Defining & Mapping Your Brand for Google: A Slightly Technical Guide for Growing Your Brand as an Entity in the Knowledge Graph
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Learn how to use JSON-LD script to place Schema.org markup into the HTML header area of your site. Also learn about defining and connecting your brand as an entity using open data sources like Wikipedia and WikiData.
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Defining & Mapping Your Brand for Google: A Slightly Technical Guide for Growing Your Brand as an Entity in the Knowledge Graph
- 1. Defining & Mapping Your Brand for Google - or - A Slightly Technical Guide for Growing Your Brand as an Entity in Google’s Knowledge Graph by Everett Sizemore
- 2. GoInflow.com Why you should go through all of the trouble in the first place. How to mark up your own site, including example code that you can customize. How to define and connect your brand on Open Data websites, such as Wiki Data, DBPedia, the Open Library Project, etc. http://opte.org/maps/ You Are Going to Learn These 3 Things:
- 3. Using To place Into the Javascript Object Notation for Linked Data
- 4. So You Can Get A Google Knowledge Graph Box
- 6. And Because
- 7. GoInflow.com
- 8. GoInflow.com
- 9. GoInflow.com
- 10. GoInflow.com ~ Some Random Person on the Internet
- 11. GoInflow.com
- 12. GoInflow.com
- 13. GoInflow.com A Small Portion of What’s Available at - https://schema.org/Organization
- 14. GoInflow.com
- 15. GoInflow.com
- 18. GoInflow.com Turning It Up a Notch Growing Your Brand as an Entity
- 19. GoInflow.com How I’m Connected to Leonardo Da Vinci
- 20. GoInflow.com Defining & Connecting Entities
- 21. GoInflow.com “If a search for your brand doesn’t already trigger a Knowledge Graph panel, the unfortunate reason is that Google doesn’t consider the brand to be a large enough entity that searchers would benefit from seeing additional information.” ~ Jill Kocher, Practical eCommerce
- 22. GoInflow.com Where To Define & Connect Entities
- 23. GoInflow.com Media (Images, Sounds and Videos)
- 26. GoInflow.com Quoting Authors, Experts and Celebrities “Notable: We limit ourselves to quotations which are notable. A quotation can be notable because it has achieved fame due to its enduring relevance to many people, or because it is attributed to a notable individual, or appeared in a notable work.”
- 27. GoInflow.com The English version of the DBpedia knowledge base describes 4.58 million things (entities), including 1,445,000 people, 735,000 places, 411,000 creative works, 241,000 organizations – Is Yours One of Them? There are also localized versions of DBpedia in 125 languages (including Italian). All these versions together describe 38.3 Million Entities.
- 31. GoInflow.com
- 32. GoInflow.com The Problem With Open Linked Data
- 35. GoInflow.com We Imagine “Hubs & Spokes”
- 38. GoInflow.com I Became an Entity: How I’m on the Knowledge Graph https://moz.com/ugc/i-became-an-entity-how-im-on-the-knowledge-graph I Am an Entity: Hacking the Knowledge Graph https://moz.com/blog/i-am-an-entity-hacking-the-knowledge-graph Demystifying the Knowledge Graph http://searchengineland.com/demystifying-knowledge-graph-201976 Using Entity Markup to Appear in the KG http://searchengineland.com/5-ways-optimize-markup-knowledge-graph-semantic-search-186755
Editor's Notes
- Please raise your hand if your company ALREADY has a knowledge graph listing in Google for its Brand Name. Now how many of you have managed to get ANSWER BOX LISTINGS for QUESTIONS About Your Brand? Not very many? Today you’re are going to learn how to do BOTH of those things.
- All of this linking and defining of data is pretty cool. But what does it mean for your bottom line? Will it help you get more traffic and make more money? 1) In other words IS IT WORTH YOUR TIME RIGHT NOW? 2) How can you mark up your own website to help Google understand your brand? We’ll start with the basics: What does the code look like and where do you put it? 3) And finally we’ll take it a step further and make sure your brand is listed as an entity on the Data Sources most likely to be used by Google to populate their Knowledge Graph boxes.
- Here is what you’re going to learn to do, essentially. JSON stands for Javascript Object Notation and LD stands for Linked Data. So we're placing very simple Javascript into the HTML Header of your page so we can provide meaning and context to machines like Googlebot.
- It’s important to note here that it’s not guaranteed that you’ll get a knowledge graph listing - even after doing everything in this presentation. But doing these things WILL improve your chances. Maybe Google already displays a Knowledge Graph listing for your brand, but you would like to Correct it or ENHANCE it in some way. For example…
- Sur La Table’s Knowledge Graph does not contain any brand-owned content. The RELATED SEARCHES may be taking traffic AWAY from Sur La Table. But what can they do? Google will show the Knowledge Graph whether Sur La Table wants them to or not. So the only thing you can do is to take some CONTROL of the situation by enhancing that box. The further you go to the right of this image, the more enhanced and customized the Knowledge Graph boxes become. Williams-Sonoma makes full use of its Knowledge Graph box with Social Profiles, Posts from Google+ and other information. Notice how far down the Related Searches are, and how much more real estate Williams Sonoma will have in the search results for branded searches.
