On this episode, we welcome back our good friend and SEO expert, Jason Barnard. Jason Barnard is known as The Brand SERP Guy – a digital marketer who specializes in branded search results and knowledge panels.
Why “The Brand SERP Guy”? A Brand SERP is what your audience sees when they Google your brand or personal name. Jason is the leading expert in this field – he has been studying, tracking, and analyzing Brand SERPs since 2013. Let’s catch up with Jason since he was last on our podcast.
Today, we are talking about two things that are important to note about your search appearance. First, your Google Business Profile page and its elements. Second, why you should run a content strategy in your business.
Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) On Getting To Know Him Through His Own Brand SERP
[00:00:00] Jason Davis: Welcome to the NerdBrand Podcast. I’m your host, Jason. We have Mitch and we have Jon. And we are welcoming back Jason Barnard, the return of The Brand SERP Guy. And we’re so happy to have you back on the show, sir, because we know you’ve got a lots to share. I am excited to see some of the stuff and I know we are too. So, thank you for coming back really quickly, I guess. It’s a very interesting fact. You’re in Paris, France but you’re an Englishman. So, you want to, because it’s been six months, has it been six months since we last had Jason on the show?
[00:00:33] Jonathan Payne: It’s been a while. Yeah.
[00:00:34] Jason Davis: It feels like for an eternity, but you want to get folks, because it’s a very interesting story, and you have lots of very interesting stories. But tell me about who you are, where you from, and all that.
[00:00:46] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, if we can show my screen, I can actually tell my story through my Brand SERP. That’s the idea of Brand SERP to represent who you are, what you do, and in my case, your history, your story. So, I call myself The Brand SERP Guy. And that means basically I look after what appears when somebody searches your brand name, your personal name, your podcast name, your album name, your music group name, the name of anything when you’re navigating to them or researching them. I look after that. And this is my Brand SERP, and I’ve been working on this since 2013.
[00:01:21] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I’m also the Knowledge Panel Guy which is the thing on the right. Basically, we can say the left-hand side is Google’s advice, its best idea of what might be useful for you. The right-hand side is fact which is why Google My Business is over there on the right on desktop. Google is saying this is fact about this local business. And I focus a lot on Knowledge Panels. And Knowledge Panels and Google My Business, they’re very similar as we’ll see like Iran. And John Mueller actually now calls me Mr. Knowledge Panel from Google which is delightful. And when he sees a tricky or interesting situation, he tweets it and I have a look into it, and it’s those rabbit holes I go down at the weekend. I’m currently living in Paris and you can see that from the LinkedIn profile. So as you can see immediately looking at my Brand SERP, you can see that I live in Paris.
[00:02:11] Jonathan Payne: Yeah.
Being A Voice Actor, Punk Folk Musician, Podcaster, Author, and The Brand SERP Guy
[00:02:12] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Then, we can see that I used to be a voice actor. I was a cartoon blue dog. That’s the only IMDb profile that I have. And the songs in the right-hand side in the Knowledge Panel, the songs that’s there isn’t there as me, the blue dog. For people listening, we are looking at a blue dog and a yellow koala dancing. And this is also in my Brand SERP.
[00:02:33] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Then, I was a punk folk musician. You can see The Barking Dogs there. We were talking about that. I played double bass in a punk folk band. And we toured in Europe for eight years, almost 10 years in fact, played 660 gigs. And we actually played with some fairly famous people, including Bob Dylan. We supported Bob Dylan at a festival which is really exciting. And Captain Sensible from The Damned, one of my great heroes. So, that was a great career that lasted 10 years.
[00:03:05] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I’ve got a groovy podcast that you can also see in my Brand SERP with guests from the digital marketing space, intelligent, interesting, and fun. And I absolutely love doing the podcast as well.
[00:03:16] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I’m an author, and I have articles on the Brand SERP from Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land. And I’m the founder of Kalicube. We specialise in Brand SERPs and Knowledge Panels, and we have a SaaS platform, and we have courses. And I’m just finishing off a book as well.
[00:03:31] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So there, as you can see, I am The Brand SERP Guy. And if you look at my Brand SERP, if you search my name, Jason Barnard, you will see who I am, what I do, who my audience is, why you might be interested in me, but also my entire life story is written out there because I’ve convinced Google that this is the story it should be telling. There you go.
Starting With A Website In Working With Your Brand SERP
[00:03:54] Jason Davis: Yup. And I can tell you right now, all of that that you just did all of our listeners and folks that are watching this on YouTube and looking at it going, oh, I just thought I needed a website.
[00:04:08] Jonathan Payne: There’s a little bit of layers to this.
[00:04:10] Jason Davis: Yeah. There’s a lot of layers to this.
[00:04:12] Mitch Gregory: I thought I just needed to buy some AdWords.
[00:04:13] Jason Davis: Yeah. I thought I just needed some Google Ads because in our world that’s usually the first thing that comes to their mind. What everything you just illustrated, oh god, I don’t know, we see all the time is neglected. And I love the fact that you mentioned and started that you’d been doing this since 2013. So, this isn’t something you started last week.
[00:04:34] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): No. It takes a lot of time, but I love the way you presented those. Oh, I thought I just needed a website, and you need to start with your website. That’s really important. And you need to get Google to understand that that website represents you or your company if you’re a company or the band, if you’re a music group like we were. And Google will then look at that and it will use it as an authoritative source, the authoritative source for information about you at which point you can tell Google your story and convince Google to tell your story through that Brand SERP.
[00:05:05] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, you do need a website. That’s where it starts. And then as you said, Jonathan, there’s lots of layers to build on top. And as you said, Jason, eight years and you get something like this. It would have taken me less time but because I was researching and testing and figuring things out, I made a few mistakes and had to clean them up. So, I would expect two years and you can get something like that for any brand, any person as long as Google has correctly understood them and it’s not too ambiguous, but you can look at two years.
Using the Analogy of the Child in Educating Google
[00:05:37] Mitch Gregory: So to your point, this isn’t something that somebody can go out and just put an action, and it’s going to happen immediately. It’s not going to happen overnight. There has to be a plan and a strategy and then a little bit of patience because it takes time for Google to acquire and to digest, I guess, for lack of a better term, this data.
[00:05:57] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Sure. I use the analogy of a child. Google’s a child, and we’re the adult. And as adults, we’re educating this child about who we are, what we do, and who our audience is. And so from that perspective, as with a child, the child doesn’t learn from one day to the next an entire topic. You have to explain, you have to re-emphasise this point in different places. You have to get it confirmed by grandma, by the sister, by the banker down the road, by the head teacher, and they all need to tell that same story, the same explanation.
