# Executive personal website: a checklist that works An executive personal website checklist: the pages, what to disclose and withhold, markup, AI-readable facts and the privacy limits that protect you. --- An executive personal website is a small, owned site that gives search engines, AI assistants, journalists and board members one authoritative answer to "who is this person?" It works when it holds a short fact sheet, a bio in several lengths and a verified link set, and when everything on it matches your company page, your regulatory filings and your professional profiles word for word. It is not a campaign and not a diary. It is a controlled record: it states what is true and public, leaves out what is private or restricted, and is built so that a reader or a machine cannot misread it. The risk is rarely that the site is too plain. It is that the site contradicts another source, exposes something private, or names things your employer never cleared. This is the executive checklist, not the general guide to building a name site. It is specific to someone who has an employer, a board, disclosure duties, a security profile and a career that will move: which pages, what to publish and withhold, how to write facts so they are quoted correctly, which markup is worth adding and what the site can do to your privacy.
The short version
## What the site is for, and what it should never try to be The site has one job: to be the page that says who you are in your own words, on a domain you keep when you change employers. Your company's leadership page cannot do that, because the company owns it and will edit or remove it when you leave. A professional network profile cannot do it either, because the platform decides the layout, the fields and the lifespan. That ownership point is the executive-specific reason to build one. A site you own keeps a stable, dated account in place through the transition. The site should not try to be a press release channel, a commentary column or a personality project. Announcements belong on the company's channels with its approvals. Opinion posts in your own name about your sector or employer are attributed to you for years and read as the company's view. Nor is it a rebuttal tool: a harmful result is a different workflow. One test before every addition: would you be comfortable seeing this sentence quoted in two years, without you in the room to explain it? ## Which pages an executive needs, by career situation
SituationCore pagesAdd when usefulLeave out
Sitting executive, large employerHome with fact sheet, bio, selected work, contactSpeaking page, board rolesOpinions on company strategy, anything that reads as company policy
Founder or chief executiveHome, fact sheet, bio, company link pageInvestor and press page, timeline of venturesValuation claims, forward-looking statements, unverifiable rankings
Between roles or in transitionHome, fact sheet, bio, selected work, contactAdvisory and board availabilityReasons for departure, disputes, anything under a confidentiality term
Non-executive director or adviserHome, fact sheet, board and committee roles, bioExpertise areas with evidenceBoard deliberations, any detail of a company you advise that it has not published
Whatever your situation, the home page is a short factual summary: full name in the first heading, current role and organization, your field and a link to each page. No splash screen, no slogan without a name in it. Google's title link guidance says that every page should have a unique, concise title in the title element, that vague labels such as "Home" or "Profile" should be avoided, and that the primary heading should be the most prominent text, for example in the first visible h1. For an executive, that means each page title names you and what the page is, in a few words. Keep the exact wording consistent across pages. ## Build the fact sheet first: the page everything else is checked against The fact sheet is a single page of short, dated, plain-text facts. Build it first: the bio, the markup and the profiles are all written from it. A good fact sheet contains these fields, in this order, each as a short line: - **Full name, and the form you use.** The full form, the short form you are known by, and any former name you want connected to you. - **Current role.** Title, organization, start month and year, and a link to the organization's own page. - **Previous roles.** Title, organization, start and end years, one line each. Use years you can document. - **Education and qualifications.** Institution, qualification, year, only what is verifiable. - **Board, committee and advisory roles.** Organization, role, dates. - **Publications, talks and recognitions.** Title, venue, date, with a link to the host's page where it exists. - **Location, at the level you choose.** A city or a country is enough. Never a street. - **Distinguishing facts.** Anything that tells you apart from someone with a similar name: middle initial, field, country, years of activity. - **Last reviewed.** A visible date, updated by a person every time the page is checked. Keep the distinguishing line neutral: a field and a country are enough, without naming another person. The rule for everything else on the site is simple: if a fact is not on the fact sheet, it does not appear on the bio or the markup. If it changes, it changes on the fact sheet first. ## What to disclose and what to withhold An executive site discloses professional identity and withholds everything that helps a stranger locate, impersonate or pressure you. The line is not "public versus private" alone, because some public facts are still best left off. The question is whether publishing it on a page you control adds authority or only adds exposure.
