These slides were presented at the SEMrush webinar "Structured Data for the Knowledge Panel". Video replay and transcript are available at https://www.semrush.com/webinars/structured-data-for-the-knowledge-panel/

1. https://kalicube.pro @jasonmbarnard v
Structured Data
for the
Knowledge PanelJason Barnard
“The Brand SERP Guy”
jasonmbarnard
https://www.youtube.com/c/kalicube

2. https://kalicube.pro @jasonmbarnard v
Jason Barnard
➔ The Brand SERP Guy

3. https://kalicube.pro @jasonmbarnard v
Jason Barnard
➔ The Brand SERP Guy
➔ 2 decades in digital (and a short career in TV)

4. https://kalicube.pro @jasonmbarnard v
Jason Barnard
➔ The Brand SERP Guy
➔ 2 decades in digital (and a short career in TV)
➔ Groovy podcast(with over 150 amazing guests)

5. https://kalicube.pro @jasonmbarnard v
Jason Barnard
➔ The Brand SERP Guy
➔ 2 decades in digital (and a short career in TV)
➔ Groovy podcast(with over 140 guest experts)
➔ Widely Published Author

6. https://kalicube.pro @jasonmbarnard v
Jason Barnard
➔ The Brand SERP Guy
➔ 2 decades in digital (and a short career in TV)
➔ Groovy podcast(with over 150 guest experts)
➔ Widely Published Author
➔ International Speaker

7. https://kalicube.pro @jasonmbarnard v
X

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The plan
1. The Knowledge Graph
2. Knowledge Panels
3. Knowledge Panels and Brand SERPs
4. Educating Google
(using schema.org, but not only :)
5. Using schema to keep Google on track
(disambiguating, correcting, stabilising, creating…)
6. Beware! Closing the loop, consistency and duplication
7. Fun examples

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1 - The Knowledge Graph
(what it is - very quickly)

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Knowledge Graph
You are educating :)

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2 - Knowledge Panels
(where they come from)

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Knowledge Graph driven by ?

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MANY Sources for the Knowledge Graph
3184 Unique domains cited in knowledge panels from my dataset
This is just the visible tip of a VERY big iceberg
https://kalicube.pro/kg-sources

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But not everything that has a
knowledge panel is in the Knowledge Graph
1. Presence in the Knowledge Graph
2. Google Books
3. GMB
4. YouTube
5. Google News
6. Others...

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3 - Brand SERPs

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What is a Brand SERP?

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With candidate
sets and the
whole page algo,
Google SERPs
Can (and most often do)
change A LOT
(only 1 result remains)
Google’s
Raw Blue
Links

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With candidate sets and
the whole page algo,
Google changes
A LOT
and in brand
SERPs it
demonstrates a
great deal of
understanding
Google’s Raw Blue Links
Top 7 organic

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Further Reading
1. How a SERP is built: Darwinism in Search
2. How bots work: Discovering, Crawling, Extracting & Indexing
3. How the blue links algo works
4. How image & video algorithm works
5. How the Q&A / featured snippet algorithm works
6. The whole page algo (what it is and how it works)
Search “Jason Barnard”
and click on this link (3rd or 4th)

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Brand SERP Knowledge Panel Knowledge Graph
In any and all of these countries:
https://kalicube.pro/track
Free Tracking

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To build any Brand SERP
Google needs to understand
1. who you are
2. what you do
3. who your audience is

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A SERP for a Brand that is ‘well understood’:
1. Your site rank #1
2. Rich sitelinks
3. Rich elements (video, image, news, podcast…)
4. People Also Ask
5. Positive and accurate choice of blue links
6. Entity boxes
And, of course….

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(Brand) Knowledge Panels
(clear indication that Google has understood)

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All shapes and sizes
And all sorts of info:
3000 distinct attributes in my dataset
Ask me about the proviso on that, though

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All sorts and formats

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4 - Educating Google
(& triggering a knowledge panel)

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Give Your Entity a Home

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Every entity needs a home
The go to place for info that Google trusts
Make a page on your site the home for your brand entity
Describe it clearly
And add some
(disaster story coming up !)

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Use Schema to indicate attributes
and relationships

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Organization
alumni
brand
employee
subjectOf
founder
funder
memberOf
owns
parentOrganization
subOrganization
affiliation
sponsor
contributor
productionCompany
copyrightHolder
organizer
participant
publisher
funder

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Organization
alumni
brand
employee
subjectOf
founder
funder
memberOf
owns
parentOrganization
subOrganization
affiliation
sponsor
contributor
productionCompany
copyrightHolder
organizer
participant
publisher
funder
<- ->ACCURATELY
reciprocated

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Relationships to entities
already in the Knowledge Graph is key
The best relationships are
● Close
● Strong
● Durable
(the more the merrier to an extent)

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Knowledge Graph Explorer
https://kalicube.pro/kg

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Use Schema to signpost
corroboration

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Use sameAs and url to signpost
corroboration from:
● Multiple
● (Independent)
● Authoritative
● 3rd parties
sameAs is meant to link your data with other data (that the machine can query: dbpedia, wikidata, wordlift...
url is meant to signpost a page that talks only (or large majority) about the entity
Cumulation of Corroboration

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The Knowledge Graph is VERY topic-niche
3184 Unique domains cited in knowledge panels from my dataset
This is just the visible tip of a VERY big iceberg
https://kalicube.pro/kg-sources

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5 - Keeping Google on Track
(just how important the ‘home’ and the structured data it contains are)

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Disambiguating
TINY discrepancies that seem unimportant
Can make all the difference in the world !

