Reading a Brand SERP To Build Your Future-Proof Digital Search Strategy

What does your Brand SERP reveal about your digital (search) strategy? In this insightful video, Jason Barnard, known as “The Brand SERP Guy” and CEO and founder of Kalicube, shares his expert perspectives and strategies. Jason reveals the secret to interpreting what appears when someone googles your brand, how to make your Google results accurate, positive, and convincing, and the importance of recognising the Entity Home. Don’t miss this opportunity to leverage Jason’s extensive digital marketing knowledge to develop a powerful, future-proof search strategy for your brand. Watch the video right to the end.

[00:00:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Michael. As I was saying before, I had forgotten that this was today. And yesterday, you sent me a message and I thought, I actually promised something that I don’t know if I can deliver. So, I spent the whole day writing this. And I think, honestly, I’ve nailed digital marketing for the next 10 years. That sounds incredibly pretentious, but it suddenly makes so much sense. I’ve been doing this for 25 years. And today, I just thought, now I’ve understood. So, I’m really excited.

Introducing Jason Barnard (The Brand SERPGuy) Through His Personal Brand SERP

[00:00:41] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, I am the Brand SERP Guy, as you said. And I should, as we all should, be able to tell my story, my life story, what I can offer people through my Brand SERP. And the Brand SERP is the search engine results page for my name. So, this is mine from a couple of years ago. John Mueller from Google calls me Mr. Knowledge Panel. I focus on Knowledge Panels because that’s the foundation of what Google understands, and what Google understands is the foundation of what it presents to the subset of its users, who are your audience.

[00:01:18] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I’m currently living in Paris, but that’s not true anymore. I moved to the South of France recently because it’s sunnier and we get better food. But you can see that from my Brand SERP that I was in Paris, Ile-de-France, although I’m British by birth. I was a voice actor, a cartoon blue dog, Boowa, the blue dog, alongside my ex-wife, Veronique, the yellow koala. And you can see here a video, some songs, and IMDb. Part of my Brand SERP, part of my Google Business Card, part of my life story that I can present to my audience through Google.

Besides Being The Brand SERP Guy and a Cartoon Voice Actor, Jason Barnard Is Also a Musician, an Author, and the CEO and Founder of Kalicube

[00:01:59] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I was also a punk folk musician, The Barking Dogs. I played the double bass. Once again, a video, and also The Barking Dogs in the sitelinks for my own website. So, that’s my nineties, 1990s, last century career. I’ve got a groovy podcast, which is intelligent, interesting, and fun. And I think it’s really delightful to point out that I listen to my own podcast, not because it’s me, but because the guests we have share so much, super delightful, insightful information. I’ve learned so much from the 250 episodes that we’ve done.

[00:02:43] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I’m an author, as you said. The Fundamentals of Brand SERPs for Business is my book. I write for Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, and multiple other media outlets. But most importantly today, I think, I’m the CEO and founder of Kalicube, which is SaaS platform, courses, and a done-for-you service for the Kalicube Process that we’re going to see in a moment.

I get to choose what Google understands and displays and presents to my audience about me, and that is what the Kalicube Process is all about.
Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)

[00:03:08] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Even Google understands that I’m The Brand SERP Guy, and I think that’s key, that I get to choose what Google understands and displays and presents to my audience about me, and that is what the Kalicube Process is all about.

[00:03:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I’ve been working on this for 12 years, and I initially started because Google initially said Jason Barnard is a cartoon blue dog. And I wanted to make sure that it said to my audience today what my audience today needs to hear or wants to see, which is Jason Barnard is a digital marketing expert. And I’ve spent the last 12 years developing the Kalicube Process. So, today, we’re going to work through the reasoning and the techniques behind it and go through a case study.

A Preview of the Topics That Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Will Discuss in This Presentation

[00:03:59] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, the plan is there are three points of view on your Brand SERP. Your audience, what does your audience see when they google your brand name? Google, what does Google think about you? Because what Google thinks about you is what it will show on your Brand SERP. It’s Google’s reflection of the world’s opinion of you.