[00:06:31] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And so, that’s the trick is basically you’re educating a child who needs to understand and then have repetition from trusted sources so it’s confident. And at that point, it will understand, it will be confident it’s understood, and it will repeat your message back to you in the faith shape of your Brand SERP. So, it will tell your brand story as you want it to tell because think about it, Google doesn’t have any reason to tell your brand story inaccurately or negatively. It wants to reflect what you want to say as long as what you say is fair about yourself.
Comparing the Idea of Entity Home to Linchpins
[00:07:05] Jason Davis: Yeah. I think that’s something that I really took to heart early on was, wait a minute, this thing has got, yeah, it’s an algorithm, it’s still all this fancy stuff. But at the end of the day, whatever I’m putting out there, that’s just all, that’s what it’s reading.
[00:07:16] Jonathan Payne: Right. It’s not making stuff up.
[00:07:18] Mitch Gregory: Yeah. And it speaks to the necessity of being strategic about what you put out there, the information and the words, pictures, et cetera, that you’re putting out on the larger internet about yourself. You need to be strategic, especially for your business, about what you put up there and how you talk about yourself and how others talk about yourself, which Jason Davis, to your point, I think leads back to why your website is so important. It’s the sort of can be the linchpin in all of these.
[00:07:56] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. Linchpins are really, really nice idea. Sorry to interrupt you. I use the term Entity Home. An entity is a thing. So, your business is an entity. I’m an entity. This podcast is an entity. And the idea of Entity Home, John Mueller from Google has been saying, yeah, this is a great way of looking at it, but linchpin is the equivalent. It’s saying, this is where all the information, it turns around this point, and this is the point of reference, linchpin, point of reference for information about this business, this person, this podcast that Google can use as a reference to compare other information to. And Google call that reconciliation. Sorry, Jonathan, I interrupted.
[00:08:34] Jonathan Payne: Yeah. You’re fine. I was going to say exactly that just as eloquently as you stated it. I’m just kidding. I was going to say we come across people all the time who are positioned one way, and then they say, I want to get this type of business or I want to attract these type of people, but they’re not putting anything out into the atmosphere and let Google know that that’s what they want to attract. Or they don’t want something, but they’ve got themselves out there as underneath a certain topic and it’s confusing Google. So, Google doesn’t know what their personal brand is or what their company brand is. So, you got to be a lot more intentional than I think a lot of people are.
The Broken Plate Analogy In Looking At Information Around the Web
[00:09:16] Mitch Gregory: Oh yeah. Well, I think there’s maybe there’s a misconception in people’s mind that Google just does a lot of this stuff all by itself like it’s some kind of magical entity, like the wizard of Oz or something.
[00:09:26] Jonathan Payne: That it can discern, and it can to a degree. We can obviously go with it.
[00:09:32] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): No. And it’s a confused child. And the other analogy I use is that if you look at the information around the web about you, it’s fragmented. So, this child has got a broken plate, and it’s trying to put the broken plate back together as a puzzle, and it’s not sure if it’s got it right, doesn’t know quite which piece fits where. So, it’s got this puzzle and it’s all a bit of a mess and it’s not really sure if it’s put it together correctly. And your Entity Home, your pivotal page, your fulcrum page, whatever that might be on your own website is the plate, the completed puzzle that Google can then, the child can then compare its version to this version and say, yeah, I’ve got that right, I’ve understood correctly or I’ve misunderstood and stopped to think about correcting it.
Some Recent Google Updates That Affects One’s Brand SERP
[00:10:16] Jason Davis: Yeah. I noticed over since I think there was an update late September and I don’t know for me, I don’t know, Jason, if you may have, I’m sure you know lots more about this than I do, of course, but it just has seemed to be a little bit weird. I was searching, you know what I mean? There’s a term that I don’t think it should be this easy, but I just kept pushing it around from page one to two and up and down and I’m like, what’s going on? This shouldn’t be this easy for me to do this with just simply making a swap in the title tag from front to back. And I would test and rewrite copy the first paragraph on a webpage and I’d go back. And I, okay, well, I’m going to make that sure that that reflects in the meta description blah, blah, blah, and all that. And I will just keep testing different stuff. And I just watch this thing bounce around like a ball on a basketball court. And it was just, this should not be, something’s wrong. I shouldn’t have this easy of a time to move this thing around. And I’m not saying that because Jason’s acting like I’m that good. No, I’m thinking something’s broke.
[00:11:27] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): This year has been a spectacularly, what would you say, volatile year for Google. It’s had more updates than we’ve ever had before. And the other thing is I track the Knowledge Graph, which is Google’s understanding of the world. Basically, it’s the information this child has understood and is confident it’s understood, and that has updates to. Every now and then, the child has this kind of light bulb moment and it updates itself and certainly understands a big chunk more of the internet. And that’s been updating more often, especially the last two or three months.
[00:11:57] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, it’s interesting you should say that. I don’t know if we’ve had main algorithm updates that have been throwing things out of whack, but we’ve had the knowledge of the child updating at the same time which hasn’t happened before either. And that’s a nice piece of advice for people. If this year has been spectacularly up and down for you in terms of Google performance, it’s probably normal because this year has been spectacularly up and down for pretty much everybody.
[00:12:24] Jason Davis: Yeah. Yeah. And I notice there’s just with the title tags that you have in the search results, I’ve seen a lot less sites that have empty tags and home. Because usually when people fire up a website or get one, they forget like the word home should not be in your title tag. And I’m seeing a lot less of those show up in search results amongst various sites, amongst various platforms not just WordPress but Squarespace.
[00:12:50] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): In fact, one of the updates is that Google now writes it own meta title. And if it finds something like that and there’s been people complaining because sometimes it does it quite badly, but the reason they did it was because of exactly what you’ve just said. It’s because there are so many sites out there that don’t have a good title for their page. And so Google thinks, well, we’re going to do him a favour and rewrite it for them which in a lot of cases has been helpful but for some people it’s been really annoying.
An Example About Coca-Cola’s Brand SERP
[00:13:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And on that point as well, native corporations, you talk about the title, the description. If you look at Coca-Cola, you search for Coca-Cola now on Google, the title says Coca-Cola international home page or something like that which is already not very great. Coca-Cola is a trademark of the Coca-Cola company. The Coca-Cola bottle is the shape of the Coca-Cola the company. And that is because they haven’t even written a meta description. Coca Cola, when you search for their name, have just got a copyright now because right at the top of their Brand SERP. It’s terrible.
[00:13:53] Mitch Gregory: That’s nice and human and touchy and feely and makes me want to pop open a bottle.
[00:14:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. I wasn’t advertising for Coca-Cola by the way.
[00:14:04] Mitch Gregory: That’s right. Free plug.
Google on Being More Strategic By Looking If One Is Specialised in a Particular Topic
[00:14:06] Jason Davis: Yeah. I’ve noticed that a lot as well. I’ve known for a while that the meta description is quite often rewritten because Google is looking at a page. And I’ve had conversations with Jon and the team at NerdBrand about on our site, we’re going through a process of rewriting copy, new build imagery, whole thing. So, everybody out there listening, watch for that in April. We hope that it’ll be there on time. We don’t know.
