Pick a sentence from the middle of your CEO's profile page. Read it out of context. Not the intro, not the conclusion. The middle.

A prospect landing on that page for the first time doesn't have the intro. They may have clicked in from a search result, a LinkedIn post, or a referral. They're reading that sentence cold.

Does it say who it's about? Does it connect that person to something real? Does it say anything about the nature of that connection?

Ramon Eijkemans ran this test across thousands of pages and found it fails around 99% of the time. His full framework is worth reading. I've run it on my own site. It fails there too, in places.

The problem isn't usually voice or style. It's that the page avoids being specific. It describes a role rather than a person. It lists markets served rather than work done. It uses language that could belong to anyone holding that title, at any company, in any city.

That failure is not a search engine problem. It's a writing problem. A reader who doesn't get a clear answer walks away. A referral who can't verify anything doesn't reach out.

Writing to schema: a checklist for what to cover, not how to say it

Here is the concern I hear when this topic comes up: "If I write to a schema template, won't it come out sounding robotic? Like a LinkedIn profile filled out under duress?"

It doesn't, if you understand what schema is actually doing.

Person schema, the structured data format used by search engines and AI platforms to understand who someone is, was designed to describe humans. Its properties are the very same questions every human reader has when they land on a profile page. Who is this? What have they actually done? Why should I trust them? Can I verify any of this?

Using schema as a checklist tells you what to cover. It says nothing about how to say it. The voice, the tone, the specific details, the things that make a person recognizable as themselves: all of that is still the writer's job.

A requirements list that tells you to name the person's specific expertise does not tell you to write "Ted Fay has expertise in digital marketing." It tells you not to write "passionate about helping organizations grow" and leave it there. The specifics are yours to find and yours to write.

The checklist

These are the properties that matter for a profile page. Each one corresponds to a question a real reader is trying to answer.

Who is this person, specifically?

(Schema properties: name, jobTitle, worksFor)

The entry point. The page needs a sentence that names the person, their role, and their organization, and says something specific about the work. Not a title alone.

Weak: "Sarah Chen is Vice President of Product at Meridian Systems."

Stronger: "Sarah Chen leads product strategy at Meridian Systems, a supply chain software company serving mid-market manufacturers across North America, with a focus on reducing procurement cycle times."

The second sentence is specific enough that a reader who skims it walks away knowing who this person is, what they do, and what makes the work concrete. It also happens to be exactly what a search engine or AI platform needs to correctly describe her. You wrote it once. It serves both.

What have they specifically done?

(Schema property: description, and the body of the page)

Results, not responsibilities. Roles tell a reader what someone was asked to do. Outcomes tell a reader what happened because of them.

"Led a team that reduced average procurement cycle time by 34% across 12 enterprise clients over 18 months" is a demonstration. "Led cross-functional teams to drive operational improvements" is not. Both might describe the same person. One is verifiable. One is not.

This is where most profile pages drop the ball, and it is also the easiest fix. If the person did something specific, say it specifically.

Why are they credible in this area?

(Schema properties: alumniOf, hasCredential, knowsAbout)

Credibility is context-dependent. A degree in mechanical engineering means something different on a manufacturing consultant's page than on a copywriter's. A certification matters when it connects to the specific work being described.

Write the credential with the connection: "Certified in [X] by [institution], applied to [specific type of client work]" is more useful than a list of qualifications. The reader is not impressed by the credential. They're looking for the reason the credential is relevant to their situation.

Where else can someone verify this?

(Schema property: sameAs)

LinkedIn. Published articles. University affiliation. Professional associations. Speaking engagements.

The page should name these and give the reader somewhere to go. Not as a link dump. As a sentence that connects the person to their external record. "Sarah has written about procurement technology for [publication]" or "her work has been covered by [source]" tells a reader where to look, and tells a machine where to find corroboration.

A profile page with no external connections asks readers to take everything on faith. Most won't.

Who do they work with and for?

(Schema properties: worksFor, memberOf, affiliation)

The organization connection and professional community matter. A person's standing in a field is partly about their institutional connections. A board seat, a professional association, a named client category: these are signals that place the person in a professional context the reader can evaluate.

One sentence handles this. It doesn't need to be a list.

Who are they beyond the job?

(Not a schema property, but it belongs on the page)

This is the part people worry will make the writing feel forced. It doesn't, if you pick something real.

A specific, verifiable human detail makes the person legible as a person rather than a title. Not "enjoys hiking and travel." Something with a name attached: a club, a community, a practice pursued seriously enough to name. That specificity is what makes it feel human rather than filler. It also tends to be the thing a reader remembers after everything else blurs together.

My own page, graded honestly

I rebuilt the 2 Find Marketing website recently and implemented the entity architecture I recommend to clients. The schema is solid. The writing has gaps.

Who is this, specifically: The About section opens with a list of the organization types I work with. That's a capabilities statement. It describes my market before it describes me. The self-contained sentence that should be in the opener exists further down, where fewer readers will see it.

What have I specifically done: The professional background section works. Feeding America, Crescent Electric, ACCO Brands, with numbers attached. The 2 Find Marketing entry is the weakest one: thin on client outcomes because the consultancy is early-stage. Honest, but the most current role is the least demonstrated.

Why credible: Handled in the background section. Passes.

External verification: LinkedIn is linked. A published article now exists in the /learn section of this site and creates an authored content signal. What's missing is a visible sentence on the profile page connecting to that article. The link from the profile page to the published writing isn't there yet.

Community: Chicago Rando is in the schema. It is not visible on the page. That is a fix.

Human detail: In the article bio at the bottom of posts. Not on the profile page. Another fix.

The schema is doing its job. The writing is doing most of its job. The gap is that the visible content and the structured data don't fully match yet.

The result

When you write to these requirements with specificity and a real voice, two things happen.

The first is that the page works better for the human reading it. The reader gets clear answers. They can verify what they're reading. They leave with a reason to believe, or they leave knowing this isn't the right fit. Either outcome is useful.

The second is that the schema is easy to add, because the content is already there. The name, jobTitle, description, alumniOf, sameAs, and knowsAbout values are in the copy. You map them. You don't invent them.

The writing that serves a reader is the same writing a platform can use. Not because you optimized for a platform. Because both a skeptical reader and a retrieval system are trying to answer the same questions about this person.

Write the answers clearly. The rest follows.

Previously in this series: Is Your CEO's Profile Page an AI Search Blind Spot?

Up next in this series: JSON-LD Implementation: Adding Person Schema to Your Profile Page (coming soon)

Ted Fay is Principal Consultant at 2 Find Marketing, helping organizations become discoverable through traditional SEO and AI-assisted search. He rides with Chicago Rando and cooks for his family when not staring at a screen.