Knowledge is power: optimising for Google’s knowledge graph

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is all about building rankings, as brands strive to reach that lucrative spot at the top of page one. As Google shifts its focus from search “strings to things” to deliver more meaningful and informative search results, they have rolled out the Knowledge Graph.

You’ll have likely seen Knowledge Graphs already amongst your search results. They’re the snippets of content shown in the boxes above or to the right hand side of the search results. There are a number of types of Knowledge Graphs, including:

• People
• Music
• Weather
• Sports Scores
• Tweets
• Movies
• Recipies
• Images
• Businesses
• Map Location

Each of these graphs contains related information to a user’s search query based on the contextual connections Google has made in its database. As you can see from the below example, a search for ‘Declan Donnelly’ returns biographical information, date of birth, images and TV shows he has presented. While we only searched for his name, Google has brought back lots of related information, reducing the number of searches a user would need to make and improving the overall search experience.

Featuring in a knowledge graph

Not only do knowledge graphs benefit users and their overall search experience, they are becoming increasingly important to search marketers. Positioned in a prime location on the SERPs, the graphs drive a huge amount of relevant, targeted traffic to the featured site. So, how do you get your site featured?

Schema

Schema markup is hugely important to Google’s knowledge graphs. Essentially, Schema allows Google to better understand the content on a webpage, which ultimately helps the search engine organise its database and make those contextualised connections.

There are a number of types of Schema markup, depending on the knowledge graph you want your website to feature in. Implementing Schema markup doesn’t guarantee your place at the top of the rankings — or else everyone would do it — but it does improve your chances of getting there.

Informative content

Digital marketers have long been striving to create good content to support their SEO performance. This remains true for Google’s knowledge graph; but what content will improve your chances of featuring?

• Break down content into easily digestible chunks — for example, how to guides should be split up into numbered steps. Google wants to present the most relevant results to users in the right format, so carefully consider how you present information.
• Keep your content up-to-date — as time passes, things change, so it’s important to keep your content up to date. For example, if you have created content around how to reset an iPhone and an update to the operating system is released, you should update your content to reflect these changes. Google will show the most relevant and informative content, so outdated content could be detrimental to your potential knowledge graph position.
• Review what’s currently in the knowledge graphs — you can get a good idea of the type of content that works for knowledge graphs by looking at what currently features in them. Take pointers from existing knowledge graph content and use it to better the content you are creating to improve your chances of it being featured.

For help creating content and building your search rankings and traffic, contact Mediaworks on +44 (0) 330 108 4263, email info@mediaworks.co.uk or fill out the below form.