In the past, SEO was largely focused on marketing to humans. However, with the rise of large language models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s PaLM 2, MUM and BERT, SEO is now also about marketing to machines.<\/p>\n
But no matter the interface, whether blue links, rich results, Google surfaces, SGE or chatbot, the timeliness imperative of SEO is for searchers to find and choose our brand.<\/p>\n
And no matter the user, whether human or AI, brand awareness and brand preference are vital for inclusion in the target audience’s consideration set.<\/p>\n
Therefore, building a well-known, top rated and trusted brand entity is the cornerstone of organic visibility.<\/p>\n
Brands, entities and the Google Knowledge Graph<\/h2>\n
The Google Knowledge Graph<\/a> is a database that understands relationships between and “facts” about entities<\/a>.<\/p>\n Google defines an entity as “a thing or concept that is singular, unique, well-defined and distinguishable” that is represented linguistically by nouns. For example, an entity<\/a> may be a person, place, product, event, idea or brand.<\/p>\n Knowledge Graphs allow entities to be contextualized through their connections to other entities.<\/p>\n So when I type into Bard “Best Italian restaurant in Berlin,” it does not match based on keywords, but rather on entities.<\/p>\n It connects the:<\/p>\n And the “facts” it knows about the restaurant entities in terms of reviews to present its opinionated recommendations.<\/p>\n A similar process happens in the SERPs to create rich results such as local packs or related searches.<\/p>\n There are many Knowledge Graph entities you could optimize for, including:<\/p>\n But the most valuable is the brand entity<\/strong>. This must be at the center of all things.<\/p>\n Brand entity SEO already significantly impacts most industries where we see many entity-only rich results<\/strong> in the SERPs.<\/p>\n And it will impact every industry as Bard becomes more popular and SGE rolls out.<\/p>\n Why? Because Google is disinclined to give visibility to brands it doesn’t know explicitly.<\/p>\n If your brand is not an entity in the Knowledge Graph, Google has less confidence in the ‘facts’ about that brand, its relevance to the user query and its relationship to other entities.<\/p>\n In this case, Google will only partially apply entity-level visibility signals<\/strong> (formerly known as site-level ranking factors, but rank is somewhat antiquated and a brand entity is more than just a website).<\/p>\n This means your brand is significantly less likely to be included in the AI’s consideration set. And since Google’s AI acts as a gatekeeper, also the end user’s consideration set.<\/p>\n If, on the other hand, Google has a detailed dossier for your brand entity and its relationships to other entities in the Knowledge Graph, it can confidently make matches that matter. Granting you more visibility in the SERPs, Bard, Discover and other Google surfaces.<\/p>\n To build your brand into an entity, follow these five steps.<\/p>\n Building a brand entity is not a solo mission.<\/p>\n It goes beyond the scope of what SEO has commonly been defined to encompass. This is branding, this is your CMO’s territory. You will struggle to make meaningful changes if you do not have them onboard.<\/p>\n Get in front of your CMO and convince them to be the executive sponsor of a ‘brand entity establishment’ project.<\/p>\n This not only secures their buy-in for the idea but also their guidance and ability to free up resources in other departments, such as development or content resources, that will be needed.<\/p>\n To get a CMO onboard, show the opportunity (or threat depending on their mentality) through presenting:<\/p>\n When assessing brand entity presence, don’t be fooled into thinking this has anything to do with the number of branded search queries or number of indexed pages of a website.<\/p>\n To understand if a brand is an entity, and if so, in what context, the ideal is to query the brand name in the Google Knowledge Graph Search API<\/a> daily and keep a record of the returned result details.<\/p>\n But for a quick check, it’s easier to use the Kalicube Google Knowledge Graph API Explorer<\/a>.<\/p>\n To become an entity in the Google Knowledge Graph, you must be clear and consistent on who your brand entity is and your relationship to other entities.<\/p>\n Start by defining your official<\/strong> brand name<\/strong>.<\/p>\n I know this sounds ridiculously easy, but I have a challenge for you. When you are next in your office, ask someone from each department to write down the brand name on a piece of paper. <\/p>\n Some will write:<\/p>\n As Google’s natural language processing is sensitive to spelling and casing, these can all be interpreted as different entities.<\/p>\n Once you settle on an official brand name, define a brand<\/strong> entity bio<\/strong>. The aim is to tell Google about your brand in a way its algorithms can confidently understand in order to extract “facts” and connections.<\/p>\n The entity bio should begin with a semantic triple to summarize the brand entity in a way Google can clearly understand.<\/p>\n For example: <\/p>\n Where “Jes Scholz” is the entity subject, “is” is the predicate, and “marketing consultant” is the object.<\/p>\n That said, a pure semantic triple can be a bit too bland for the humans that will read the bio. So feel free to spice it up with an adjective or a secondary object.<\/p>\n For example:<\/p>\n Where “organic” is the adjective and “SEO futurist” is the secondary object.<\/p>\n Then address your core offering and target audience. For example:<\/p>\n Then expand on this with concise paragraphs that address all key details about your brand entity in order of importance for your market. For example, the:<\/p>\n This should all be written with a view to building Google’s understanding of your brand entity and what other entities, especially topical entities, you are related to. <\/p>\n As Google’s confidence in these areas grows, so do your chances of appearing on Google surfaces.<\/p>\n Once you have drafted your brand entity bio, evaluate it with Google’s Natural Language API<\/a> (you can use the free demo) to see how Google processes the text, identifies entities within it and categorizes it.<\/p>\n To go into more detail, I strongly recommend you read the full works of Jason Barnard and his Kalicube process<\/a>.<\/p>\n Once you have defined a clear, meaningful and topical brand entity bio and aligned it with all key stakeholders, it’s time to repeat it ad nauseam. Brandsplain it through corroboration.<\/p>\n Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"Bard](\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/wp-content\/seloads\/2023\/05\/image-143.png.webp\")
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<\/figure>\nStep 1: Secure CMO sponsorship<\/h2>\n
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Step 2: Define and align your brand entity bio<\/h2>\n
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