[00:14:31] Jonathan Payne: Next December.
[00:14:33] Jason Davis: Yeah. It depends on what happens in the world. But it’s like being more strategic about, okay, this page is about that and not this and, and, and, and, and. Because that’s what I’ve seen is Google’s reading that and saying, well, this page is about multiple things, but according to this term, this is closest. I can figure out what this actually is supposed to be about when they get here. So, being more strategic about if it sites about marketing, just talk about marketing without throwing in there maybe social media and all of the other things. I think that’s where things are starting to feel like change the page. Google wants to see pages more strategic and more like that. One thing, what’s the one thing you’re trying to tell people, not this one thing and 17 others, because you’re hoping it converts a sale.
[00:15:22] Mitch Gregory: Whatever will hook.
[00:15:23] Jason Davis: Right.
[00:15:25] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. That’s a great point. And I think you’ve probably put your finger on the whole year has been about that. It’s focusing in and being more intelligent about and more strategic about what we’re talking about on an individual page. What solution does it provide to our users, to Google’s users in fact, to our audience? And that focusing in on a specific thing and focusing on your core topic as well, what we’re seeing is that sites that couldn’t rank before because Google was looking at links and keyword counting, can now rank if they are specialised in a particular topic. And Google understands that they’re specialised in that topic, that they’re experts, and they’re authoritative for that topic.
[00:16:06] Jason Davis: Yeah. It’s like you said, it’s like a child trying to learn. I tried learning multiple things at once one time and it didn’t go well. So, I just focused on one thing and by gosh, I learned how to do Photoshop. But you know what? To this day, illustrator alludes me.
[00:16:24] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But you’ve made a really good point there. In fact, that the child is looking who to ask for specific pieces of information. So, it’s not going to ask the baker about how to cook meat, for example. And so, the child is looking around and it’s saying, who can I trust for the authoritative and helpful information about a particular topic. And the baker, if he’s talking or she’s talking about meat or vegetables, the child’s going that doesn’t make sense. I can’t believe them. They want the baker to talk about bread, things around bread, and sandwiches, and whatever else bakers do. Sorry, go ahead.
Presenting The Google Business Profile of Oxford Cheese Company and Looking At Its Elements
[00:16:59] Jason Davis: No, you’re good. I want to get into seeing actual some examples in some of the slides you have of some of these panels and stuff to just give people a visual. And so if you’re Iistening to this podcast, please go to YouTube, like, subscribe, click the bell there. See, guys. I did my job. And make sure that you go and check this out because what Jason has to show, I wanted to go through it and let him just run free here because it’s really fascinating. So, the floor is yours, sir.
[00:17:30] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Well, in fact, we’ve got slides up here, and I think I’ll lead you guys to help both by inserting questions but also comments and also explaining what I’m talking about for the people who are only got audio. But right now we’re looking at the Oxford Cheese Company which is a cheese shop in Oxford. And because we’d go through this Google My Business panel, it’s a Google My Business panel. That’s what we’re looking at at least in the first half of the show.
Looking At Oxford Cheese Company’s Reviews From Customers
[00:17:56] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I want to look at which elements we control or the business controls and which elements Google is just pushing in there. And if you look at the reviews, for example, we know very well that Google reviews appear on Google My Business or Google Business Profile as it’s better known. And obviously, the business doesn’t control them because it’s the customers, the clients who are giving these reviews, but you can encourage your happy customers to give reviews. I think a lot of local businesses forget that.
[00:18:24] Mitch Gregory: We knew that.
[00:18:27] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Brilliant. Well, the Oxford Cheese Company hadn’t done such a great job. They’ve only got 48 reviews. I would suggest they could have more. They could give out a card on the way out to the shop or they could have a sign on the door that says, please give us a Google review. And the other thing is giving instructions to people so it’s simpler for them to actually do that.
Identifying Other Elements and Which The Business Can Control
[00:18:46] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Underneath that, you’ve got the category. It’s a cheese shop and they get to choose that. So, there’s some control with they are. Apparently, you can choose up to nine categories, but the first category, the principle category is the one that will show. The others just help you rank for related keywords around the topics of those categories. So, they could potentially put grocery shop if they sell other things than cheese, but their primary role is to sell cheese. So, that’s obviously something called track control.
[00:19:14] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Service options, in-store shopping, they can control that. They can change that because obviously you can’t allow that. Located in, it’s in the covered market. Now that’s interesting because that’s Google’s own Google map system deciding that this shop is actually in a covered market and it isn’t on the street. So, they don’t control it. So, if Google gets it right, you’re happy. But if Google gets it wrong, there’s actually not very much you can do about that except re-educate the child. But that’s a whole different topic and we don’t want to go down that rabbit hole.
[00:19:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): The address is obviously for yours to control, the hours open too. Health and safety, mask required in these COVID times, Google gave us control over that pretty quickly after COVID because it’s obviously incredibly important. And I think COVID, a year and a half ago now, really pushed things forwards in terms of Google’s management of real time information in loads of business. That was really cool from that perspective. Excuse me. That was totally out of place. Raising COVID might possibly have been cool is that we got control of the Google Business Profile to some other aspect.
[00:20:18] Jason Davis: We know what the intention lies.
How The Popular Times For A Business In Measured Through Android Phones
[00:20:21] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And one thing I think a lot of people wonder about is the popular times. And we see that. It’s the little graph with a little blue lines that say when…
[00:20:32] Jason Davis: I just gonna ask you about that. Yeah.
[00:20:35] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): When is the shot for. And people think, I wonder how they get that information. It’s basically Android phones. They track Android phones and how many Android phones are in that shop at any given moment. So, they can tell relatively speaking when it’s full and when it’s not full, when it’s busy, when it’s not busy.
[00:20:55] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the other thing is if you have a small shop and you think, well, I hardly have any Android phones coming or I’m an Apple store in which case there is no Android phones coming in to shop, what it can also do is extrapolate that data so it doesn’t have to have explicit data for a specific shop. It can actually just guess and it makes very good guesses. So, that’s not something you can control, but it is something that I think a lot of people look out. If I was going to go to the Oxford Cheese shop, I wouldn’t go at four o’clock in the afternoon because Google tells me it’s going to be busy, and I don’t like gearing up because I’m grumpy.
[00:21:30] Mitch Gregory: I think you’re exactly right. I think especially things like restaurants.
[00:21:36] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah.
[00:21:37] Jonathan Payne: I’ve used it for the gym. I don’t want to be there when it’s packed.
[00:21:40] Mitch Gregory: Right. Right
[00:21:42] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. And it’s incredibly useful. It’s an incredibly useful functionality, and I think I certainly use it. And as a business, then you obviously want it to represent your busy times correctly because it also helps you to keep business down at busy times, and hopefully, they come back at a time when it’s less full.
