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Highlight author credentials and expertise

rule · author-expertise

Providing evidence of an author's expertise helps validate the content and build trust with your audience.

Code Example

HTML
<section class="author-bio" aria-labelledby="author-name">
  <h3 id="author-name">About Jane Smith</h3>
  <p>
    <strong>Jane Smith</strong> is a Senior Security Researcher with over 15 years of experience. 
    She holds a CISSP certification and has led security audits for global technology firms.
  </p>
  <nav class="author-social" aria-label="Author social links">
    <a href="https://linkedin.com/in/janesmith" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">LinkedIn</a>
    <a href="https://twitter.com/janesmith" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Twitter</a>
  </nav>
</section>

Why It Matters

  • E-E-A-T: Directly supports the "Expertise" pillar of Google's search quality guidelines.
  • User Trust: Users are more likely to follow advice or purchase products when the information comes from a verified expert.
  • Conversion Rates: Credible authors can significantly improve the conversion rate of informative or promotional content.
  • Brand Reputation: Showcasing a team of experts builds the overall authority of your brand in your niche.

Exceptions

  • Necessary utility or compliance pages can be intentionally brief and should not be judged by the same editorial-depth expectations as ranking-focused content.
  • AI-assisted drafting is not a failure by itself; flag unsupported claims, missing editorial review, or low-originality output instead.
  • When a page has both trust-signal issues and crawl/index problems, make the page eligible to rank first and then improve the content quality signals.

Standards

  • Use these references as the standard for the final search-facing HTML, metadata, and crawl behavior.
  • Check the implementation against Google Search Central: Search Essentials before treating the rule as satisfied.
  • Check the implementation against Google Search Central documentation before treating the rule as satisfied.

Verification

Automated Checks

  • Inspect rendered HTML and HTTP headers to confirm the expected metadata or crawlability signal is present.
  • Test the affected URL with Google Search Console or equivalent tooling where relevant.
  • Re-crawl a representative page set after deployment.

Manual Checks

  • Confirm the change does not create conflicting canonical-url, robots, or structured-data signals.