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Issue #148 · important

Issue 148

What is this issue?

Author profile or team member pages are missing Person schema, weakening E-E-A-T signals and preventing attribution of content to a verified, machine-readable author entity.

Without Person schema:

  • Search engines can't verify the author's identity and credentials
  • E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) signals are weakened
  • Content can't be properly attributed to a specific person
  • Author information won't appear in rich results
  • AI search engines can't understand author expertise and authority

A proper Person schema should include: @type (Person), name, and optionally jobTitle, worksFor, sameAs (social profiles), knowsAbout, image, @id (for entity linking).

Why does it matter?

Person schema is critical for E-E-A-T and content attribution:

  • E-E-A-T signals: Creates a machine-readable chain: article → written by → person → works for → organization
  • Author attribution: Enables proper attribution of content to specific authors
  • Rich results: Author information can appear in article rich results
  • AI search readiness: AI engines use Person schema to understand author expertise and authority
  • Entity linking: Using @id enables cross-page entity linking between articles and author profiles
  • Social proof: Links to LinkedIn and other professional profiles via sameAs build credibility

Resolving this issue improves your SEO health score by strengthening E-E-A-T signals and ensuring proper content attribution.

How to fix it

  1. Create author profile pages: Create dedicated pages for each author at URLs like /author/name or /team/member-name

  2. Add Person JSON-LD structured data to author profile pages:

    {
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Person",
  "@id": "https://www.example.com/author/jane-smith",
  "name": "Jane Smith",
  "jobTitle": "Senior SEO Analyst",
  "worksFor": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "Example Corp"
  },
  "knowsAbout": ["SEO", "Structured Data", "Technical SEO"],
  "sameAs": [
    "https://linkedin.com/in/janesmith",
    "https://twitter.com/janesmith"
  ]
}

  3. Include recommended properties:

    • name: Author's full name
    • jobTitle: Professional title
    • worksFor: Organization the author works for (link to Organization schema)
    • sameAs: Array of URLs to social profiles (LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.)
    • knowsAbout: Array of topics/expertise areas
    • @id: Unique identifier for entity linking (use author profile URL)

  4. Link from Article schema: In your Article schema, reference the Person entity:

    "author": {
  "@type": "Person",
  "@id": "https://www.example.com/author/jane-smith"
}

  5. Validate with Google's Rich Results Test

Examples

Example 1: Missing Person Schema on Author Page

Problematic state:

<!-- Author page without Person schema -->
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Jane Smith - Author</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Jane Smith</h1>
    <p>Senior SEO Analyst at Example Corp</p>
    <p>Expertise: SEO, Structured Data, Technical SEO</p>
    <a href="https://linkedin.com/in/janesmith">LinkedIn</a>
  </body>
</html>

Corrected state:

<!-- Author page with Person schema -->
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Jane Smith - Author</title>
    <script type="application/ld+json">
      {
        "@context": "https://schema.org",
        "@type": "Person",
        "@id": "https://www.example.com/author/jane-smith",
        "name": "Jane Smith",
        "jobTitle": "Senior SEO Analyst",
        "worksFor": {
          "@type": "Organization",
          "name": "Example Corp"
        },
        "knowsAbout": ["SEO", "Structured Data", "Technical SEO"],
        "sameAs": [
          "https://linkedin.com/in/janesmith",
          "https://twitter.com/janesmith"
        ]
      }
    </script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Jane Smith</h1>
    <p>Senior SEO Analyst at Example Corp</p>
    <p>Expertise: SEO, Structured Data, Technical SEO</p>
    <a href="https://linkedin.com/in/janesmith">LinkedIn</a>
  </body>
</html>

Example 2: Person Schema Without Entity Linking

Problematic state:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Person",
  "name": "John Doe",
  "jobTitle": "Content Writer"
}

Missing @id for entity linking and worksFor for organization connection

Corrected state:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Person",
  "@id": "https://www.example.com/author/john-doe",
  "name": "John Doe",
  "jobTitle": "Content Writer",
  "worksFor": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "@id": "https://www.example.com",
    "name": "Example Corp"
  },
  "sameAs": ["https://linkedin.com/in/johndoe"]
}

Example 3: Linking Article to Person Schema

Corrected state - Article with author reference:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "headline": "SEO Best Practices for 2024",
  "author": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "@id": "https://www.example.com/author/jane-smith"
  },
  "publisher": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "@id": "https://www.example.com",
    "name": "Example Corp"
  }
}

The @id in author references the Person schema on the author's profile page

How PixyScan detects this

PixyScan follows these logical steps to detect missing Person schema:

  1. Detect author/team pages: The crawler identifies pages with:

    • URL patterns (/author/, /team/, /bio/, /about/)
    • Visible author information (byline, author bio section)
    • Team member profiles

  2. Extract structured data: The crawler looks for JSON-LD, Microdata, or RDFa blocks on the page

  3. Check for Person schema: The crawler verifies if any schema block has:

    • @type set to Person
    • Required property: name

  4. Validate schema completeness: If Person schema is found, the crawler checks for:

    • jobTitle property
    • worksFor linking to Organization entity
    • sameAs linking to social profiles
    • knowsAbout expertise topics
    • @id for entity linking

  5. Trigger conditions: The issue is flagged when:

    • Author/team page doesn't have Person schema
    • Person schema exists but is missing name property

References