You’ve probably spent hours tweaking your LinkedIn or your personal portfolio, hoping someone—anyone—finds it. Most people think "SEO" is just for blog posts or massive e-commerce sites. That’s wrong. Honestly, the way Google treats personal entities has changed radically in the last few years. If you want to know how to make a profile that doesn't just sit there gathering digital dust, you have to stop thinking like a resume writer and start thinking like a data provider.
Google’s Knowledge Graph is hungry. It wants to connect "strings to things."
When you search for a person, Google isn't just looking for a string of text; it's looking for a verified entity. To rank, your profile needs to be more than a bio. It needs to be a node in a web of information. This is where Google Discover comes in. Discover is the "query-less" feed. It doesn't wait for someone to search for you; it pushes content to people based on their interests. If your profile is optimized as a high-authority entity, you stop being a search result and start being a recommendation.
Why Your Current Profile is Invisible to Google
Most profiles fail because they are "islands." You have a Twitter, a LinkedIn, and maybe a personal site, but Google doesn't know for sure they are all the same you. This is a classic E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) problem. Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines specifically mention that the reputation of the creator is a core part of Page Quality. If Google can’t verify who you are, it won't risk showing you in Discover.
Discover is picky. It prioritizes "high-interest" content.
If your profile is just a list of jobs, it's boring. It’s static. Google Discover loves fresh, visual, and engaging content. To bridge the gap, you need to turn your profile into a living document. This isn't just about keywords; it's about Schema Markup. Using Person schema is how you tell the robots, "Hey, this is me, and I also wrote these articles, and this is my official YouTube channel." Without those technical handshakes, you're just another "John Smith" in a sea of millions.
The Technical Reality of Profile SEO
Stop using generic "About Me" sections. They don't work. To understand how to make a profile that ranks, you need to look at how Google’s "About this result" feature works. It pulls from Wikipedia, your own site, and trusted third-party mentions.
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Schema Markup: The Secret Language
You need to implement SameAs properties in your JSON-LD schema. This is a non-negotiable step. By listing your social media URLs within the code of your main profile page, you are explicitly telling Google's crawler that the "Jane Doe" on LinkedIn is the same "Jane Doe" on this website. This consolidates your "link juice" and authority into a single entity.
Visuals and the Discover Feed
Google Discover is highly visual. If your profile picture is a low-res crop from a wedding photo, forget it. Use high-resolution, original images with descriptive alt-text. Google's Vision AI can actually "see" what's in your photos. If you're a software engineer, having a photo of you at a desk or speaking at a conference helps the AI categorize your entity. It’s weird, but it works.
Beating the Algorithm with "Entity-Based" Content
Think about the last time you saw a person's profile in your Google feed. It usually happens because they were mentioned in a news cycle or they published something that went viral. You can't always control the news, but you can control your "Topic Authority."
If you want to rank for "Expert in Renewable Energy," your profile shouldn't just say that. It needs to be surrounded by "supporting content." This is the "hub and spoke" model applied to a human being. Your main profile is the hub. Your guest posts, tweets, and podcast appearances are the spokes.
Most people get this backwards. They try to optimize the profile first. Actually, you should optimize the ecosystem around the profile. When Google sees your name appearing frequently alongside specific keywords on high-authority sites (like Forbes, Wired, or even niche industry blogs), it builds a "confidence score" for your entity. Once that score hits a certain threshold, your profile starts ranking for those keywords automatically.
How to Make a Profile Pop on Discover
Discover is "interest-based." To get there, your profile needs to trigger an interest signal. This usually happens through a "Personal Brand Site" that functions more like a magazine than a CV.
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- The Lead Image: Use a 1200px wide image. This is the minimum requirement for Google Discover to even consider your page for the "large image" format, which gets way higher click-through rates.
- The "Freshness" Factor: Update your profile regularly. Not just once a year. Add a "Recent Projects" or a "What I'm Thinking About" section. Google’s "Freshness Algorithm" gives a temporary boost to pages that have been recently updated with substantial content.
- The Hook: The first 160 characters of your profile bio act like a meta description. Make them punchy. Don't start with "I am a..." Start with the problem you solve. "Helping SaaS companies scale to $10M" is better than "SaaS Consultant."
Real-World Nuance: The "Wikipedia" Problem
A lot of SEO "gurus" will tell you to just go out and get a Wikipedia page. Honestly? That's almost impossible for most people, and if you try to fake it, you’ll get blacklisted. Instead, focus on "Tier 2" entities. Sites like Crunchbase, Muck Rack (if you're a writer), or even well-maintained GitHub profiles carry immense weight with Google.
Google uses these "seeds" to verify facts. If your Crunchbase says you founded a company in 2018 and your LinkedIn says 2019, you’ve just created an "entity conflict." Google hates conflicts. It lowers your trust score. Accuracy across all platforms is the most underrated SEO tactic for profiles.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
- Keyword Stuffing: Don't put "Marketing Expert" twenty times in your bio. It looks like spam to humans and feels like spam to Google's Helpful Content Update (HCU) filters.
- Buying Backlinks: If you buy a "Profile Backlink Package" from a shady site, you're toast. Google's Penguin 4.0 and subsequent updates are incredibly good at spotting these patterns. One link from a real, relevant site is worth 10,000 links from a "link farm."
- Ignoring Mobile: Google is mobile-first. If your profile page takes five seconds to load on a 4G connection, it will never show up in Discover. Period.
Actionable Steps to Rank Your Profile Right Now
If you want to move the needle today, don't just read this. Do these things in this specific order.
First, audit your "Digital Footprint." Search for your name in an incognito window. See what Google thinks is the most important thing about you. If it's a random Facebook post from 2012, you have an entity problem.
Second, claim your Google Knowledge Panel. If one exists for you, claim it. If not, start building the "entity home" (usually your personal website) that will eventually trigger one. This involves using the Person schema we talked about earlier.
Third, focus on "Co-occurrence." Write a few high-quality pieces of content on platforms like Medium or Substack. In those pieces, link to your main profile using your name as the anchor text. But more importantly, make sure your name appears in the same paragraph as the keywords you want to rank for. If your name and "Artificial Intelligence" appear together enough times on reputable sites, Google begins to associate the two.
Fourth, optimize for "Personalized Search." Encourage people to interact with your profile. Share it on social media. The more people who click your profile in search results, the more Google sees it as a "helpful" result for that query. This "User Signal" is a powerful, though often debated, ranking factor.
Fifth, use high-quality, original photography. As mentioned, Google Discover is a visual medium. Professional, high-contrast photos where your face is clearly visible work best. Avoid stock photos at all costs. Google knows they are stock photos and they add zero value to your entity's uniqueness.
To really nail this, you have to realize that Google isn't a search engine anymore—it's an answer engine. Your profile shouldn't just be a list of what you've done. It should be the definitive answer to the question: "Who is the best person for [Your Niche]?"
Stop trying to "trick" the algorithm. Start providing it with the structured, verified, and fresh data it needs to feel confident in recommending you to its users. That is the only way to stay relevant in an AI-driven search landscape where "who said it" is becoming just as important as "what was said."