[00:04:26] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And then you need to be incredibly, incredibly interested and focused on your Brand SERP. Because the Brand SERP is not only the key to your audience and to Google, but also to your own digital marketing strategy, which is what we’re looking at today. So, I would argue that your Brand SERP should be the starting point, the driver, and a major focus KPI for your digital search strategy.

[00:04:55] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Why have I put search in brackets? Because it actually affects every aspect of your digital strategy. So, it’s not just search. We’re using search and we are using Google to understand what it is we need to do, how we need to prioritise our work within our own digital strategy.

Future-Proofing Your Digital Strategy: Search Engines, Answer Engines, Assistive Engines, and Generative AI

[00:05:18] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that’s where we come to the final point is that you’re going to future-proof your digital strategy. When I talk about search engines, that’s what we knew from before. 10 blue links, then universal search, but now we’re looking at answer engines. Answer engines, what is that? That’s ChatGPT on Bing, and that’s now search generative experience on Google. They aim to answer the question right at the top, so people don’t even use the search aspect.

[00:05:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And then assistive engines, that’s for the future. We don’t know where that’s going, but definitely already we can see that when you ask Google Home who is Kalicube, who is Jason Barnard, it answers correctly. Because our strategy, the Kalicube Process, has already made its place, made its point and ensured that these machines understand who we are, what we do, which audience we serve, and how we want to be represented.

[00:06:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And generative AI is hugely important. Once again, we don’t know where it’s going, but it’s learning from Knowledge Graphs, it’s learning from large language models. And being able to educate, and I say educate, these machines is our responsibility and something that we have to do in order to face the future. And that’s Kalicube Process.

Building Out From the Brand SERP Using the Kalicube Process and Getting Results on Social Media, Across the Web, and Traditional SEO

[00:06:40] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): How does that sound, Michael? Me too, actually, because I spent the day thinking about it. And I wanted to show some results, because somebody the other day asked me for some numbers as to why people would be interested in this.

[00:06:58] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Because looking at your Brand SERP, the search engine results page for your brand name, seems fairly pointless. It doesn’t seem like this hugely great win that you’re going to get for your boss or for your client. But when you build out from the Brand SERP using the Kalicube process, you get results, not only on social media, on media, and across the web, you also get results in traditional SEO.

Kalicube Successfully Helped Clients and the Company Itself Implement the Kalicube Process and Get Good Results

[00:07:26] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I wanted to show this guy. He’s a delightful, delightful chap, Robin Bourdet. I spent two years with him implementing the Kalicube process. He initially had a 37% year on year drop in SEO traffic. And we worked through the Kalicube process, which is based on knowledge, recommendations, and now generative AI, to push him from minus 37% year on year to plus 33% year on year. And that’s a huge turnaround. And as he says, and I love this, they turn my strategy around, profits are up, and I feel serene about the future. He feels comfortable. That’s hugely important.

[00:08:11] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But there’s more, if we look at this lady here, Marie Julie Leguen. I’ve been working with them for several years, and she makes the point that I’ve made them autonomous. They have a modulable digital strategy that they can now manage in house, and I no longer need to coach them, consult with them, give them reports. I don’t work with them at all anymore.

[00:08:36] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And they, on their own, are now driving 163% traffic increases on SEO year on year. And that’s not even counting all the social media, all the branded traffic, all of the articles that they’ve got and the traffic they’re getting from review platforms, such as Trustpilot. And that’s huge. These are strategies that any marketer can implement. Marie Julie is super smart. Her team are super dedicated, and they are absolutely nailing it, and they don’t need an agency.

[00:09:16] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And from our perspective, we have obviously done this the best. I’ve baked this into the entire Kalicube company, 330% traffic increase year on year in year two. And that’s hugely important. Year one is setting the stage. Year two is when the growth really starts because you’ve baked this into your business.

The Focus of the Kalicube Process Is Your Brand SERP, Which Is Also Your Google Business Card

[00:09:40] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, the Kalicube Process focuses on your Brand SERP. And I’ve been arguing and talking about Brand SERPs for 12 years now. Brand SERP, the search engine results page for your exact match brand name, because it gives you insights. Your audience will google your name before they do business with you, and it’s also a reflection of how good or bad your digital strategy is.