ItemPublish?Reason
Current title and employerYesPublic, checkable and the first thing people search
Role history with yearsYes, with years you can documentGives assistants one source for your career
EducationYes, if verifiableA claim that cannot be checked costs more than it earns
Past speaking and publicationsYesDated and independently confirmed by the host
Upcoming travel and eventsOnly with a lag, or not at allA live schedule shows where you will be
Compensation, equity and valuationOnly what you are required to disclose, from the filingSelf-reported figures create a claim you must defend
Opinions on your employer or its competitorsNoAttributed to you, read as the company's position
Home address, family, children, routineNeverNo authority value, high exposure
Private phone and emailNeverUse one professional route
Dispute, litigation and departure detailNo, unless counsel advisesOften restricted, always quoted
### Constraints that come from your employer and your role Before publishing anything about current work, check four constraints, because an executive site is a public statement by someone with duties: 1. **Employment terms.** Your contract may restrict outside publishing, use of the company name or logo, or statements about clients, and it may require approval for external activity. Read it, or ask the person who owns the policy. 2. **Confidentiality.** Anything that is not already public from the company stays off the site, including customer names, deal details and plans. 3. **Disclosure duties.** If your company is listed, or you hold a regulated role, statements about performance, outlook or inside knowledge can raise legal and compliance questions. This guide cannot say what applies to you: your general counsel or the company's disclosure policy decides. A safe default is to restate only what the company has already published. 4. **Endorsements and affiliations.** A line saying you advise, sit on the board of, or are backed by an organization is a claim about that organization. Confirm its wording or link to its page. Ask for approval where it applies and keep a written record. ## Write facts so people and AI assistants quote them correctly AI assistants and search engines quote the sentences that are easiest to extract, so the executive site should be written as short declarative statements with full names and dates. There is no published rule that makes an assistant prefer one site, and this guide does not claim one. The practical aim is to leave no ambiguity for whichever system reads the page. - **Lead with the definition.** The first sentence on the home page says who you are: name, role, organization, field. A visitor and a machine should not have to scroll. - **Use the same name form everywhere.** Pick one full form and use it on the site, in the markup, in every profile and in every bio you supply. A second spelling creates a second candidate identity. - **Date every fact.** "Chief operating officer of the organization since March 2024" is quotable. "Recently joined" is not. - **Write in plain text, in the page itself.** Facts held only in an image, a PDF or a script-loaded widget are harder to read for both people and crawlers. Keep the fact sheet and bio as ordinary page text. - **Avoid superlatives you cannot source.** "Leading", "award-winning" and "top" invite a question about who says so. Name the award, the year and the body that gave it, or leave the word out. - **Keep the three bio lengths consistent.** One sentence, one short paragraph and one full page, all built from the fact sheet. Any bio you supply to a conference or publication should be one of the three, copied unchanged, so every outside page repeats the same facts. Assistants also draw on pages you do not control, such as your company's page and press coverage. The site gives them one consistent source to compare those against, and gives you a page to point to when one is wrong. ## Markup: the minimal set, and what it cannot do Structured data is worth adding to an executive site only in a minimal form, and only if it describes what visitors can see. Google's introduction to structured data recommends JSON-LD, says not to mark up information that is not visible to the user, and says markup can enable more engaging results without promising that any page gets them. It names the Rich Results Test for checking markup before launch. Treat markup as a clear statement to machines, never as a ranking lever. For a personal site, the relevant markup is ProfilePage with a Person as its main entity. Google's ProfilePage documentation lists an "About Me" page on a blog and an employee page on a company website among its valid uses, and a store's main home page, which holds much non-profile content, among its invalid ones. The page should center on one person. It requires mainEntity, and a name for the Person (alternateName if no name is available). It recommends dateCreated, dateModified, alternateName, description, identifier, image and sameAs. For an executive, the matching page is the fact sheet or about page, not a home page that is mostly navigation. A practical minimal set: - **name.** Your full name, in the same form as the page heading. - **alternateName.** One accepted variant, such as a short form, only if you use it publicly. - **description.