Author Pages in SEO and E-E-A-T: Why They Matter and How to Set Them Up Correctly

Do author pages actually have an effect on SEO? There is an ongoing debate in the SEO community about the usefulness of such pages, since they rarely result in direct traffic. However, without clearly structured information about the author, Google may not recognize their qualifications, and users may not trust the content.

In this article, I will explain why an author profile is important for SEO and how it confirms the expertise of the content and helps build trust among readers. I will also provide a clear list of requirements and a structured checklist to help you design your author page correctly.

Key arguments in favor of creating an author page

An author page enhances user trust in content and supports the site's reputation. Here are some key reasons why you should pay attention to it.

User trust

Providing information about the author will help strengthen audience loyalty. In SEO and internet marketing, the focus is always on the user — their trust determines the effectiveness and profitability of organic traffic.

Compliance with the E-E-A-T principle

Google uses E-E-A-T to evaluate content quality, and this affects a website's ranking in search results. It is particularly important for YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics, which are sites dealing with finance, health, or safety.

Due to their impact on the user, Google takes unverified content in these areas more and more seriously. Although E-E-A-T is not a formal ranking factor, it is used to evaluate the trustworthiness, expertise, and authoritativeness of the material.

How important is the author page for Google and E-E-A-T?

Since the days of Google+, which was built around authorship, it has been clear that Google places significant importance on the authors’ identity. While that social network did not last long, its core idea of linking content to a specific individual has remained central to Google’s approach to evaluating quality.

Often, Google relies heavily on the authority of the publisher or the reputation of the platform hosting the content.

Google patents

The company patents its own ideas, technologies, and algorithms to protect its innovations from being copied and to establish legal grounds for their commercial use.

Accordingly, Google has registered several landmark documents on the subjects of authorship and expertise:

• Google Patent US9378293B2 (2005), which describes a system and methods for using structured author data.

• Google Agent Rank US20070033168A1 (2005), a model that considers the author's reputation and calculates its impact on ranking.

• Generating Author Vectors, US Patent 62165966 (2022), which describes a method for analyzing relationships among authors, content, and writing styles.

Person in Google's knowledge graph

In recent years, Google has significantly expanded its knowledge graph by adding more Person entities. This makes it important for the search engine to accurately identify authors, experts, and opinion leaders.

The knowledge graph allows Google to link different information about a person in one place, including their professional activities, publications, media mentions, and social profiles. Google then uses this data to better understand the authority of the source.

The author is no longer just a name in the article header; they are a specific entity in the Google ecosystem.

Statements by Google employees

According to John Mueller, a Google Search Advocate, the search engine correlates authors' names with entities. In other words, Google tries to determine if the author is real, what information can be found about them, and how relevant they are to the publication's topic.

Google analyzes the following:

• Mentions of the name on various websites

• Links to profiles on social networks or expert platforms

• The context in which the author appears

• Writing style and content topics

For instance, a search engine may perceive an author as more reliable if it sees that their name is regularly associated with expert content in a particular field, is mentioned on authoritative resources, and has profiles with relevant information. This affects the page's E-E-A-T quality assessment and, potentially, its visibility in search results.

Adding information to official documentation

In August 2024, Google added profile pages to its list of recommended structured data. This further confirms that authorship is becoming increasingly important to search engines.

Next, I will discuss how to help search engines identify authors and confirm their expertise.

Create a "home" for the author's entity

The main tip is to create a centralized author page that will serve as the primary source of accurate, structured information about the author. This page should bring together all their professional activities so Google doesn't have to search and compare fragments from different sources — everything needs to be available in one place. 

This can be achieved in a few steps:

1. Create author pages if they are missing.

2. Link the author to their content.

3. Add photos and a bio to introduce visitors to the author's personality.

4. Simplify transferring this data to the knowledge graph.

5. Add elements that inspire user trust and demonstrate expertise.

Now, let’s look at the process point by point.

Create author pages

If your site does not have these pages, create them.

Link the author to their materials

Establish a clear connection between the author and their work. To do this:

• Add links to articles, news, research, and anything else that confirms the author's expertise and activity to the page.

• Each piece of content written by the author should contain a clear link to their profile, preferably in the publication template.

• Use appropriate structured data on content pages.

Add content to author pages

To help search engines and users clearly identify the author's expertise, the page should contain comprehensive, structured information about the author. Keep in mind that it's not just a biographical reference page. Instead, it's proof of competence that increases trust in the content.

The profile should contain the following information:

1. Basic information:

• First and last name
• Current photo (preferably professional)
• Education and qualifications

2. Expertise and experience:

• Professional experience and key achievements
• Fields in which the author is an expert
• Published articles, books, research, or speeches, as well as links to them
• Awards and certificates confirming expertise and experience

3. Contact details:

• Links to social media profiles
• Contact information (email address, website)

4. Personal details:

• Hobbies and interests that influenced the author’s expertise

How to write an author bio

The following recommendations will help you highlight the author's expertise and improve their visibility in search engine results.

1. Write in the third person. This creates the impression of an independent assessment, adding authority to the text.

2. Focus on the author's expertise and the target audience. Include only relevant information that confirms the author's professional expertise and would be of interest to the target audience.