[00:10:07] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, to be really clear here, it’s the exact match brand search. So, in my case, it will be Jason Barnard or it will be Kalicube. For you, it would be Michael Cortez. There are multiple problems around your name, as I understand, but also my name, of ambiguity. That’s not the topic for today. That’s quite a detailed and difficult topic that needs to be dealt with in specific ways, and we can talk about that later.

Comparing Microsoft’s Brand SERP With Kalicube’s Brand SERP, Considering the Obvious Difference in the Size of the Two Companies

[00:10:36] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And we look here, this is Microsoft, looks great. It’s their Google Business Card. And I love the irony of we are looking at Microsoft’s Google Business Card. And I will bet my bottom dollar, most people see Google’s representation of Microsoft rather than Microsoft’s representation of Microsoft on Bing.

[00:10:59] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And those results can be more or less unconvincing, more or less negative, and more or less inaccurate. As we can see here, Kalicube is doing actually a pretty good job for a small company with only 14 people. We look pretty impressive next to Microsoft, who employ tens of thousands of people.

[00:11:22] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And on the right, you have what we remember from days gone by of 10 blue links, that really, really doesn’t look impressive today. I would not do business with them. I don’t know who they are. I have no idea who this company is, but that doesn’t encourage me to do business with them because I expect to see something more like what we have for Kalicube, or if we’re a huge corporation, what we see for Microsoft.

[00:11:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And remember that what we see for Microsoft is natural. That’s really easy for huge corporations to do. For mid-sized companies or small companies like Kalicube, we can actually look just as impressive as Microsoft. And it isn’t, really isn’t rocket science.

Looking at Personal Brand SERPs for People: Bill Gates’ Brand SERP Versus Jason Barnard’s Brand SERP

[00:12:08] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And then for people, same thing. I look almost as famous and impressive as Bill Gates. He’s got 25 billion dollars, and I have a thousand euros in my account. And every month, I struggle to pay my bills. But in the middle there, I look like I’m just as famous, just as important, and just as interesting, credible as Bill Gates. And that is hugely important.

[00:12:37] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Because if somebody googles my name, google my name now, Jason Barnard, and you will think, yeah, he looks impressive. Have I done as much as somebody like Rand Fishkin, who we all know? No, I haven’t. I haven’t built multiple businesses. I haven’t done all the stuff that he’s done, and yet I look at least as impressive as Rand Fishkin, probably more.

The Three Reasons That Your Brand SERP Is Incredibly Important: For Your Audience, For Google, and For You

[00:13:06] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Now, there are three reasons that your Brand SERP is incredibly important. It’s incredibly important for your audience. As we said, it’s your business card. Clients, prospects, investors, partners will all google your brand name, your personal name before they do business with you. What they see is your Google Business Card, and they are using Google because they trust Google. So, that is Google’s recommendation. You need it to look positive, accurate, and convincing for your audience.

Your Brand SERP Is Important for Google, Who Greatly Considers the Concept of E-E-A-T or Credibility

[00:13:34] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But it’s also important for Google. It’s Google’s assessment of the world’s opinion of you. And you mentioned E-E-A-T earlier on, experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. If Google is showing positive results, accurate results, it understands who you are and it understands that you’re an expert, you’re experienced, you’re authoritative, and you’re trustworthy.

[00:13:58] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): If it’s showing less good results, obviously it hasn’t understood and/or it doesn’t think you are credible. I use the word credible. They use the word experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. I like the word credibility because it’s much quicker to say.

Lastly, Your Brand SERP Is Important for You Because It’s a Window Into Your Brand’s Digital Search Strategy

[00:14:20] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And it’s also important for you, because it’s a window into your brand’s digital search strategy. If you search your brand name now, think about what you expected to see, what you actually now see, and what you want to see. And you need to move from expectation to reality, and then onto how do I change that reality to become exactly what I want. I need Google to present my message to my audience in my words with my brand narrative.

