Build your Google Business Card
How to get or improve your Knowledge Panel
I’ve been tinkering around with my Google Knowledge Panel this week. I have an old one from 2007 when I wrote my first book, which is outdated now and looks a bit sparse.
Google still dominates online search results, so I’m keen to grow and improve my KP — it’s your digital business card and the first thing people see when they look you up online.
If you don’t have a Knowledge Panel, you look like a nobody. So, it’s a really good way to push yourself up the career ladder as it were, to be recognised as a leader in your field. Jason Barnard, the Brand SERP Guy.
I clicked on the dots next to my name and suggested an edit. I added a a short bio, but they rejected it. That info comes from the Knowledge Graph, Google’s information collection about people, places, and things.
So, back to the drawing board. I have to educate Google!
Google is actually a child, thirsty for knowledge who wants to understand the world. It doesn’t care about notability; it just wants to understand everything.
I’m working through this free guide from Kalicube (Jason’s agency specialising in KP). I’ve updated my website bio (Home/About page) and social profiles (Crunchbase, Journolink, Response Source, Haro, Muck Rack, Substack, and LinkedIn).
He says your bio needs to be clear and consistent (who you are, what you do, who you help), and preferably written in the 3rd person. I’m not keen on that; it’s too formal for me, but I’ll try it for now. I can tweak it later.
Repurpose the same bio across all your social platforms and link back your website to “create an infinite loop of self-corroboration that Google understands”.
I checked it this morning, and it’s now updated my name and added my social profiles, but there’s no pic of me or bio, so I still have some work to do.
It could take months so I need to be patient, but at least I’ve made a start.
Thanks to Jason and team for this resource!
I enjoyed his interview with Kristina God, MBA on how to create a KP as a writer (Kristina writes on Substack and Medium), plus they touch on other stuff — how Google is explicitly looking for writers, multimedia content, the importance of visual branding (often overlooked) and whether we should let AI crawl our content (we now have that option on Substack).
If the future of search is about how we educate these smart machines, then we need to understand the knowledge algos and how they function. This is a good place to start!
Also, check the information about you on ChatGPT, etc, to make sure it’s correct. Joe Pulizzi asked it what his favourite colour is, and it said ‘purple’ when we all know it’s orange! 🚩
If you make videos, check the auto-generated captions on YouTube, as they can be inaccurate.
Here’s Jason’s website (like an encyclopaedia!) and Knowledge Panel.
Let me know how you’re growing your Knowledge Panel.
Congrats to Kristina on becoming a Substack Bestseller and getting 100 paid subscribers! 🥳
Good Reads
▶️It’s not just you. It’s harder now to make a living as a creator. An excellent essay on how the sea has shifted when building an online business. Those who are killing it are mainly marketers selling courses about marketing. I agree; it’s very meta (more Substacks about how to succeed on Substack). I’m in this space, too, and struggling with it. Some advice on how to look forward and innovate. [Alexis Grant]
▶️Google’s Helpful Content update — reflecting on what happened. The September ’23 HCU caused thousands of sites to lose organic (SEO) traffic from Google in a few days (there seem to be NO recoveries from this), and the March core update rolls on. Here’s Lily Ray on patterns she’s seen in her work, research, and advice for smaller indie publishers. [Lily Ray]
▶️Time to Act. What are publishers doing now? Some industry leaders in the blogging and publishing space have joined forces to create a collective non-profit association, the Web Publishers Association, to inspire change. Tony Hill shares his thoughts on it here [Amy Aitman]
▶️Joe Pulizzi’s new book, The Content Entrepreneur, is out in the next few weeks. I love the cover of the proof copy — very Gatsby! Direct sales only via their websites, not Amazon etc, so a bold move. I’m interested to see how the experiment goes — not sure how it differs from Content Inc. [Joe Pulizzi]
How am I doing?
I’m always looking for feedback. Is there anything you’d like to see more or less of? Which bits do you enjoy the most?
Hit reply and say hello — or email me at nika@nikatalbot.io.
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Originally published at https://www.nikatalbot.io.
