Person Schema for Authors: The E-E-A-T Signal You Are Missing

After Google's Helpful Content and core updates, author credibility is a measurable ranking factor — particularly for YMYL (Your Money Your Life) content in health, finance, legal, and news niches. Person schema lets you provide Google with structured proof of who wrote your content, what their credentials are, and where they have a verifiable presence on the web.

This is the structured data most content websites skip entirely — and it is often their biggest missed E-E-A-T opportunity. This guide shows all three levels of implementation from quick inline authorship to full dedicated author page entity graphs, covering WordPress, Next.js, and plain HTML.

1. Why Author Schema Matters for E-E-A-T

Google's Quality Rater Guidelines explicitly instruct human raters to look for author credentials, especially on YMYL pages. The guidelines ask reviewers to consider: "Does this content demonstrate that the creator has relevant lived experience or professional expertise?"

While Google's algorithm does not read author schema like a human does, the structured data creates an entity graph that correlates with the signals quality raters look for:

• A Person entity with a LinkedIn profile signals a real professional
• A Person linked to Google Scholar citations signals academic expertise
• A Person with an ORCID ID signals research credentials in STEM fields
• A Person who worksFor a recognized institution signals organizational authority

Practically, sites that add strong author markup with verifiable external credentials see improved ranking stability through core updates compared to anonymous or poorly-attributed content.

2. Three Levels of Author Schema

"author": {
  "@type": "Person",
  "name": "Dr. Sarah Chen"
}

"author": {
  "@type": "Person",
  "@id": "https://example.com/authors/sarah-chen",
  "name": "Dr. Sarah Chen",
  "url": "https://example.com/authors/sarah-chen",
  "sameAs": [
    "https://linkedin.com/in/sarahchen",
    "https://twitter.com/sarahchen",
    "https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=abc123"
  ],
  "jobTitle": "Senior Nutritionist",
  "worksFor": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "Example Health Institute"
  }
}

// On the author page /authors/sarah-chen:
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Person",
  "@id": "https://example.com/authors/sarah-chen",
  "name": "Dr. Sarah Chen",
  "honorificPrefix": "Dr.",
  "url": "https://example.com/authors/sarah-chen",
  "image": {
    "@type": "ImageObject",
    "url": "https://example.com/images/sarah-chen.jpg",
    "width": 400, "height": 400
  },
  "description": "Board-certified nutritionist with 15 years
    of clinical experience specializing in metabolic health.",
  "jobTitle": "Senior Nutritionist",
  "sameAs": [
    "https://linkedin.com/in/sarahchen",
    "https://twitter.com/sarahchen",
    "https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=abc123",
    "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-1234-5678"
  ],
  "knowsAbout": ["Nutrition", "Dietetics", "Sports Nutrition"],
  "worksFor": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "Example Health Institute",
    "url": "https://healthinstitute.example.com"
  }
}

3. Building a Full Author Profile Page

A dedicated author page is the backbone of strong author E-E-A-T. Each author should have a page that includes:

4. Linking Articles to Author Entities

Once you have an author page with a defined @id, reference it from every article that person writes using just the ID reference. This builds the entity graph:

// Article schema — using @id reference instead of full object
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "headline": "The 10 Best Sources of Protein for Muscle Building",
  "datePublished": "2026-02-20",
  "dateModified": "2026-02-25",
  "author": {
    "@id": "https://example.com/authors/sarah-chen"
  },
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://example.com/#organization"
  },
  "mainEntityOfPage": {
    "@type": "WebPage",
    "@id": "https://example.com/protein-sources"
  }
}

5. Best sameAs Profiles for Author E-E-A-T

6. Adding Professional Credentials

The hasCredential property is the most underused E-E-A-T property. Use it to document degrees, certifications, and professional licenses:

"hasCredential": [
  {
    "@type": "EducationalOccupationalCredential",
    "credentialCategory": "degree",
    "educationalLevel": "PhD Nutrition Science",
    "recognizedBy": {
      "@type": "Organization",
      "name": "Stanford University"
    }
  },
  {
    "@type": "EducationalOccupationalCredential",
    "credentialCategory": "certification",
    "educationalLevel": "Registered Dietitian (RD)",
    "recognizedBy": {
      "@type": "Organization",
      "name": "Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics"
    }
  }
]

7. WordPress Implementation

Most WordPress SEO plugins (Yoast, RankMath) only add a basic author name. For full E-E-A-T author schema, you need to extend this manually or use a dedicated plugin. The cleanest approach is to add a custom function that outputs Person schema on author archive pages:

function add_author_schema() {
  if (is_author()) {
    $author = get_queried_object();
    $schema = [
      '@context' => 'https://schema.org',
      '@type'    => 'Person',
      '@id'      => get_author_posts_url($author->ID),
      'name'     => $author->display_name,
      'url'      => get_author_posts_url($author->ID),
      'description' => get_the_author_meta(
        'description', $author->ID
      ),
      'image' => [
        '@type' => 'ImageObject',
        'url'   => get_avatar_url($author->ID, ['size' => 400])
      ],
      'sameAs' => array_filter([
        get_the_author_meta('linkedin', $author->ID),
        get_the_author_meta('twitter', $author->ID),
      ]),
    ];
    echo '<script type="application/ld+json">';
    echo json_encode($schema, JSON_UNESCAPED_SLASHES);
    echo '</script>';
  }
}
add_action('wp_head', 'add_author_schema');

Note: Add custom user meta fields for LinkedIn and Twitter URLs via register_meta() or the user profile screen in WordPress admin.

8. Next.js / React Implementation

const personSchema = {
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Person",
  "@id": `https://yoursite.com/authors/${author.slug}`,
  "name": author.name,
  "url": `https://yoursite.com/authors/${author.slug}`,
  "jobTitle": author.jobTitle,
  "description": author.bio,
  "image": {
    "@type": "ImageObject",
    "url": author.profileImageUrl,
    "width": 400, "height": 400
  },
  "sameAs": author.profiles.filter(Boolean),
  "worksFor": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "@id": "https://yoursite.com/#organization"
  }
};

return (
  <>
    <script
      type="application/ld+json"
      dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{
        __html: JSON.stringify(personSchema)
      }}
    />
    {/* page content */}
  </>
);

9. Common Author Schema Mistakes

10. Frequently Asked Questions