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Person schema markup: example, properties and WordPress setup

Person schema describes an individual: their name, job title, employer, photo and the profiles that belong to them elsewhere. It rarely stands alone. Most of the time it appears as the author of an Article, the performer of an Event, or the main subject of an author or profile page.

There is no Person rich result, so the value is in identity. Clear Person markup, linked by sameAs to the person's other profiles, helps search engines and AI assistants attribute content to the right human rather than someone with the same name. That matters more as answer engines decide whose expertise to cite.

Updated By the Hydrogen SEO team

JSON-LD example

Copy this into a <script type="application/ld+json"> tag and replace the values with your own.

json
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "ProfilePage",
  "dateCreated": "2024-01-08T10:00:00-05:00",
  "dateModified": "2026-08-01T12:00:00-04:00",
  "mainEntity": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "@id": "https://example.com/authors/maya-lindqvist#person",
    "name": "Maya Lindqvist",
    "url": "https://example.com/authors/maya-lindqvist",
    "image": "https://example.com/images/maya-lindqvist.jpg",
    "jobTitle": "Senior Editor",
    "description": "Maya has written about houseplants and indoor gardening for twelve years.",
    "worksFor": {
      "@type": "Organization",
      "name": "Greenroom Journal",
      "url": "https://example.com"
    },
    "knowsAbout": [
      "Houseplant care",
      "Indoor gardening",
      "Plant propagation"
    ],
    "sameAs": [
      "https://www.linkedin.com/in/mayalindqvist",
      "https://www.instagram.com/maya.grows"
    ]
  }
}

Properties

PropertyStatusWhat it is
nameRecommendedThe person's full name, as they use it publicly.
urlRecommendedThe person's profile or author page on your site.
imageRecommendedA photo of the person.
jobTitleRecommendedTheir role, such as "Senior Editor".
worksFor / affiliationRecommendedThe Organization they work for or are affiliated with.
sameAsRecommendedURLs of their official profiles: LinkedIn, social accounts, Wikipedia or Wikidata.
descriptionRecommendedA short bio.
knowsAboutRecommendedTopics the person has expertise in.
alumniOf / awardRecommendedEducation and recognitions, when relevant and true.

When to use it

Three common places:

  • As an author. Inside Article markup, author should be a Person with at least a name and ideally a url to their author page. Google recommends listing each author separately.
  • On an author or profile page. Wrap the Person in a ProfilePage with the Person as mainEntity, as in the example. Google documents ProfilePage markup for pages that focus on one person or organization.
  • As the site owner. A personal brand, portfolio or solo blog can describe the individual behind it with Person instead of Organization.

Give the Person an @id, then reference that same @id from every Article they write. One consistent entity is easier for machines to trust than many slightly different copies.

Add it in WordPress

By hand. Output a ProfilePage block on author archive templates (is_author()), pulling the name, bio and profile links from the user profile.

With Hydrogen SEO. The Schema settings hold the Organization or Person behind the site, with name, logo, URL, phone and email; importing from another SEO plugin brings those across. For posts, Article schema can use the %author% smart tag so each post names its real author. For extra Person properties such as sameAs or jobTitle on author pages, developers can append a block with the hydrogen_seo_schemas filter.

Common mistakes

  • Extra text in name. Use "Maya Lindqvist", not "By Maya Lindqvist | Editor".
  • Organization as author for a human-written post. Use Person when a person wrote it.
  • sameAs to profiles that are not theirs. Only link accounts the person controls or pages about them.
  • Inflated credentials. Awards, degrees and titles must be true. Schema is not a place for aspirational bios.
  • A different spelling on every post. Reference one entity by @id.

More: invalid structured data.

Test it

The Schema Markup Validator (validator.schema.org) is the main tool here, since standalone Person markup has no Google rich result to report. Paste the live URL and confirm the Person and its properties parse. For posts, run Google's Rich Results Test to check the Article and confirm the author is read as a Person. Test live URLs after purging any page cache.

Common questions

Does Person schema give me a knowledge panel?

Not by itself. Knowledge panels depend on Google recognizing a person as an entity from many sources. Consistent markup linked to their real profiles helps with identification.

Should author pages use Person or ProfilePage?

Both: a ProfilePage whose mainEntity is the Person. That tells Google the page is about that individual.

Can a post have several authors?

Yes. Use an array of Person objects in author, one per author, rather than one name string with commas.

Is Person schema an E-E-A-T signal?

Google has not said schema affects E-E-A-T directly. It does make authorship explicit, which helps systems attribute content correctly.

Other schema types