How to Turn Your Internal Experts Into Search Entities

Marketers have a new buzzword to either salivate or lose sleep over: entities.

Not KPIs, not personas—entities. We know it sounds vaguely like the plot of a sci-fi film about sentient databases. But entities are real, and if AI models don’t recognize you (or your brand) as one, you may as well not exist to the millions of users currently asking AI tools for answers instead of typing searches into Google.

Somewhere between “thought leader” and “structured data,” entities are how AI search engines recognize and categorize information sources. That means your brand needs to show up as an entity and your products as their own connected entities. Beyond making your brand and flagship content machine-readable, you can tap the people within your organization who already embody that expertise—and elevate them as recognized entities, too.

So if you’ve got a CTO who wows the crowd on stage with her cutting analysis of AI ethics, or a chief economist whose byline shows up in every industry trade mag, you’re halfway there. But you still need to figure out how to turn these living, breathing experts into machine-legible profiles complete with context, connections, and citations that LLMs can actually read.

Why Internal Experts Matter in AI Search

As AI-driven search tools evolve, they’re often rewarding recognizable human expertise over anonymous brand content. Research from BrightEdge identifies author expertise as one of the key quality signals AI algorithms use to evaluate trustworthiness and relevance. In other words, an article bylined “Marketing Team” carries less authority than one attributed to a real person with verifiable experience and a digital footprint to match.

This ties into a larger shift in how credibility is gauged online. Search Engine Land notes that “verifiable authorship makes your content stand out as trustworthy in a sea of generic AI material,” recommending brands use structured data to help AI systems understand who is behind the content (more on this in a sec). When search engines and AI models can connect a name to reputable publications and other professional activity, they’re more likely to surface that expert as a reliable source.

This matters because buyers trust people more than logos. The 2024 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report found that nearly three-quarters (73%) of decision-makers say an organization’s thought‐leadership content is a more trustworthy basis for assessing its capabilities than its marketing materials.

Put simply: Both algorithms and audiences are looking for the same thing, and that’s credibility. When brands elevate internal experts with visible, verifiable identities, they improve their odds of being cited in AI-generated answers and influencing real-world buying decisions.

Three Implementation Layers

Turning experts into search entities requires three systems working together.

1. Optimizing authorship metadata

Think of your expert pages as digital passports for your people. If AI systems can’t read the name or credentials on that passport, your content risks rejection.

This first layer is about definition, i.e., making sure every expert within your organization has a clear, consistent identity that algorithms can recognize. Maybe your head of compliance appears as “J.R. Martinez” on your blog, “John Martinez, JD” on LinkedIn, and “John Martinez” on a conference agenda. To a human, it’s obviously the same person; to an algorithm, it may be three separate entities (there’s that fun term again).

Likewise, specificity matters. The same rules that make a resume effective apply here: A vague bio like “20 years in B2B SaaS” tells a weaker story than “former VP of Product at Salesforce, led three launches generating $50M ARR, published in Harvard Business Review.” This layer is about getting the foundational data right so AI systems know who your experts are.

Action items for marketers:

• Add structured data: Use Schema.org/Person markup on every author bio to make expertise machine-readable, and link to LinkedIn and external publications.
• Standardize bylines: Keep author names, titles, and bios consistent across all platforms, and maintain a canonical author page as the single source of truth. Update on a consistent basis (quarterly or every six months) to reflect new achievements or expertise.
• Show concrete credentials: Use specific, verifiable achievements (e.g., awards, results, publications) instead of vague experience statements.

2. Building cross-platform credibility

If your experts only exist on your blog, they might as well be whispering into the void. Once identity is defined, visibility is the next layer. AI engines (and human audiences alike… those still matter too) take cues from signals across the web. A CTO who posts on LinkedIn, appears on a podcast, receives invites to CES and SXSW every year, and gets quoted in TechCrunch looks a lot more “real” to both humans and machines than one who lives exclusively on a company site.

This layer is about amplification: showing up in trusted spaces where expertise carries weight. Each verified appearance helps algorithms cross-reference your experts and build confidence in their authority.

Action items for marketers:

• Show up beyond your own domain: Encourage experts to share insights on LinkedIn, contribute guest articles, join panels, or appear on podcasts. Each mention reinforces their authority signal.
• Keep bios consistent: Use the same headshot, job title, and expertise descriptors across platforms so AI sees one cohesive identity.
• Prioritize trusted venues: Focus your experts’ visibility in the channels and publications your audience already trusts. Quality beats quantity.

3. Connecting human voices to structured data

Your VP of Product might publish a brilliant post on API security, but unless that article links her name to the subject in structured data, those insights will disappear into the algorithmic abyss. This third layer closes the loop and linking who your experts are and where they appear to what they know.