- There is a company called Inflow Inventory that develops Inventory Management Software. They’re not our direct competitor because we’re in different industries, but they have been around longer and rank #1 for the word “Inflow”. However, notice which company has the knowledge graph box on this search, which invites users to search for our brand instead, while also dissambiguating which is which by using the phrase “Internet Marketing Company”. Having a knowledge graph listing allows us to regain more of that potential lost traffic from the other company. It gives us an advantage. Also, I think it's pretty cool that Google uses the phrase "Internet Marketing Company" to describe our brand because that's a keyword phrase for which I would love to rank. Feel free to link to us that way.
- And This Is Kind of Cool… What we have here is proof that all of our hard work in defining our brand as an entity and connecting it to other entities is paying off. Google understands how to answer this question about us.
- This Answer Box, derived from data found in the Knowledge Graph, proves that Google knows the nature of the relationship between two entities: Mike (The CEO) and Inflow (His Internet Marketing Company). So far - ALL these screenshots were taken before we added the Wikipedia and WikiData pages for Inflow. The information in them comes from two sources: Freebase – Which is not in operation anymore. All of the efforts for that site are now mostly going toward Wiki-Data, which I’ll discuss more later. And The JSON-LD script on our home page, which looks like this…
- This SCRIPT is placed in the HTML <HEAD> area of our home page. The advantage of this over traditional Schema.org markup and other Microformats - is that you don’t have to actually have the content on the page to mark it up. For example, in order to use Schema.org markup within the body of the page we would have to put the number of employees, the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) number and Wikipedia link ON THE PAGE. JSON-LD allows us to put the Markup in the HTML Head area so our human visitors don’t have to look at all of that junk, which is there just to provide context to a machine.
- In that way, it is very much like the old days, back when we used to focus mostly on Meta Keywords and Meta Descriptions. Things that most human visitors would never see. Back then Meta Tags were the primary way of explaining a page to search engines. Now we are using Schema Markup and Linked-Data. We have come full circle
- Some of you may remember when writing Meta Tags all day was part of the SEO Job Description. Some of you are probably still doing that all day in 2015. Many of you probably don’t come from a CODING or web development background. That’s OK. This stuff is pretty easy when you break it down into its component parts.
- The highlighted code here starts off with THREE very important pieces of information: #1 – This is a script. Specifically, it is Linked Data in JSON format. (JavaScript Object Notation) #2 – Our Linked Data is using the Schema.org Vocabulary #3 – The Schema type we’re using from that vocabulary is Organization
- Now Google knows that our JSON-LD script is following Schema.org’s Organization Schema. And this opens up many different related Properties that help you explain your business to Google. For example, you can tell Googlebot in a machine-readable language the names of your employees, and their official job titles. You can define your official social profiles, and even connect SUB-Organizations with PARENT-Organizations.
- In addition to the street address, you will want to include the GeoCoordinates in the form of Latitude and Longitude. You can get these coordinates from a Google Maps listing of your business.
- Here’s a better view of how to get those coordinates.
- Here is where you start connecting this entity to the other places on the web that represent “Official pages” about the organization. We’ll talk more about some of these sites later, but even if you don’t have a WIkiData or Wikipedia page you can still get a Knowledge Graph listing (sometimes) by linking to your official social profiles and by providing the rest of the information in the script. The SameAs tag says, these are all "official" pages about this Organization.
- Once you add the code to your site, head over to Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to make sure there are no errors.
- Now you know what to put on your site to get the BASICSs out of the way. You have told Google and the rest of the Internet a little more about Your Brand. It’s time to start looking for more ways to grow and connect your entity”.
- If you want Google to think you’re MORE Important, and if you want Google to “understand” your brand -- Start By Defining Your Entity and Connecting it with Others. My DOT is way too big here. It would look more like this… [BREATH. PAUSE.]
- This was as small as I could get my dot, but you get the point. The closer your entity is to major HUBs - like important people, places, events or things – the more important it looks to Google. I’m not saying you should go out and try to tell Google that you’re connected to Leonardo Da Vinci. But you are probably connected to marketing organizations, other members of your team, and to certain concepts like Search Engine Optimization. You can connect yourself to these things. For the rest of the Presentation I’m going to talk about how to build Google’s understanding of your Entity and its relationship to others. In other words, how to make your brand appear MORE Important to Google.
- [READ IT Aloud] so it gets translated. This is a good point, and one we should take a moment to think about. [PAUSE] Is it OK that Google doesn’t think you’re important? Wouldn’t being considered important by Google probably also be good for SEO? So the question question isn't – “WHY should we do this?” It's the more actionable one – “HOW do we get Google to think we’re MORE important?”