Google on Choosing Which Reviews To Show on Your Google Business Profile
[00:22:05] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And then the last thing here, we’ve got the reviews. There’s actually something quite interesting about the reviews is if you’ve got these reviews stuck on your Google Business Profile and you think that, but they never change. The answer is they don’t change very often. Google changes them every, Joy Hawkins was saying, it’s about once a year. And there’s no system for how Google chooses them. It just chooses them. It can be like in this case, there’s a two star review and it says, this is yearly outing for my family and we enjoy immensely every year. And there are several things that trouble me about that. Yeah. They do it every year, but they only give it two stars. Why are they going back every year? And thirdly, it’s an outing for the family and it’s a cheese shop.
[00:22:50] Jason Davis: Yeah. It’s like going to the dentist. We just like visiting the office.
[00:22:59] Mitch Gregory: The lighting is just so nice.
[00:23:02] Jason Davis: Yeah. We’re not here for any work or anything. We just like the lighting.
[00:23:06] Mitch Gregory: That’s interesting about how infrequently Google updates that you would think, I would have automatically assumed that it updates depending on the frequency of reviews being posted which to me seems logical. I wonder why that, can you shed a little light into why it doesn’t update any more frequently?
[00:23:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I honestly don’t know. But here you can see there aren’t any dates on the actual reviews it’s showing. So, it’s giving itself that leeway. How algorithmically it does it is for us impossible to know. I asked Joy Hawkins who knows more about this than I do. And she was saying, it’s what we’ve observed, but we don’t actually have a pattern or any helpful advice to give about it which is really unfortunate. But I would imagine as time goes by, Google are going to get more fluid and flexible with this. So, I think we can hope for that to improve.
[00:24:02] Jason Davis: Yeah. I guess that makes sense. Maybe it’s the most popular one. Maybe people look at it because I know for a more press, if you do a blog post, like you’re thinking Mitch, the latest one is going to be at the top.
[00:24:15] Mitch Gregory: Right.
[00:24:16] Jason Davis: But there’s a widget. You can always say poll most popular posts, and they can go back years. It’s just the one that’s always frequently click through to view. Maybe. That’s a guess. Yeah. That’s my, yeah. That’s my.
[00:24:33] Jonathan Payne: Google users can go in and like a review I think if I remember right. So, maybe it’s the ones that are you can say if this review was helpful. I might be thinking of Amazon. I don’t know. I’m pretty sure you can as a Google user, you can go on different profiles. You can go on different reviews and look at people’s reviews and then like it if it was helpful. I don’t know if there’s like a dislike thumbs down.
A Brief Background on How the Teams on Google Works
[00:24:56] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. And one thing, I was talking the other day to some colleagues and one thing I think we forget is Google is actually a very fragmented company. So, they have a team looking after the Google Business Profile. Within that team, you’re going to have a team looking after reviews. And the reviews actually feed into other products too. So, they have this interreliance between these different products that they try to integrate. But because the teams are all completely independent, it’s actually quite difficult to do that horizontal integration.
[00:25:26] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I was talking to Fabrice Canel who’s the product manager for the Bingbot, and he was saying, in Microsoft they actually worked but each section of Microsoft has what would be termed as CEO. So, they have an overriding bus. It will be looking after whole groups of teams and bringing them all together. And at Google, they’re all very independent.
[00:25:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And another thing that Gary Illyes from Google told me was that these different products, different ideas on Google like Google post, Google My Business posts, it’s somebody at Google who picks it up and runs with it and decides that it’s going to be something. And if that person leaves the company or gets bored with a product or goes and do something else, a really great product can be dropped by Google. So, it’s the enthusiasm of individual people to drive a team forwards that will make or break a product much of the time.
Some Google Products That Lived and Died
[00:26:26] Jonathan Payne: I miss Google Reader. I do. It was good.
[00:26:32] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I don’t even know what it was.
[00:26:35] Jonathan Payne: The RSS feed reader that Feedly take over.
[00:26:38] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Oh, right.
[00:26:39] Jason Davis: Oh, I remember FeedBurner. Was that relate to that in a way? Because I know that’s really old.
[00:26:45] Jonathan Payne: It’s related. I think. I don’t know. I don’t remember. But Google Reader used to be where you subscribe to different RSS feeds for blogs. And it was like the first or the most popular one for years. And then they just out of the blue deprecated it, and people were sad. It was just a product.
[00:27:02] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): There is actually somewhere online, a page of the Google Graveyard. And it lists all Google products that have lived and died. So, you can actually visit the Google Graveyard on the side. It is not a Google site which is interesting.
[00:27:17] Jason Davis: Yeah. Somewhere at the top is like Google+ and they’re like, we don’t want to talk about that. But there’s 60 million users that are like, wait a minute, what is that. Yeah. That’s actually very good. That’s really insightful because I’ve wondered about that too. And I’m like, well, I’ve always figured, well, maybe it was a revenue thing. Maybe it was a usage thing but as you just highlighted, no, no, it was just somebody internally was really passionate about it and then they left. And that was it. Everybody else was like, well.
[00:27:48] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I would imagine that it’s the enthusiasm with the team lead that gets it to the goal of being released. And at that point, it’s clicks and revenue streams and all of that that makes the decision as to whether it survives. And then there must be also revenue aspects to it. The person can’t just say, I think this is great and drive with it, run with it. They’re going to have to convince their bosses. But at the same time, that idea that the development of an individual product is going to depend a great deal on one individual driving it forward is actually quite insightful and gives you a good idea of why Google keep having these products that appear and then disappear.
[00:28:28] Jason Davis: Yeah. Yeah. If I’m going to focus on something and then I’m probably going to want to pay attention to that because of that mechanism being there and not try to keep working with something that isn’t as enthusiastically pursued. So, yeah.
The Effect of Different Sources of Information in Your Brand SERP
[00:28:43] Mitch Gregory: Yeah. We’ve talked about the importance of your website and it determining what your Google My Business panel, the information, and things it contains. What about the other aspects of your brand besides your website like your other digital properties, for lack of a better description, I guess your YouTube channel, your Facebook page, your Twitter feed, how do all those things, do they have an impact on information that is out there and how Google digests who you are and what you’re about?
[00:29:19] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. That’s a great question because it is those different channels at different members. If you control them, you can think of it as different members of the family repeating the same thing that you were, different sources of information within the same family. Whereas, third-party sites would be the baker, the school teacher, the police woman, and so on and so forth. So all of those controlled or semi-controlled channels like here we can see Twitter, for example, or YouTube or LinkedIn are going to be helpful in supporting evidence for the child from a close family member in the child’s case.