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sameAs

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https://schema.org/Person (character)
+
https://schema.org/Person (character)
https://schema.org/TVSeries
(https://schema.org/Movie)
https://schema.org/MusicGroup
https://schema.org/MusicAlbum
https://schema.org/MusicRecording (x2)
https://schema.org/WebContent

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Clarifying
TINY discrepancies that seem unimportant
Can make all the difference in the world !

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alternateName

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Stabilising

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X
Jason Barnard

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Creating

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kgmid=/g/11lc1n_4c9

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kgmid=/g/11hq9c8sny
NB - no source :)

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In short…
The closest you get to control

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In short…
The closest you get to control

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6 - Duplicates
(closing the loop & consistency)

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Seems so simple…
TINY discrepancies that seem unimportant
Can make all the difference in the world !

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Define timezone - UTC vs GMT vs BST

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Some examples of small discrepancies
that caused BIG headaches for the entities
● Namesake(search results page)
● Subdomain (www vs non www)
● Timezone(none vs UTC vs GMT vs BST vs ET etc)
● Accents (é vs e)
● Order of words (SARL Cedreo vs Cedreo SARL)
...
This could be a specialisation all on its own…
I see new ones almost every day, Sherlock :)

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7 - Fun Examples
(‘cos my ‘ead ‘urts)

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This webinar...

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Jumping to the top...
Featured Snippet Stylee !

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Inspired me to try something…
on a (sunny) Sunday afternoon

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2 minutes from the moment I invented the entity…
to Google understanding it

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Didn’t get the knowledge panel :(

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What is a knowledge panel in Google? ---->
But got some
visibility

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What is a knowledge panel in Google? ---->
<--- What is a knowledge panel
...some
goooood visibility

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People Doing This Rather Well

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Things you might want to retain in your brain
1. Knowledge Panels vary ENORMOUSLY by entity type and entity(case by case)

71. https://kalicube.pro @jasonmbarnard v
Things you might want to retain in your brain
1. Knowledge Panels vary ENORMOUSLY by entity type and entity(case by case)
2. Wikipedia isn’t necessarily helpful(and the more I think about it the more reasons I can think of that it isn’t helpful for 99.9% of us)

72. https://kalicube.pro @jasonmbarnard v
Things you might want to retain in your brain
1. Knowledge Panels vary ENORMOUSLY by entity type and entity(case by case)
2. Wikipedia isn’t necessarily helpful(and the more I think about it the more reasons I can think of that it isn’t helpful for 99.9% of us)
3. Give your entity a home (or rather force that home on Google)

73. https://kalicube.pro @jasonmbarnard v
Things you might want to retain in your brain
1. Knowledge Panels vary ENORMOUSLY by entity type and entity(case by case)
2. Wikipedia isn’t necessarily helpful(and the more I think about it the more reasons I can think of that it isn’t helpful for 99.9% of us)
3. Give your entity a home (or rather force that home on Google)
4. Schema.org markup is your best shot at control

74. https://kalicube.pro @jasonmbarnard v
Things you might want to retain in your brain
1. Knowledge Panels vary ENORMOUSLY by entity type and entity(case by case)
2. Wikipedia isn’t necessarily helpful(and the more I think about it the more reasons I can think of that it isn’t helpful for 99.9% of us)
3. Give your entity a home (or rather force that home on Google)
4. Schema.org markup is your best shot at control
5. Small discrepancies can sink your boat faster than a bag of rocks

75. https://kalicube.pro @jasonmbarnard v
Things you might want to retain in your brain
1. Knowledge Panels vary ENORMOUSLY by entity type and entity(case by case)
2. Wikipedia isn’t necessarily helpful(and the more I think about it the more reasons I can think of that it isn’t helpful for 99.9% of us)
3. Give your entity a home (or rather force that home on Google)
4. Schema.org markup is your best shot at control
5. Small discrepancies can sink your boat faster than a bag of rocks
6. Brand SERPs are the most interesting thing in digital marketing

76. https://kalicube.pro @jasonmbarnard v
Things you might want to retain in your brain
1. Knowledge Panels vary ENORMOUSLY by entity type and entity(case by case)
2. Wikipedia isn’t necessarily helpful(and the more I think about it the more reasons I can think of that it isn’t helpful for 99.9% of us)
3. Give your entity a home (or rather force that home on Google)
4. Schema.org markup is your best shot at control
5. Small discrepancies can sink your boat faster than a bag of rocks
6. Brand SERPs are the most interesting thing in digital marketing
7. Track all this stuff - it changes fast

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More information...
https://kalicube.pro @jasonmbarnard
https://www.youtube.com/c/kalicube

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More information about
Brand SERPs Knowledge Panels Knowledge Graph
https://kalicube.pro

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Structured Data for the
Knowledge Panel
Thank you !
Jason Barnard
“The Brand SERP Guy”
jasonmbarnard
https://www.youtube.com/c/kalicube