
| Author profile pages | One per expert, structured and verified |
| Person schema | With sameAs and knowsAbout |
| Authorship implementation | Bylines and markup on signed pages |
| Maintenance procedure | Keeping profiles current |
Prerequisites
What we need from you.
- The experts who will sign content and their verified credentials
- Headshots and permission to publish profiles
- Access to the experts’ external profiles
Related
Where this sits.
By David Selakovic · Published 2026-10-16 · Revised 2026-10-16 · Reviewed every 180 days
Questions
Asked before engaging.
Do authors have to write the content themselves?
They have to be the source of the knowledge and sign the page after verification. Drafting support is normal; invented expertise is not. See Expert sign-off and authorship.
What if an expert leaves?
Their profile and pages are handled by the maintenance procedure: reassignment, revision or archiving, with authorship history preserved.
Can a firm be the author?
A page can be published by the organization, but engines weight identifiable people. Named authors are the standard.