This is where human knowledge becomes data that machines can understand and reuse. By embedding structured tags and capturing expert insights in standard formats, you make it easy for AI systems to retrieve and cite that expertise again and again.

Action items for marketers:

• Connect people to topics: Use internal knowledge graphs or structured tagging to link each expert to their focus areas within your content taxonomy.
• Use Q&A formats strategically: Create FAQs or explainers where experts answer common questions, then mark up with FAQPage schema to give AI clean, citable quotes.
• Close the feedback loop: When experts share new insights or answer customer questions, capture that information in structured formats so AI systems can find and surface it.

Common Barriers to Expert Participation

Getting insights out of busy SMEs or execs is messy, political, and often lands low on their priority list. Here are the five roadblocks that show up again and again:

1. Time (and attention) scarcity. Experts are underwater. Billable work and internal projects always come first, leaving “content” to fight for scraps.
2. The curse of knowledge. The more experienced someone is, the harder it is for them to explain what they know. SMEs often skip context or assume everyone understands their shorthand, which makes it tough to extract content that’s clear and usable.
3. Legal and brand risk aversion. Some organizations hesitate to spotlight individuals, fearing off-brand messaging or intellectual property leaks.
4. Internal competition. In fields where credibility equals career capital, multiple people may want to “own” the same topic. Without guidelines for who speaks on what, thought leadership can turn into a turf war.
5. No infrastructure for knowledge capture. Most teams lack the systems to document, tag, and reuse insights efficiently. Without templates, structured interviews, or AI-assisted content extraction, valuable expertise slips through the cracks.

Extraction Tactics That Work

Most content programs stall not because experts lack ideas, but because teams lack infrastructure. When you fix the process, expert participation scales naturally.

1. Make participation low-friction. Stop asking experts to write. Instead, schedule 30-minute interviews where content teams extract insights. One conversation can fuel three blog posts, five LinkedIn updates, and a dozen quotable soundbites. Layer in micro-content opportunities, e.g., quick takes on breaking news or short Slack replies that can be repurposed later. Even better, host “office hours” where content teams drop in with questions.
2. Level up your content team. Train writers to think like interviewers. Teach them to draw out “atomic insights”—the smallest, most original nuggets of expertise that make content stand out. Close the loop by showing experts how their words evolve into polished stories.
3. Partner early with legal and comms. Bring them into the process instead of treating them as gatekeepers. Create simple review workflows and clear guardrails, e.g., what experts can and can’t comment on, how approvals work, and where quotes will appear.
4. Frame it as career growth. Recast participation as professional development. Show how visible experts land conference invites or grow their LinkedIn following. The more your people see real outcomes, the easier it is to get them on board.
5. Create repeatable extraction systems. Build interview templates by content type, e.g., thought-leadership sessions, tactical how-tos, or case-study debriefs. Run monthly roundtables where three to five SMEs discuss one topic; use AI transcription to surface quotes instantly (but have a human double-check for accuracy, of course).

The Long Game

Building expert authority takes time; you probably won’t see results in 30 days. AI systems need consistent, credible signals across platforms before they cite your experts by name in generated answers.

But bit by bit, those signals create a map of expertise that algorithms rely on. Over time, AI builds its own understanding of who knows what. The organizations that keep contributing credible information will shape how their fields are defined in the years ahead.

We can’t change the jargon, but we can make it useful. If “entities” are what the algorithms respect, your experts deserve to be recognized as some of the best.

Learn more about how Contently can help your brand build lasting visibility through expert-driven content.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

Why should marketers care about entities?

If your experts aren’t recognized as entities, their insights are harder for AI to associate with your brand. Your competitors’ names might even show up in generated answers, even if they’re referencing ideas you originated.

How can I tell if my experts are already “recognized” by AI?

Search for their names alongside key topics on Google and emerging AI search tools like Perplexity or ChatGPT’s search mode. If their profiles or quotes appear consistently, they’re already surfacing as credible entities. If not, you’ve got an opportunity to strengthen their visibility through structured data, authorship pages, and off-site presence.

What’s the fastest way to start building entity recognition, and how long does it take for results to show up?

Start small. Add Schema.org/Person markup to your expert bio pages, link those bios to LinkedIn and other verified sources, and make sure bylines and job titles are consistent across platforms. Then, publish or syndicate content where the algorithms and your audience already look for expertise.

As for how long it takes, this depends. In most cases, consistent, well-structured authorship data starts showing traction in a few months. Over time, as AI models absorb more signals, that visibility compounds.