Build your author presence
Add complete book and author structured data
Add accurate Person and Book structured data to help search engines interpret your author and book pages. The markup must match the visible page, and it does not guarantee a special search result.
Authors often hire help with this: website or technical.
Why it matters
Search engines assemble what they know about an author from many sources, and they are frequently wrong: the wrong photo, another author's books, a birth year from a different person. Structured data on your own site gives them one clear statement to weigh against the rest. It helps them interpret the page; it does not decide the answer, and it does not guarantee a rich result. It is not a ranking trick and nobody should promise you one. It is a way of being unambiguous.
Your part
- What you do
- Verify. Someone else may do it. Inspect the result yourself.
- Who normally owns it
- Author and Website specialist. Webmaster or site builder implements; author supplies and checks the facts
- When
- Before launch, once the book page and identifiers are final (Build your author presence: any time, and the earlier the better)Checked September 14, 2026 (opens in a new tab)
How to do it
The full walkthrough
Structured data is a block of code, usually in a format called JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data), that sits inside a web page and describes its subject in a vocabulary search engines understand. The vocabulary most sites use is Schema.org, which has types for Person and Book, with fields for name, ISBN (International Standard Book Number), author, publisher, publication date, and the same-as links that connect your page to your profiles elsewhere.
This is a job for whoever builds the site. Traditionally published authors with a designer or a template platform should ask whether Book and Person markup is included and what fields it fills. Many themes add a generic Article type and nothing else.
Hybrid and self-published authors on hosted site builders can often add the markup through a plugin or a custom code block. The values must match what is on the visible page and in the book's metadata, so have the Book Identity Sheet open when you fill it in.
The markup does not have to be perfect on day one. A Person entry with your name, your site, and links to your retailer and library profiles is already useful. Add the Book entries as each edition is finalized.
How to check it. Two free tools read a live page and show what search engines see. Google's Rich Results Test (search.google.com/test/rich-results (opens in a new tab)) tells you whether the page carries markup Google will use; the Schema Markup Validator (validator.schema.org (opens in a new tab)) lists every Book and Person entry with any errors in plain words. Paste the page address into either, look for a Book and a Person with no errors, and check that the ISBN, title, and author in the result match the visible page. Run it again after any redesign; themes drop markup quietly.
Common mistakes
- Marking up something the visitor cannot see on the page. The markup has to match the visible content.
- Expecting a rich result. Google decides what to show, and marking a page up does not oblige it to show anything.
- Marking the page up as a generic web page or article and calling it done.
- Entering an ISBN with hyphens in one place and without them in another, or using the print ISBN for the ebook entry.
- Pointing same-as links at profiles you have not actually claimed.
- Copying a template that lists the site builder as the author.
Identifiers for Add complete book and author structured data
Set a status on any record and it joins this step. All book identifiers.
| My status | Identifier | Why this matters | Yours |
|---|---|---|---|
| ISBN The International Standard Book Number, printed above the barcode. Most formats sold through the book trade get their own. | Every retailer, wholesaler, and library orders and lists your book by this number, and the title, contributors, format, price, and publication date attached to it are what those systems display, so one wrong detail shows up in many places at once. Traditionally and hybrid published authors normally receive the numbers from the publisher and check what is attached to each one. If you publish the book yourself, you buy the numbers and assign them, and you are the one who decides whether your imprint or a platform is recorded as the publisher. Keep one list of every ISBN beside the edition and format it identifies so you can check listings against it. | Add your ISBN-13 | |
| ISNI The International Standard Name Identifier: a sixteen-digit number that says which creator you are when several people share a name. | Without a shared number, databases across publishing and libraries have no agreed answer to which person wrote what, which is how one writer's books end up grouped with another's. It matters most if you have more than one book, share a name with another writer, or work with a publisher that already carries these numbers in its metadata; a first-time author with an uncommon name and one title can reasonably do nothing. You may have one already, because many are created from data that libraries and other contributors feed in, so on every route the first move is normally to search the database rather than to request anything, and a traditionally published author can also ask whether the publisher requests them as part of its metadata practice. Record the sixteen-digit number only after checking that the works under it are yours. | Add your ISNI |
What done looks like
- A Person entry on the biography page with your published name, a same-as list pointing to your official profiles, and an ISNI (International Standard Name Identifier) if you have one.
- A Book entry on each book page with title, author, ISBN for each format, publisher, date published, and a description that matches the visible text.
- Markup validated with a public testing tool and free of errors.
- Values that are updated whenever the visible page changes.
- The page passes the Schema Markup Validator with a Book and a Person and no errors.
Sources and last checked
- Official source
- Official source (opens in a new tab)
- Last checked
- September 14, 2026
- How confident we are
- Verified
Rules and deadlines change. We last checked this information on September 14, 2026. If you see something that needs updating, please tell us.