** The one-sentence definition from the fact sheet. - **image.** A real photograph that is crawlable and matches the content. Google says not to use a default, icon or placeholder image. - **sameAs.** Links to profiles that are really yours and that carry the same facts. - **dateModified.** The page's last human review, matching the "last reviewed" line on the page. The same documentation says that if a structured data manual action applies, Google ignores the page's markup. It advises using the URL Inspection tool to confirm Google can reach the page, and checking that robots.txt, a noindex tag or a login requirement does not block it. New pages can take several days to be found and crawled. A job title in the markup that the page does not show is the kind of mismatch to avoid. Google's site names guidance adds a point for the home page. The name shown for a site in results is chosen automatically from several signals, with WebSite structured data (name and url, optional alternateName) on the root home page as the strongest way to state a preference. Google makes no guarantee that it will use it, and says the system can show other names, and that recrawling can take from a few days to several weeks. Use the same name in the markup, the title and the home page text. On titles, Google's title link guidance says title links are generated automatically from several sources, including the title element, the main visual title, headings, og:title, anchor text and WebSite structured data, that changes can take a few days to a few weeks to appear, and that it cannot manually change title links for individual sites. Set the title, the first heading and the home page text to say the same thing, then leave them alone while a recrawl happens. ## Privacy limits: how the site itself can expose you An executive site can add risk even when every sentence on it is accurate, because it concentrates the facts a stranger needs in one place. Plan for that before launch, not after a problem. - **Event calendars.** A page listing next month's keynote, hotel conference and travel dates tells anyone where you will be. List events after they happen, or publish them only when the host's own page is already public and the venue is a staffed public one. - **Photographs.** A photo file can carry location data, and a casual photo can show a home or a child. Use a professional portrait, remove the location data and check the background. - **Domain registration.** Registration records can show a name, address and phone. Use the registrar's privacy service and a professional contact address. Never register in the name of the home address. - **Contact route.** One form or one professional address that goes to an assistant or a shared inbox. A public direct address collects unwanted mail, impersonation attempts and spoofed requests that use your name. - **Family and household.** No names, schools, shared images or references that identify a partner's employer or a child's activities. Executives with a security team should ask it before launch. ## The order of operations: a realistic 90-day timeline The sequence matters more than the speed: facts first, approvals second, site third, linking fourth, review last. A site published before the facts are fixed gets indexed in its inconsistent form.
WindowWhat happensDone when
Days 1 to 10Fix the facts: fact sheet, three bios, link set. Check against the company page and filings.One approved fact sheet, no disagreements left
Days 10 to 25Get approvals from employer, communications and counsel where they apply.Written sign-off on the wording
Days 25 to 40Build on a private copy with noindex, titles, headings, markup and the contact route.Every page reviewed on a phone and a desktop
Days 40 to 50Launch, remove noindex, request indexing, link from profiles you own.Site returns for your name in the search tools
Days 50 to 90Align outside bios and profiles to the fact sheet. Review results and answers.No outside source contradicts the site
The windows are typical ranges for a small site with a single reviewer. Approvals vary most. Noindex works only if the page stays crawlable, so do not rely on a robots.txt block alone. After launch, expect the home page to appear for your name within days to a few weeks, but not to hold a particular position. ## A worked scenario: a new chief operating officer (invented) An invented scenario shows how the checklist cuts decisions. Assume a chief operating officer joins a mid-sized, privately held company from a competitor. She has no personal site, a professional profile that lists two titles with wrong end dates, and a company page that the new employer will publish in her first week. A conference has asked for her bio, and a journalist has asked for one factual line. She starts with the fact sheet, not the site. Writing the dates exposes the problem: her profile and her former company's page give different end years for a role. She corrects the profile, asks the former company to fix its page, and records the year that appears in her signed contract. The conflict is gone in three weeks, before any site exists. She reads her employment terms and asks the communications lead to approve the site. The lead asks her to omit sector