Cultivate Expert Authorship Signals
Also known as: Author Authority, E-E-A-T Authorship, Byline Credibility, Person Schema
Attribute content to named experts with visible bios, credentials, and author markup, so readers and search engines can judge who wrote it and why to trust it.
What is Cultivate Expert Authorship Signals?
- Impact Mechanism:
- Citation & Attribution
- Category:
- Authority & PR
- Effort:
- Medium
- Skill needed:
- Content & Editorial
- Evidence level:
- Proven
How does it work?
1. Credit the real people behind content
Attribute each piece to its actual author or expert reviewer; invented author profiles count as deception under Google's guidance.
2. Add a byline linked to a bio
Show the author's name near the title, linked to their author page, wherever readers would expect a byline.
3. Build an author page with evidence
List role, relevant experience, credentials and links to professional profiles; mark it up as ProfilePage with a Person mainEntity.
4. Add the author to Article markup
In Article JSON-LD set author with @type Person, only the name in name, and url or sameAs pointing to the author page.
5. Explain how the content was made
State how you tested, sourced or reviewed it, and disclose AI or automation use where readers would reasonably ask how it was created.
6. Validate markup and page access
Test the article and author page in the Rich Results Test, then confirm with Search Console URL Inspection that Google can access them.