[00:29:57] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But here, what we can see is Google is understood on its own. This Twitter profile belongs to Oxford Cheese Company. They don’t get to say that in Google Business Profile. Google has to understand that, and that comes from multiple things. But the most important once again is the website linking to that Twitter profile and that Twitter profile linking back. It’s really simple. That isn’t enough on its own. But if you have profile pages and review pages around the web and you site your Twitter profile, Google will eventually understand because it will see this information repeated multiple times. And that repetition, it’s a child you teach by repetition.
Optimising Google’s Panels Using SEO Plugins
[00:30:37] Mitch Gregory: Right.
[00:30:37] Jason Davis: Yeah. I think a lot of times in my world, when it comes to connecting those things, the open graph, I just like calling it the OG data because it just sounds funny, but we know what that is. But in web, if you look at the head stack on the side, you see the OG and then there’s Twitter and there’s all that. In WordPress, there’s a great, obviously a plug has been around Joost de Valk has had Yoast SEO for quite some time. And it’s always been my preferred SEO plugin even though I know there’s All In One. And I believe, Jon, you found one a while back.
[00:31:11] Jonathan Payne: I’ve heard a lot of I think it’s Rank Math.
[00:31:14] Jason Davis: Something like that. Yeah. For WordPress, you’ve got the ability to actually do what you just said about connecting those accounts by just putting in that information and optimising with Google’s panels. WordPress is like, I’m ready to go with Google or let’s have a party. But a lot of times it’s just so underutilised even from that perspective because it’s really hard to focus on all the things. I know that as a business owner, you’re like, okay, I got a site, pictures are on there, copies on there. But all the stuff we’re talking about, you’ve really got to have an agency or somebody that is watching that and making sure all that’s there because I’ve come across several places that just simply didn’t have any pages ranked on Google just because they forgot to uncheck something.
Having Experts Like NerdBrand and The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard) in Choreographing Your Brand SERP
[00:32:01] Mitch Gregory: Well, that’s the benefit of having an expert like maybe NerdBrand or…
[00:32:10] Jason Davis: Wow. Shameless plug.
[00:32:13] Mitch Gregory: Or The Brand SERP Guy.
[00:32:15] Jason Davis: Seriously, yes.
[00:32:15] Mitch Gregory: They basically know how to choreograph, help you choreograph.
[00:32:21] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): You’re good at the words. Choreograph.
[00:32:25] Mitch Gregory: I’m the creative guy.
[00:32:26] Jason Davis: He better be. He’s the creative director.
[00:32:29] Mitch Gregory: Yeah. That’s what it is. You’ve got to choreograph these things to make sure that everything is in sync. Each instrument, if you will, is in sync with the next instrument.
[00:32:38] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And if you’re choreographing with your Twitter, as it were, then you need to have two partners dancing together, one of which is your website which is what Jason just described. But the other is Twitter needs to point back. Twitter, actually, you need to play the game both ways. You need the partners to work together for that dance to work. I like choreography even if I can’t say it.
[00:32:59] Mitch Gregory: Glad I can help.
[00:33:03] Jason Davis: Mitch quite often will say stuff and it makes it into books, podcasts, video. I think a while back you said something. We had guests, Christoph Trappe.
[00:33:13] Mitch Gregory: He said, can I use it? He e-mailed me. Can I have permission to use that? I’ll never forget what it was. I said, can I get permission from you to use that? I want to use that. And I said, sure. It’s right to check too.
[00:33:27] Jason Davis: Yeah. That didn’t happen.
[00:33:28] Mitch Gregory: I didn’t see that part. No check.
Presenting the Google Business Profile of Nosebag Restaurant
[00:33:30] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Oh. Now we’re looking at the Nosebag Restaurant which is also in Oxford.
[00:33:34] Jonathan Payne: I have to get to that.
[00:33:35] Mitch Gregory: Had to. Got to.
[00:33:36] Jason Davis: I want to get to the one that’s the dirty word but in French. I really want to know what the word is. When you get to that, we’ll put it all. Let’s get to. Yeah.
[00:33:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): We’ll try to speed this up a little bit because I do get a bit obsessed. We’ve talked about the basic aspects, and we won’t repeat ourselves. But here you can see at the top left-hand corner you can see two pound signs, British pound money signs saying that this is relatively inexpensive. So, you have the option of having the price which is actually something that you can set. As we move through this, I won’t stop on the things we’ve already talked about.
Looking at the Reviews of Nosebag Restaurant Shown in Their Google Business Profile
[00:34:10] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Reviews from the web. Now, you’ve got those reviews from Google, and in this case, they’ve got 319 reviews for Google which is quite good. But we have reviews from around the web. Sluurpy, 80%, 1,900 votes and HappyCows, 3.5/5, 14 reviews. Where did they come from? They come from obviously these third-party review sites. And why do these ones appear than the other ones? If a review site has Schema Markup, ranks on your first page of your Brand SERP when you search your own brand name, that allows it to be a candidate for appearing here, and Google will then choose the one or ones, one, two, or three, that it thinks the most representative of your brand.
[00:34:54] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And now, there is a really good hint. If you think it’s got it wrong, if you think the HappyCow reviews don’t represent the Nosebag Restaurant, it’s up to you to figure out why Google thinks that’s important. And either convince you that another one is important potentially by linking to different review sites from your own site to indicate that those are the ones you think are important. That won’t change it on its own, but it helps. Its another clue for Google. Or sending your clients to the HappyCow review site and getting the happy customers to give more reviews, push that score up so you look better in the Google My Business or the Google Business Profile.
Schema Markup Explained Using The Child Analogy
[00:35:31] Jason Davis: Yeah. It’s interesting Schema that I come across that a lot in web where it just doesn’t exist or it’s totally relied upon too much by a plugin if it’s on WordPress to power that. You can’t do that. It’s just part of the tool, but you need a developer. You need somebody that knows that code to go ahead and put that there.
[00:35:50] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. And Schema Markup is an interesting point because from the child analogy, I’m going to keep coming back to that, it’s actually the bullet list for the child that confirms what it’s already been told. So, everything that’s in the Schema is going to be in the page, and then, the Schema Markup just gives it a bullet list in its native language so that it’s, what would you call it, revision? It’s like when you’re revising for an exam, but the child is using that supporting, learning material.
The Description on Google Business Profile That Google Controls and The One Controlled By The Business
[00:36:17] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I forgot one thing. On the left-hand side, you can see, enduring and simple wood-furnished self-serve canteen for signature soups, salads, and casseroles. That description right at the top of the Google Business Profile is written by a Googler. What appears to happen is that the machine will generate a title and then a Googler will then go in and rewrite it slightly because this looks like it’s been written by either reviewers or a pretentious critic.
[00:36:48] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And so, this is actually provided by Google so you can’t control it. Whereas, the one on the bottom from the Nosebag Restaurant is the description you actually put into your Google Business Profile so you control that. So, some local businesses are going to have a description which is actually provided by Google which is based we believe on customer feedback.
