Imo, while I think the original intent was for vampires to be exactly as Giles says in the pilot (not the person, but the thing that killed them), as things went on and we really got into the weeds with vampires, the lore kind of changed. By the end, there is way way WAY more evidence pointing to a full continuity of self with buffyverse vampires than the alternative.
Harmony is literally THE SAME except as a vampire she doesn’t care about killing people. Drusilla retained her madness and visions that she had as a human; if she were a whole separate entity, why would she? Darla was largely the same when she was turned human, and then back into a vampire, except she’s more flippant about murder and the like. There’s plenty of throughlines from Liam -> Angelus -> Angel, and for that matter: Why would Angel go by as shortened version of his demon’s name instead of going back to Liam if he isn’t Angelus? And Spike??? I could go on and on and ON how much of William is in Spike and how, with the flashbacks in LMPTM, we even see the birth of his harder, “Spike” persona as a vampire. That persona wasn’t born of vampirism itself, as we initially see fledgling William acting more or less what you’d expect a turned poet would act; big eloquent speeches about how evil he is now. Then the trauma with his mother happens and he later meets Angelus, and that is where the punkish, brash Spike we know is born. Through seeing his “weakness” (his love) weaponized against him and rebelling against an overbearing vampire authority figure. Through character development, not possession.
But beyond that, the soul can’t be a separate entity.... or literally every vampire conflict, especially with Spike and Angel, loses all of it’s power. It ruins the story. Why should I care about Angel’s redemption if, according to lore, he didn’t do anything except be the 18th century version of an obnoxious frat boy? Why should I care who Dru or Darla or William or Liam were if all they are is the meat puppet a wholly separate being is wearing? It flat-out destroys Spike’s character too, as his getting the soul is no longer just a point of character development, but the outright death of his character up until that point. Basically the equivalent of what happens to Fred in AtS s5. But that’s obviously not what happened, isn’t it? Because s7 Spike doesn’t act like William, whose last memory is being drained in an alley in 1880. He remembers being Spike, continues calling himself Spike, talks about Spike’s actions like they were his own, and everyone still treats like like he’s Spike. Because he is Spike. William was always Spike; he says it himself in plain words “There was nobody else”.
Here’s my biggest piece of evidence for what the soul isn’t: The Mayor. The Mayor is stated to have sold his soul, so he is presumably soulless. But the thing about the Mayor is that he isn’t a vampire, so while he lost his soul, there was nothing demonic to take its place. No other entity to take up residence in his soulless body. He’s soulless, yet remains a wholly sentient being who retains his thoughts and feelings and personality. If the buffyverse soul is somebody’s personhood, their sense of self and thought, then the Mayor should have been an empty vessel, a zombie. And he obviously isn’t.
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