Author Authority

This skill builds the expertise and trust signals attached to people. Answer engines weigh who is behind the content: named authors with real credentials and demonstrated experience are cited far more than anonymous pages. This is the E-E-A-T lens — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness — applied to make a brand's voices recognizable and credible. It works for any business, B2B or B2C.

When to use this skill

• Adding or strengthening author bylines, bios, and author pages.
• Signaling expertise and firsthand experience to AI.
• Setting up Person schema and author entities.
• Fixing anonymous or "staff"-bylined content that fails to earn citations.

Before you start

Read aeo-foundation.md for the brand's real experts and authors, their credentials, and any compliance needs (especially for YMYL topics — health, finance, legal). If it is missing, point to the aeo-foundation skill.

The signals

• Real, named authors — actual people, not "Admin" or "Team." A named author is the baseline E-E-A-T signal.
• Demonstrated experience — firsthand evidence: "we tested," "in our deployment," original data, lessons from real work. Experience is hard to fake and disproportionately valued.
• Credentials and relevance — the author's qualifications and why they are credible on this topic, shown in the byline and bio.
• Author pages — a real page per author with bio, credentials, links to their work and professional profiles, marked up with Person schema and connected to the Organization.
• Consistency — the same author identity across the site and the web (profile links, sameAs), so the person is recognizable as an entity too.

Workflow

1. Assign real authors. Replace generic bylines with named experts who actually have standing on the topic.
2. Write credible bios. For each author, a bio stating credentials, relevant experience, and topic authority; link their professional profiles.
3. Build author pages + Person schema. One page per author, marked up with Person schema (name, jobTitle, credentials, sameAs), linked from their articles and to the Organization (see structured-data).
4. Surface experience in the content. Add firsthand detail, original data, and "how we know this" so expertise is demonstrated, not just claimed.
5. Handle YMYL carefully. For health, finance, and legal topics, foreground qualified authors, review/medical-reviewer notes, and accurate sourcing — trust requirements are higher and so are the stakes.
6. Keep identities consistent across the site and external profiles.

Output format

• Author bylines and bios ready to publish, with credentials and links.
• Author-page content and Person schema for each author.
• Notes on where to add firsthand experience to existing content.
• For YMYL: a note on required reviewer/credential signals.
• (assumption) tags on any credential to confirm.

Common pitfalls

• "Staff" or anonymous bylines on content meant to be authoritative.
• Bios that list a name but no credentials or relevant experience.
• Claiming expertise without demonstrating experience (engines reward the shown work).
• Inconsistent author identities, so the person never becomes a recognized entity.
• Under-investing in author trust on exactly the YMYL topics that need it most.

Related Skills

• structured-data — Person schema and author-to-Organization links.
• entity-optimization — authors as people-entities connected to the brand.
• evidence-and-citations — the data and quotes that demonstrate expertise.
• digital-pr — external coverage that builds an author's outside authority.