- The answer is to grow your entity and connect it to other entities. It’s the same concept as linkbuilding. The more entities pointing to you the better. And the more entities pointing to THEM the better for you too. BUT DON’T BE SPAMMY. It won’t work. Everything you do will be undone by editors, and you will have wasted your time, along with everyone else’s. There are lots of sources of Open Data on the web. Any reputable open data source is a potential opportunity to Define and Connect your Entity. If you can help Google sort through these connections and understand your brand you will be more likely to get the information you want to appear in the Knowledge Graph. So let’s start looking into some of these Data Sources...
- WikiMedia Commons, Like WikiPedia, is owned by the WikiMedia Foundation. The purpose of WikiMedia Commons is to provide a repository for Public Domain and Creative Commons media. A good place to start would be to upload your company logo and headshots for the executive team, or anyone in the company who speaks at events, writes or gets interviewed. Other things to add would be photographs and video of events, and sound files like a radio or podcast interview with the founder.
- WikiData will allow you to provide a few VERY important pieces of information in a way that machines can understand. Things like Company Name and Description, Industry, Website and Logo are just a few things you can put on here. Google used to use a similar site called Freebase, but it has since been deprecated. If you already have a Freebase page a Volunteer Editor may eventually move it over to WikiData. But don’t wait for that to happen. You can add it yourself, or hire someone to do it.
- If you or anyone at your company has published a book, the Open Library Project is a great way to get information about them into a Machine-Readable format. They’ll even accept eBooks, which is what I have added here. The author is our Conversion Optimization expert Keith Hagen, who now has his own Author Page on the Open Library Project. You’ll see Inflow is listed as the PUBLISHER, which means the brand gets its own Open Library Page too.
- I took some quotes from Keith Hagen’s eBook seen in the previous slide, and added them to WikiQuote. They stayed up for about 48 hours before an editor took them down. The reason given: Keith was, apparently, not Notable enough in their eyes. I disagree, but can appreciate the need to maintain these standards.
- DBPedia is a community effort to extract structured information from Wikipedia, and to make this information available on the Web. Basically, Wikipedia is built for Humans, and DBPedia is built for Machines. This slide has a lot of text, but DBPedia is a critical component of what we’re talking about today. So I’ll give you a moment to read. [PAUSE] That is an enormous amount of data-points, all connected to each other to form the structural skeleton of THE WEB OF THINGS.
- About Us is an easy profile to get, and includes all of the basic information about your company. I don’t think Google uses them directly, but they may provide data to other Open Data Sources.
- About Dot Me is like About Us, but for people. You can include your official Title, and official Company Website, along with a short bio about yourself. This is handy for people who speak or are in front of clients. By defining myself as an employee of the Organization Inflow, it helps MACHINES connect the two entities in a meaningful way. Google may or may not use this. But it probably isn’t going to hurt.
- Wikipedia is a must-have for any brand. But they can be picky about which brands and people they include. The trick is to have press. The more you can get national and global publications to write about you or your brand, the easier it will be to get a Wikipedia page to STICK. So if you don’t have enough Press Coverage yet, that is a sign that you should do some PR work. Get someone from your organization interviewed, offer quotes to the media about your industry, send out interesting press releases, and do the paperwork necessary to be included in lists like the Inc. 5000 or Internet Retailer Top 1,000.
- Marking up your HTML Head with JSON-LD allows you to add the SAME-AS tag. This is your opportunity to provide a BI-DIRECTIONAL link to the other sources we just discussed. Essentially, it says “WE AGREE THAT THESE ARE OFFICIAL PAGES ABOUT US”.
- Anyone who has ever tried to create a new Wikipedia page, or to use Schema.org markup, can tell you that it’s not as easy as you might think. Wikipedia has a lot of rules to keep people from spamming it, or uploading false information. Sites like these require all entries to follow very specific formats and rules that are different for each data-source. In other words, it can be confusing to anyone who doesn’t specialize in this sort of thing. The Solution? [NEXT SLIDE]
- HIRE SOMEONE! For a few hundred Euros you can have someone do this for you. Also, once you get all of these pages up, make sure you add them to the Links section on your Google Plus “About Us” page.
- If you need more than just someone to write a Wikipedia article, and are looking for some serious consulting by a fellow Italian, Gianluca is your man. You can find him somewhere at this conference.
- It’s easiest for us to comprehend this stuff if we think of ENTITIES as a “HUBs and SPOKEs”. And if we ZOOM IN like this it makes sense. BUT… the further BACK we step, the more we see…
- THAT IT’S A MESS What you see here is just a list of entities that Rely On or Get Data From -DBpedia. And DBPedia gets their data from Wikipedia" which CITES its "Information" from lots of different Sources. In other words, this is a picture of only ONE HUB and its MANY spokes – which are themselves major hubs. And if we take another step back to View a more Complete Picture…
- [PAUSE] They Call It STRUCTURED DATA. But It ends up looking MORE ORGANIC than STRUCTURED. The thing about ORGANIC SYSTEMS is: THEY ARE DIFFICULT TO MANIPULATE. That is why THE BEST WAY TO MAKE GOOGLE THINK YOU’RE MORE IMPORTANT ---> Is to actually BECOME more important. In other words, GO BUILD YOUR BRAND.
- Here are a few more resources for you to check out when you get home. THANK YOU.