An author byline is the line that names who wrote a piece of content. Around it, sites often add an author box with a photo and short bio, and an author page that collects all of that person’s articles. In SEO, these elements show readers and search engines who stands behind a text.
What does Google say?
Google’s helpful content guidance says: “We strongly encourage adding accurate authorship information, such as bylines to content where readers might expect it.” It also warns against deceptive authorship information and says any form of deception makes a page untrustworthy. The guidance also asks whether bylines lead to further information about the author. Google’s documentation does not describe bylines as a ranking factor (assessment).
Structured data
For articles, Google supports author.name, author.url and author.sameAs. The url should point to a page that uniquely identifies the author, such as a bio page or social profile. For an internal author page, Google recommends ProfilePage markup. Each author belongs in a separate author field, and the name field should contain only the name.
Example
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "Article title",
"author": {
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Jane Doe",
"url": "https://www.example.com/authors/jane-doe/"
}
}
Sources
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