Are you familiar with the Google Knowledge Graph? If not, now’s a great time to understand what it is and how to leverage its power for your small business. Not only does it enhance the discoverability of your business, it also can help you drive more visitors to your website. Sound good? Let’s learn dive in.

Benefiting Both the Business and the Consumer

In his Search Engine Journal article “How to Maximize Your Reach Using Google’s Knowledge Graph,” Aleh Barysevich talks about the creation of Google Knowledge Graph, beginning with the evolution of Google itself. In the beginning of Google, it was all about achieving top organic rankings through search engine result pages (SERPs). Now, the opportunities are very different, especially with the creation of Google Knowledge Graph.

Over the years, Google has tried to interpret the intent of the keywords that people use in searches. What exactly are people trying to find? This desire to take it to the next level brought about an entity-based search that connects context and other semantic data. What does this mean in simple terms? In short, searchers now have a helpful chunk of information at-a-glance without having to click on one of the links on the search engine results page (SERP).

As an example, Google something right now, perhaps a local business. Do you see all that information on the right-hand side with things like the address and hours of operation? These “cliff notes” are powered by the Knowledge Graph. It minimizes the work of the searcher and makes it effortless to get all the facts in a single glance.

What does this mean for small business owners and marketers? According to the article, through the Knowledge Graph, it’s now possible to “leverage search engines for increased visibility and click-through rates, due to the combination of hyper-relevant information, sheer size, diversity of media types, and primary location on SERPs.” And while the website URL is embedded in the Knowledge Graph, having the hours of operation, phone number, and directions front and center, webmasters report that the number of visits to their client’s websites year-over-year have diminished somewhat. This is particularly true of the number of organic visits.

As detailed in Barysevich’s article, here are some examples of the Knowledge Graph in various categories:

• Companies: With the Knowledge Graph, companies can point consumers in the right direction, such as detailed product categories, customer service numbers, stock price information, and social networks.
• Influential people: Your leading expert can be branded with a quick snapshot that includes things like recent appearances, affiliated organizations, and materials like e-books.
• Local businesses: As discussed before, local shops can leverage this prime real estate in a big way with frequently requested information like daily hours, popular times, and positive customer reviews.
• Entertainment: Whether you are considering a movie, television show, or book release, you can now have all the information you want (i.e. show times, reviews) at your fingertips.
• Health: If you need a quick glance at a health condition (is it a cold or the flu?), this condensed and visible answer is displayed in a bite-sized chunk through the Knowledge Graph.

Putting It into Practice

Google recently made changes that allow you to add information into the Knowledge Graph directly. In addition, you can influence the content by looking at the sources that Google pulls from.

According to the article, the three primary sources that Google relies on to populate the Knowledge Graph are: Wikidata.org (Previously Freebase.com), Wikipedia, and the CIA World Factbook. It is also suggested that Schema Markup and content from “high authority sources” may be used.

Here are some details on these sources, taken from the article:

Wikidata.org (Previously Freebase.com): This free database contains over 15,000,000 data points and data can be manually entered into Wikidata (Wikipedia’s sister site), or sent directly through an API.

Wikipedia: While anyone can enter information into Wikipedia, the content needs to be unbiased to stick, so avoid anything overly commercial. If you go the sales pitch route, it will be removed.

CIA World Factbook: Dubbed as the place for “information on the history, people, government, economy, energy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities,” you can’t submit your information manually here.

Sites leveraging Schema Markup: When you put “schema markup” on your website, search engines know what they are looking at. These tags scattered across your site help enable “rich snippets”, simultaneously improving SERP visibility, click-through-rates and powering Knowledge Graph results.

Content from High Authority Sources: What does Google use to measure credibility? Things like age of the domain, number of relevant and informative pages on the site, number of quality links, and link diversity all matter in deeming a website valuable or authoritative. Publishers should aim to develop their own authority on certain topics and nab relevant public mentions and referrals.

Lastly, the author gives five recommendations for influencing the Knowledge Graph, summarized below:

1. Leverage structured data through Schema.org Markup: While this depends on your objectives, you can customize your Knowledge Graph through things like logos, contact numbers, and links to social media sites. To make sure this is working, rely on Google’s Structured Data testing tool.

2. Get listed at Wikidata.org and Wikipedia: Double check your verifiable third-party source data and ensure your content is free from bias.

3. Local businesses: Optimize Google Maps and your Google+ business page: For small business owners with a physical space, ensure your presence on Google My Business is complete and accurate, with plenty of recent information like new reviews. Make sure that your “NAP” – name, address, phone number are 100% consistent with your website and all other directory listings (St. and Street are not consistent – same for ext. and xt., ste, suite, etc.)

4. Conduct keyword research: Using long-tail keywords, you can use a combination of keywords that you “own” as well as relevant trending topics.

5. Utilize YouTube: This is a prime place to publish multimedia content, especially since the Knowledge Graph has already pulled from here for musicians and artists.

Moving Forward with The Knowledge Graph

Ultimately, the Knowledge Graph provides an opportunity for marketers to be seen by the right people at the right time, even in a blink of an eye with a quick search. What do you think? Do you think it’s everything it’s cracked up to be, or do you have a different perspective you’d like to share?


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References:
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/maximize-reach-using-googles-knowledge-graph/144579