How Claiming Your Knowledge Graph Benefits You
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How to Claim Your Google Knowledge Graphs
“Google’s mission to create the largest pool of knowledge that is easy to access and navigate can help you boost your reach. How? Knowledge graphs.”
Google is used millions of times a month to search billions of keywords. When considering your online reach, your presence on Google plays a pivotal role. You may already know the value of Google AdWords as part of your online marketing strategy, but have you considered other ways Google can help your reach your audience more effectively?
According to Google, their top priority and mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful to everyone. Google’s mission to create the largest pool of knowledge that is easy to access and navigate can help boost your reach. How? Knowledge graphs, of course.
What is a Google Knowledge Graph?
Knowledge graphs were introduced by Google in 2012 as a means of providing more accurate, useful, and easily accessible results to searches performed using their search engine. At the time of the release of knowledge graphs, Google’s head of engineering Amit Singhal described the concept of knowledge graphs as "an intelligent model—in geek-speak, a 'graph’—that understands real-world entities and their relationships to one another: things, not strings”.
The idea is that when someone searches for something, Google uses a database of knowledge and applies a level of semantics to figure out the context of the query so that the results are more useful. It also interprets connections between keywords and information. You may not realise it, but you have seen a knowledge graph before. It is at the righthand side or above search results. Here are a few examples.
If you search “cat” you will find this lovely knowledge graph to the right of your search results. If you search on mobile, the information will show up above your search results.
The knowledge graph includes facts about cats. It explains what they are, shows you photos of them, and states things like their breeds and lifespan. This is a great example of the gathered information displayed on one knowledge graph. Now, Google your company. Is your knowledge graph up to scratch?
The concept of knowledge graphs has grown to include these kinds of search results too (see above and below). When asking a question, Google uses its knowledge base to figure out what online information best answers the search and offers the answer along with related questions and answers. Sometimes Google will include a panel of relevant articles or relevant videos, and sometimes it will include a list of questions with answers.
Optimising your content so that it answers these kinds of questions can help you end up as the default answer link and result in more traffic. In this way, offering useful content that aims to give people easy access to the information they want can increase your web traffic.
How Knowledge Graph Benefits You
Knowledge graphs are a powerful organic SEO tool. Optimising results related to your company can increase the quality of leads or the amount of traffic to your site. By helping Google provide more accurate and accessible information about your business or company, you’re helping them reach their goal to make information more available, accessible, and easy to understand.
This benefits you because you can take control of what Google shows users searching for your company or webpage. Google doesn’t always get it right. Having the power to become the authority on the knowledge graph about your business or organisation means you get to choose what information is shown when people search for you. Considering the prevalence of fake news and inaccurate information that could be floating around on the internet about your company, this control can be really valuable and help you put your best foot forward, so to speak.
Steps to Claiming Your Google Knowledge Graph
If your knowledge graph has not been claimed, a button will appear below the knowledge graph that reads “Claim this knowledge Panel”.
To find out if your knowledge panel has been claimed or not, just Google it. Here is an example of a knowledge panels that has not been claimed. As you can see, the panel lacks a lot of information that the company could easily make available to searchers.
You can claim your knowledge panel in just a few steps. First, click the button that says “claim knowledge panel” that appears underneath the knowledge panel you wish to claim. Next, click “get verified” (it is the only button on the page you are redirected to). You will see options for means by which you can get verification, including via YouTube Channel, Twitter, or Google Search Console.
Once you have claimed your knowledge panel or Knowledge Graph, the button that says “claim this knowledge panel” will disappear, and all the elements on the panel will become editable. You can now add relevant information, remove inaccuracies, and update imagery so your company looks good on Google. In order to edit your knowledge panel, you will need to be logged into your Google Search Console account.
Sources: Hackernoon; SearchEngineLand; Neilpatel;Steven Green
Sporty fun loving “Half IronMan” with self-acclaimed degree in Search engine optimisation & Entrepreneurship. CEO & Founder of Trafficfundi, P.tch Digital & Greenies Comics.