opinions and the company logo. She agrees, and the approval is saved in writing. The site is small: a home page with a two-sentence definition, a fact sheet page, a bio page with three lengths, a selected-work page with only published items and a contact form. The fact sheet carries a "last reviewed" date, and the ProfilePage markup uses the same name, description and sameAs links, which point only to her real professional profiles. She leaves out her city of residence and shows only the country. The conference receives the short bio, copied unchanged. Three weeks after launch, her new company page, her site and the conference page all state the same title and start month. The result is modest: one quotable source for the journalist and any assistant, which stays when she leaves. ## Five ways an executive site backfires 1. **It contradicts the company page.** Two titles or two start dates make journalists and assistants pick one or quote both. Fix the difference at the source first. 2. **It speaks for the employer by accident.** A commentary post, a logo or a statement about strategy reads as the company's position. Remove it, or have it approved in writing. 3. **It exposes what the executive meant to protect.** A calendar, a photo with location data or a registrant address does the harm. Review the privacy list above before each launch and each update. 4. **It claims what cannot be checked.** Unsourced rankings, invented credentials and generated headshots cost trust. Name the source, or cut the claim. 5. **It is abandoned.** A site that still lists an old employer as current is worse than no site, because it becomes a second wrong source. If you cannot commit to a review date, publish fewer pages. ## What to do next: one hour, one page The next step costs an hour and does not need a website. Write the fact sheet on a single page, and compare it line by line with your company page, your profiles and any speaker or board page that names you. Every disagreement is either a correction to request or a fact to settle before anything is built.
If a wrong or exposed fact is already out there

If the fact sheet turns up a wrong title, a stale page or a result that exposes more than it should, an executive-focused review can sort what to correct, what to leave and what to protect. Start with our executives page.

Reputation Partners usually begins executive work with the same exercise, because a verified fact sheet shows the true size of a problem faster than a search report does. Keep the review date: a site untouched for three years is an old claim with your name on it. ## Questions people ask ### Does an executive need a personal website if the company already has a bio page? Usually yes, because the company page is not yours. The employer can change or remove it when your role ends, and it follows the company's style, not your facts. A small owned site gives you a stable record that you keep across employers. It should repeat the facts of the company page exactly and link to it, rather than compete with it. ### Should I use my own name or my company name as the domain? Your own name is the safer choice, because a company domain belongs to the company and will not follow you when you leave. Use the full form people type. If it is taken, add a neutral element such as a middle initial rather than a profession that may stop being true. Register for several years with renewal on, so the domain cannot lapse. ### Can I put my current employer's logo and a company bio on my site? Only with the employer's permission. A logo suggests the company endorses the page, and a company bio can contradict its own. Link to the company's page and restate the title and dates plainly. If your contract or the employer's communications policy covers outside publishing, follow it and keep a written approval. ### Should I include a photo, and which one? Include one professional portrait that looks like you now, with location data removed from the file and nothing identifying your home in the background. Google's ProfilePage documentation says not to use a placeholder image, and a generated face weakens trust. Do not post family photos or casual images from private events. ### Will structured data make my site rank first for my name? No. Google says structured data can enable more engaging results, but its documentation does not promise that a page gets any particular result. Markup helps a system understand who the page is about. Position depends on many other signals, including how consistent your other pages are. ### Do I need to add an AI-specific file for assistants to read the site? No source read for this guide says assistants require one, so there is nothing to add beyond clear text. Write the fact sheet and bio as ordinary page text, use one name form and one date style, and keep them current. Those habits help every reader, human or machine, and need no special file. ### How often should I update the site? Check it on every role change, board appointment or publication, and at least twice a year. Change the visible "last reviewed" date only when a person has actually checked the facts, and make the markup date match it. Rewriting titles repeatedly is a different matter: leave them alone while a recrawl takes effect.