[00:37:12] Mitch Gregory: We believe.
[00:37:13] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): We believe. We don’t know. But it’s definitely corrected by a human being at Google. But I think it’s generated by Google’s own machine learning and then corrected by Google before it’s pushed back up.
[00:37:31] Jason Davis: Gives the actual person a bit of a headstart and clue about what they need to proofread and correct. That makes sense.
What People Say In Your Reviews Matter More Than The Score
[00:37:42] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Once again, the thing about reviews, and we’ll really quickly touch on this, it’s not just the score that matters. It’s what people say in them that matters as well because Google will understand attributes about your business. I’ll use coffee shop, for example, when I’m traveling, I will say coffee shop with Wi-Fi or free Wi-Fi. And the coffee shop has not put in its Google Business Profile anything about Wi-Fi, but the reviewers have talked about great free Wi-Fi. And when it shows me the result, it will pull up those reviews with the correct term. So, Google is understanding that this coffee shop has free Wi-Fi through the reviews and not through the owner. So, reviews, getting people to be your happy clients, be verbose about what they enjoy, what was good, obviously not what was bad. That would be a bad idea. It’s really helpful. And it will help write this description.
[00:38:36] Jason Davis: Yeah. I seen that on the webpage before where we’ve placed a review on a website page and whenever somebody looks for that, that reviews and the meta description. And I saw the click-through rate just fly through and I’d knew. I was like, well, we are never revising this because that’s actually leading to really good traffic and numbers that we wanted because people are just reading that.
[00:39:00] Jason Davis: And I think a lot of times we get a little hung up on what we put on there. We want it to say our business name and something cute, this and that. Sometimes it’s one of those happy accidents that’s really, and you’ve talked about it before. I’ve seen a while back, you’ve posted stuff like saying, go ahead and say the best, say best whatever. I used to call them tag modifiers. But putting those kinds of things in there, it’s okay if it’s relevant because people want to know what’s the best solution for blank. That’s something that I’ve noticed. Having a Google review in there was like, that’s great that they don’t pick that up sometimes.
[00:39:35] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But as you say, if you can get your clients to say the best, that’s even more powerful. If your clients are saying it, then the child is really going to start believing it because it’s other people saying it about you as opposed to you saying it about yourself.
[00:39:49] Mitch Gregory: Right.
The People Also Search For Panel and Another Example of A Business Profile For Doctors
[00:39:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And then right at the bottom, we have People Also Search For which is basically their competitors at the bottom of their Google Business Profile. Google lists alternative restaurants at the bottom which is kind of annoying.
[00:40:02] Jason Davis: Yeah. Everybody hates that. They’re always, can we get rid of that? Can we change that? And I just shrug and go, I don’t think you can.
[00:40:11] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): You can. And right at the end, we’ll see. In fact for Kalicube, ours have disappeared. And I don’t know why, but I only found that out today. So, there is a mystery I’ll need to solve.
[00:40:22] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Here’s some Google My Business, Google Business Profile, sorry, for doctors. They tend to be really poor, badly filled in reviews. And the reason for that is because a lot of doctors don’t know they exist. Another reason is that a lot of doctors work within health centres and hospitals, and the hospital or health centre simply don’t deal with it. And another reason is doctors keep moving from hospital to hospital or work in multiple hospitals, and it’s incredibly complicated and very rarely are they well filled in.
The Roxy Cinema’s Google Business Profile and Its People Also Search For Panel That Shows Not Only Competitors But Also Complimentary Businesses
[00:40:54] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Roxy Cinema. It’s a movie theater in New York City. So, we’re getting closer to your home. And the description that Google has written is old school, intimate theater, featuring news, independent or foreign films per standard concessions. So, fairly basic. But I wanted to look here at the People Also Search For which isn’t the nearby restaurants. So, we’ve got People Also Search For Cinema Village, Film Center, Regency Battery Park, tourist attractions around and cinemas around it. But they’ve actually added a second line of these different alternatives. But they’re things you would want to do after the cinema such as restaurant.
[00:41:34] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that’s a really interesting development because it’s now saying, right, once you’ve been to the cinema, we know you’re probably going to go and eat. So, they’re going to suggest restaurants so that you already have that thing that’s thought. Which means for the restaurants around the cinema, that’s an opportunity.
[00:41:48] Jason Davis: Right. Yeah.
[00:41:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It’s very difficult to manage, but it’s an opportunity and it’s somewhere where you might buy them. So, you can think not only about the appearing on your competitors’ Google Business Profile, but also complimentary services and businesses which is a really interesting concept.
[00:42:04] Mitch Gregory: Interesting. But again, that’s something you don’t control. As the user, that’s something that Google is doing on its own.
[00:42:13] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Yeah. As the Brand SERP Guy, I can now officially state on my own bat and it’s all my own idea is that those arguably the most difficult things to control on a Brand SERP. The other thing that I haven’t been able to master so far, and I say so far because I intend to figure this out. But right now, if you said to me anything on my Brand SERP, can we correct it? Can we make it better? Can we change it? I would say yes. I think I can either get rid of it or I can improve it or I can convince Google to change the message. This is the one thing where I would say, right now I can try, I can help but I can’t give you any kind of real, it wouldn’t be a guarantee anyway, but even any real hope because we’re not sure how it works.
[00:43:00] Jason Davis: Yeah. Yeah.
The Google Business Profile of Batard Restaurant, A French Restaurant
[00:43:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And then, now we’ve got the Batard Restaurant which is what you wanted. I think it was Mitch who wanted this.
[00:43:07] Mitch Gregory: Jason.
[00:43:08] Jason Davis: I want it because you said it was like a dirty word in French and I’m just like, okay.
[00:43:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. It’s a rude word in French, and it’s a really posh restaurant. It’s got 4 dollar signs so it’s quite expensive. And it’s a French restaurant.
[00:43:22] Mitch Gregory: Seems like such a French thing to do.
[00:43:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Honestly, I only put this screen up because I love the name of the restaurant, and it happened to be on the screen before. Is there anything that grabs your attention on this?
[00:43:38] Jason Davis: The reserve a table. Yeah, no, that’s new.
[00:43:41] Jonathan Payne: I’ve used that before.
[00:43:43] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Yeah. I’m not really sure about them because obviously reserve a table is going to be only for restaurants and cinemas or reserve a seat, maybe?
[00:43:51] Jason Davis: Yeah.
[00:43:52] Jonathan Payne: Well, I think usually the times I’ve used it runs through open table I think is the platform that it pulls in from. So, I assume you can control open table to hopefully influence or maybe there’s a direct connection between.
[00:44:06] Jason Davis: I’ve done that before on WordPress sites for local restaurants here in Louisville where they’ve had an open table account. There’s a plugin actually for WordPress.
[00:44:14] Jonathan Payne: Right.