3. Describe the author's role in the company. Describe the tasks the author works on and how they apply their skills to real projects.

4. Highlight achievements. Mentioning the author’s specific successes and awards strengthens their professional authority and distinguishes them from other experts.

5. Be concise. Clear and concise writing makes it easier to understand key facts and helps retain readers' attention.

6. Use real names. As Google correlates names with other sources, using real names improves the author's profile indexing and recognition.

7. Avoid mistakes. Well-written text increases trust in the author and creates a professional image.

8. Keep it updated. Providing up-to-date information about the author’s achievements and career changes helps readers access fresh, relevant information. Google has already added publication and modification dates to profile micro-markup as key attributes.

What to avoid in the author biography

Below are the most common mistakes that can reduce the effectiveness of an author bio.

1. Blank pages with only the author’s full name and no other detail. This does not indicate the author's personality or expertise.

2. Incomplete bios with only a photo, full name, and position. Such a profile looks superficial and can reduce confidence in the author's competence.

3. Overly lengthy texts. Key facts can get lost in the details. For example, not everyone is interested in knowing that you love cats. The exception is if this information is relevant to the audience.

4. General and uninformative phrases. These add no value because they do not reveal the specialist's specific achievements or skills. 

Optimizing author pages

In addition to providing quality content, it is important to present information in a way that is clear, accessible, and useful to readers and search engines. 

1. Ensure the data is well-structured and divided into logical sections with the appropriate subheadings. Include the main keywords in the H1 heading. This is usually the author's full name, but you can expand it to something like “News from [name]” or “Expert on [topic].”

2. Save the page to a separate URL where the first and last names are transliterated into Latin characters.

3. The author's page should be open to indexing so search engines can analyze it.

4. Add correct and understandable alt descriptions to images and file names.

5. Use the <a href> attribute to link the author's page to the content, and vice versa.

Structured data on the author's page

Now that the information has been written, structured, and optimized, you need to explain the relationships between the page's elements to Google. You can do this using structured data.

The main markup for the page will be Person because it is the most relevant entity. To help Google understand that this is the author's page, use the profile page property, as specified in the official documentation.

Recommended properties for the profile page:

• dateCreated: helps Google understand when the page was created.

• dateModified: shows when the information was last updated.

Example of detailed markup:

Meaning of values:

• name: person's name (required)

• description: a brief description of professional achievements and specializations

• jobTitle: current position/profession

• url: link to profile or personal page

• image: URL of profile photo

• sameAs: list of URLs of social media accounts or other profiles (e.g., LinkedIn, Twitter, personal blog, or wiki)

• alternateName: other names/pseudonyms

• knowsAbout: the author's areas of expertise or topics

• alumniOf: information about educational institutions

• award: awards and honors

• worksFor: Organization where the author works (name and URL)

• hasCredential: qualifications and certifications

• credentialCategory: type of certification or degree:

• name: name of the certificate or diploma
• recognized by: the organization that issued the certificate
• url: link to the certificate or information about it

Important properties of a person to pay attention to:

• same as: shows connections between profiles.

• alternate name: helps identify entities with different spellings.

Below is a structured checklist for evaluating the design's quality.

Evaluation checklist

1. Article:

• Contains an a href link to the author

• Uses structured author and publisher data

• Includes a link to the author's page in structured data

2. Biography:

• Written in the third person

• Answers the question, "Who is the author?"

• Demonstrates experience

• Focuses on expertise and reveals the author's role in the company

• Reveals the author's role in the company and establishes trustworthiness

• Concise and structured

• Contains real names

• Contains no grammatical errors

• Regularly updated

3. Author page:

• Structured with paragraphs, subheadings, and lists

• Has a separate URL

• The URL is optimized with the transliterated surname and first name

• Contains a profile photo

• Has links to certificates (expertise)

• All photos and files are optimized with alt descriptions and relevant file names

• Contains links to social networks for trustworthiness and authoritativeness

• Provides an option to contact the author

• Contains links to the author's publications

• Contains links to speeches, webinars, and conferences (authoritativeness)

4. Structured data:

• Uses person markup

• Marked up with sameAs (links between profiles)

• alternateName is used for name variants

• Contains job title

• Includes worksFor (place of work)

• Contains knowsAbout in Thing format (area of expertise)

• Passes validation

Conclusions

1. The author page is important for building user trust and for complying with the E-E-A-T principle.

2. Google considers authorship through patents, knowledge graphs, and structured data.

3. To help search engines find author pages, create a separate page with a unique URL. It should contain complete, clearly structured information, including the author's name, photo, education, professional experience, achievements, links to publications and social networks, and contact details.

4. The biography should be concise and written in the third person, focusing on expertise. Avoid templates, general phrases, and unnecessary details.

5. Optimize the content by using an H1 tag with keywords, adding alt descriptions to images, and ensuring the correct content structure.

6. Add schema markup such as ProfilePage with Person properties. This will help Google identify the author more easily and recognize their expertise. As a result, both search engines and users will have increased trust in the content.