[00:44:15] Jason Davis: There’s 75,000 plugins in WordPress. So if you thought of it, it’s probably there. But, yeah, I’ve done that before and it’s influenced this including showing I think some other Schema data with menu, maybe not menu, it’s been awhile, but some other things that you would find useful if you want to reserve a table. Hey, we have XYZ, eggs, biscuits. I don’t know, whatever.
The Batard Restaurant Not Only Showing Their Busiest Times But Also If You Have To Wait for a Table
[00:44:43] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And in fact, there were a couple of things that just occurred to me. Mitch, you were talking about the the time people, sorry, their busiest times. Here we can see not only does Google say the busy time, but it also says no wait. So, they’re saying right now, you don’t have to wait for a table.
[00:45:03] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And it also says people typically spend two and a half hours here. So, people obviously take their time eating. And it’s giving me information saying, if you want to sit down and take a long time if you may like the French often do, and Google once again is tracking that using the Android phones. It knows people sit down and stay in the restaurant two and a half hours.
[00:45:23] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that’s another important point is repeat visits from people with Android phones, a signal to Google that the business has satisfied that user. So if you’re a coffee shop and Google knows that the person often walks past your coffee shop and you went in there once and you never go back, that’s a negative signal. If you keep going back every day, that’s a positive signal. So, there’s these implicit signals that Google’s also using to rank your business. So, that’s scary but important.
Google On Bolding Important Words On Reviews By The Customers
[00:45:51] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the other thing is in the reviews, you can see they’ve got some terms and they bolded walk, night, food, service, meal, staff, bartenders, salmon, and chicken. Those are the words in the reviews that Google sees coming up over and over again, and it sees them as being important or, and, or queries that people make around this restaurant. So, what Google is doing is it’s highlighting the terms on this Brand SERP for the brand search on this restaurant the terms that it thinks are relevant to the users, the clients, the customers, the foodie people who go to Batard Restaurant which is phenomenally complicated and really interesting.
[00:46:33] Jason Davis: Yeah. I’ve always noticed that even just doing a search on Google in the search result page where it will bold certain things. I haven’t paid attention lately if it’s still doing that.
[00:46:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It does it a lot.
[00:46:46] Jason Davis: Yeah, no, you’re right. No, you’re fine. I try to use that intuitively to like, okay, well, this is what’s being looked at a lot or searched a lot. I need to really, really think about how I’m implementing my strategy for this page. And I’m trying to get indexed because if they’re looking for chicken and I’m trying to be fancy and say bird, something, then probably want to maybe just call the thing, the thing.
[00:47:14] Jonathan Payne: That was a signal to Google way back in the day. That was a myth or a…
[00:47:21] Mitch Gregory: Sounds like it.
[00:47:22] Jason Davis: I don’t know Jason, was that a myth? I feel like it was, but I know that people did it a lot.
[00:47:29] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Back in the day when I started, I started 1998, yes, it was a thing. Google have said, well, Google about, she said it helps the algorithm understand if you do it honestly.
[00:47:40] Jonathan Payne: Yeah. Right.
[00:47:41] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But they’ve trained the algorithm to spot when you’re not doing honestly. So, if you’re going to bold things, bold the things that are important like Google are doing here. They can’t really say to you, you’re not allowed to bold things on your website when they’re doing it on theirs.
[00:47:53] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, perhaps the trick here would be to say, right, these are the words that Google thinks are important to my customers. I should be, as you said, focusing on these words, potentionally bolding them not for Google but because my customers are going to react very positively to these. And if anybody knows, Google knows. And obviously, you also know by asking your customers when they come in your restaurant or your shop. So don’t ever forget the human aspect is that Google knows a lot, but you know your customers.
The People Aspect of Google and Using Them Wisely and Honestly
[00:48:21] Jason Davis: I remember a guy. I’m glad you said that because it reminds me of what a friend of ours, Diana Richardson from SEMrush, always says. It’s people optimisation, not search engine optimisation, I think is what she says. We sometimes forget as we’re doing this that we’re…
[00:48:39] Jonathan Payne: There’s this intermediary between the brand website and Google. There’s the person. And if they’re reacting positively, that user signal is what Google wants to see.
[00:48:51] Jason Davis: Yeah. Yeah. It was for the people. Do it because you love the people. In web, we always say, wow, why do you want to do that in web? Why do you want to put that there? And they’re just like, well, I just wanted that there. It’s like, why do you want to make your users angry? That’s what we always tell them.
[00:49:02] Jonathan Payne: Or think.
[00:49:03] Jason Davis: Yeah. Or think. Yeah. Don’t make them think. But, yeah. And I think that back in the day, when you said in the 90’s, the markup for bolding the HTML was different. It was a <b> tag. Now, it’s actually says <strong>. But there’s also a <span> tags now and things like that that allow you to put in some of that Schema as well into that. So, there’s a lot of cool things that if you’re knowledgeable about the code as well as paying attention to like we’re talking about now, the people aspect, you can make a really strong page which will lead to some of these results we’re seeing here with you’re forming Google about some of this stuff.
[00:49:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And importantly, use them wisely, use them honestly, and use them to help your users as you said, and Google will pick up on that. And if there’s a mismatch, it will either ignore it or it will rank you lower. So, I would suggest, yeah, as you said, work towards your customers using Google as a source of great information about your customers, but remember, you actually know your real customers, whereas Google doesn’t have them face to face. So, you can ask them questions which sounds obvious but I think a lot of people forget.
[00:50:16] Jason Davis: Yeah. Well, sometimes that’s just. I got a survey a few days ago. Some of the questions on there, I’m like, I don’t know if you want to ask people that question. But I’m protecting identities. But it’s good that they’re at least receptive to ask if they want to know as they go about what they’re trying to accomplish. It’s rare.
[00:50:38] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah.
[00:50:40] Mitch Gregory: If customers, the people you’re acting with and your business like you enough, they want to help you. They want to see you succeed. They want other people to know about you. So, they’re generally a willing, they can be a willing participant in helping you do these things and gather information and do the things just to promote your business.
Customer reviews show their generosity of spirit: they are saying, I love your business, I love what you’re doing, I’m happy to invest my valuable time to give a review.
jason barnard (the Brand serp guy)
[00:50:59] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Absolutely. I was slightly surprised. I’m finishing writing a book now, and I was wondering who I could get interested in the book and if I could get some people to pre-read it to give me some critique. And a lot of people from my customer base are incredibly keen to help. And it’s really they want to help me because they like my business and they like, hopefully, they like me a little bit as well. But it is this generosity of spirit which is saying, I love your business, I love what you’re doing, I’m happy to help him put time in which is important because time is absolutely the most valuable thing we have.
[00:51:37] Jason Davis: Yup. Yup. And on that note, sir, we won’t keep you much longer. But we do want to thank you for coming on and sharing all this. You’re the last episode. You can go to NerdBrand. Just look for us on YouTube and find it. Watch that one. It’s not like a Marvel Cinematic Universe thing. You don’t need to watch that one before this one, but that show’s pretty popular. I’ll tell you, Jason. It really is. People, we looked at the, I looked at the numbers on that, and it’s probably one of our top five that people watch. Yeah. I always look forward to having you on because I know that this is a topic that is always of interest. I can see Robert in the booth nodding his head a lot. Okay. Wow. All right.
[00:52:23] Mitch Gregory: Well, this is crucial stuff. In an age where Google has so much power over how your brand exists in the real world. And there’s great tools there that are at your disposal and there’s great things you can leverage that can help you to promote and get the message out about your brand.
[00:52:48] Mitch Gregory: Somebody like Jason makes it, it can seem, especially somebody like me who comes from the creative side of things. I’m not a numbers guy. I’m not an algorithm guy. I don’t sit down and do formulas all day long. It can seem daunting.
[00:53:02] Jason Davis: Yeah.
[00:53:02] Mitch Gregory: Because Google has all this information and seems to have so much authority and power, but it can be leveraged if you know how to, again, I’ll go back to the word choreograph. If you know how to utilise the assets you have at your disposal, you can make this work for you and make it a huge, powerful tool to help you succeed.
[00:53:21] Jason Davis: Yeah. Yeah. Well.
What Does Google Show Your Audience When You Search Your Own Brand Name
[00:53:24] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Just one thing. That’s absolutely brilliantly said, Mitch. And the thing is the most powerful tool is looking around Brand SERP. What does Google show your audience when you search your own brand name? It shows them what it thinks is valuable, helpful, and relevant to their relationship with you. From them as a customer, to you as a business. And if that is wrong, you need to re-educate Google. And if it’s right, you can make it better. But it’s a reflection of how Google perceives your customer’s perception of you.
[00:53:56] Mitch Gregory: And since everybody goes to Google first these days, it’s vital.
[00:53:59] Jason Davis: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a preview of what ongoing SEO services are like. That’s a part of it. You have to keep going back and checking to see how you look. We do it just to see how we look. Right now, we’ve been busy with other things, but I try to do it on Sundays.
[00:54:14] Jonathan Payne: Yeah. Same here. I’m going to look at, our Brand SERP has improved massively. We’re a two year-old business. Over the course of a year, the podcast has definitely, that panel has shown up, and it’s shown up in search results much more prominently.
An Experiment Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Did With His Name and What Came Up When You Search For It
[00:54:35] Jason Davis: Yeah. We’ve taken a lot of your advice, Jason, and followed your lead on some of this stuff and watching you post on LinkedIn. So, I probably don’t think it’s really necessary to tell people where to go find you because honestly, if they Google you, look up your name on LinkedIn, there’s like tons of places they’re going to find you. So, obviously, yeah, I’ll look up Jason Barnard. I know you have one last slide that was Jason Barnard nerd.
[00:55:01] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right.
[00:55:02] Jason Davis: You want to touch on that one because that’s…
[00:55:05] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I’ll go back to it. It’s part of this idea of educating Google. This is a silly game and it isn’t serious and it isn’t supposed to prove anything in particular except a friend of mine said, oh, why don’t we just call you Jason Brandnerd? Wouldn’t that be funny because it sounds a bit like Barnard? And I said, okay, can I get Google to recognise that Jason Brandnerd is a synonym for Jason Barnard. And the answer is yes. And it took me a week for Google to show a feature snippet when you type in who is Jason Brandnerd which is the crack queer we are looking at now.
[00:55:43] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And it shows a feature snippet where I explain Jason Brandnerd is a term coined by Anders Hjorth who’s my friend on 30th of April 2021 in response to a LinkedIn post message to Anders Hjorth. And so, basically, I just explain the concept. I explained that it’s a synonym. And because I am an authority on myself, Google trusts me. It believes what I said. And the synonym basically took a week to become a truth in this child’s mind which is the delightful.
[00:56:13] Jason Davis: Yeah. Yeah. And on that, that’s how we’re going to end the show because that right there, everybody’s going to latch onto that and be like, wait, what? Because that’s amazing. We thank you so much for coming back. We love having you on. The information you have and the one compliment that I’ve heard from people is you have a way of explaining it and breaking it down into understandable terms which is a gift to do to be able to do that, a gift talent, whatever you want to equate that to.
[00:56:43] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Thank you.
Some Feedback From Listeners of the Podcast
[00:56:44] Jason Davis: But that’s the feedback I’ve always gotten is I actually understood what he meant when, because there’s a lot of people out there that say, here’s how Google works. And then they’ve watched the previous episode when you were with us and they’re like, oh, that makes much more sense. So, I think you’ve, yeah.
[00:57:01] Jason Davis: Yeah. So, you’ve added a nice little layer with this episode and coming on today with us. And again, for those listening out there on audio, go check us out on YouTube to see Jason’s presentation and some of the stuff that he’s shown us.
[00:57:14] Mitch Gregory: The panels.
[00:57:14] Jason Davis: Yeah. All these panels and everything. It’s really fascinating to look at and go through. And it’s been educational for me this morning because I know it was probably like, you’re what, six hours difference between us?
[00:57:29] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. It’s late afternoon now.
[00:57:31] Jason Davis: Yeah. I really appreciate your time and taking that out of your afternoon to come on the show and chat with us.
[00:57:39] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It was an absolute pleasure. And what you just said is actually really touching, and I’m now blushing for people listening to the audio. I’m blushing as red as my shirt.
[00:57:49] Jason Davis: Well, it’s true. They’ve said it. But anyways, you can find the NerdBrand Podcast just by, Jon, you want to.
[00:57:58] Jonathan Payne: Search NerdBrand Podcast and tell us if we’re doing the right job.
Learn More About Jason By Checking His Personal Brand SERP
[00:58:02] Mitch Gregory: Jason, Mr. Barnard, do you want to remind people where they can find you?
[00:58:06] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. One of the other things about Brand SERPs which I really like is if you search my name, Jason Barnard, you can see my site, Twitter, YouTube, podcasts, and articles I’ve written. And basically for me, the idea of my Brand SERP is it gives you the choice how you want to interact with me whether you want to hang out on Twitter on LinkedIn or read my articles or listen to the podcast or come onto my site and learn about my private life.
[00:58:32] Mitch Gregory: There’s a whole other podcast.
[00:58:34] Jason Davis: Okay. All right. And on that note, everybody, thank you for listening. Like, subscribe and again, thank you all for out there for listening. Like, subscribe, find us at NerdBrand Agency as a handle for all of our social media. Again, I encourage you to go to YouTube, click the bell, get the latest subscription videos, and all that. Jason, thank you for coming on. And to everybody out there, remember, keep your nerd brand strong.