[00:14:56] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And while I’m doing that, I will change Google’s opinion of me and I will also improve my overall digital search strategy, but actually my digital strategy. Because by changing Google’s opinion so that it represents me to my audience in a way that I wish, I necessarily have to improve my engagement with my audience across the entire web.

Improving Your Brand SERP Starts With Branding, Followed by Marketing, and Finally by SEO

[00:15:22] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, by definition, improving your Brand SERP is a marketing virtuous cycle. I come from a world of SEO. And all of a sudden now, honestly, I’m a marketer. SEO is third on my list. Branding, marketing, SEO, in that order. SEO is simply there to package what I’m already doing as a marketer and a brand manager for my audience and for my company. It doesn’t mean to say it’s not important. It just means to say it’s not my primary focus. It’s only third on the list.

[00:15:58] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But I can use SEO and Google. To improve my Brand SERP, I will necessarily have to improve my digital ecosystem. Everything about me online, improving it, making it more consistent, making it more engaging from my audience, and that will be reflected in my Brand SERP.

[00:16:19] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, if you have googled your brand name in the time that I’ve just been talking from two slides ago to now, you will see. Does it represent me? Does it represent the effort and money I’m putting into different elements of my digital strategy? If it doesn’t, then you’re doing it wrong. And the Kalicube Process is the way to set that right, incredibly simply, as we will see.

Google’s opinion will improve as you improve your Brand SERP.
Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)

[00:16:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Google’s opinion will improve as you improve your Brand SERP. It will understand you better, it will understand how you serve your audience better, and it will understand your credibility. Your E-E-A-T throughout, which is incredibly important today and moving forwards. And every day, you look at your Brand SERP and you see, does that reflect who I am, what I do, which audience I serve, how I serve them, am I credible, has Google understood. If Google hasn’t understood, then I’m doing it wrong.

Having a Great Brand SERP Will Make Everybody Happy: Google, You, and Your Users

[00:17:21] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Everybody is happy. When you get that right, Google is happy. It understands who you are. It understands which subset of its users are your audience and how you can serve them. It understands that you’re credible as a solution for the subset of its users, who are your audience. You are happy because you improved your content strategy, your marketing strategy. And your users are happy because they’re seeing a consistent message from you across the web, and especially when they google your name just before doing business with you.

What Are the KPIs in Improving Your Brand SERP?

[00:17:54] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Next question, what KPIs? Somebody asked me this, and I was wondering. KPIs are extremely important, very difficult for me to create or understand or present, but actually it’s really simple. The greener your Brand SERP in the Kalicube Pro platform is, the more you have a positive reflection of Google’s opinion of the world’s opinion of you. That means to get that greenness, you need to improve engagement.

[00:18:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And you can see here over geo regions, we have more engagement, more positive in Australia and France than we do in Canada and the US. And that’s hugely important, that the way Google represents you across different geo regions will change vastly, because it’s trying to serve the audience in that geo region. So, if you are an international company or even a national company, you need to track multiple geo locations in order to understand how it’s representing you to the local audience, which is something a lot of brands overlook.

Using Kalicube Pro to Take Control, Set Priorities, and Improve Your Brand SERP

[00:19:05] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Then you need control. You need to take control. It’s not, can I have control, please? You need to grasp control. You need to take the initiative. Get control. As you can see here, this is over time in the UK, Kalicube went from less control, or B on our control score, up to A, where we have almost total control. So, control will drive quality. Engagement will drive quality.

[00:19:35] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And then, how do you set the priorities? Kalicube Pro, once again, offers you the opportunity to identify priorities, and it’s really simple. You start with market number 1, the US in this case. And you start from the top of the Brand SERP, and you work down, and you improve everything. You start from the top of the right hand side, and you work down. You improve everything.

[00:19:57] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Then you move on to market 2, market 3, market 4, market 5. And you will see that your entire digital strategy, your entire digital ecosystem has improved across all of the different geo locations where your audience are engaging with you. So, Kalicube Pro allows you to not only measure and track and improve recommendations, it also allows you to improve track, and move the needle on control, and sets you the priorities working from top to bottom, which is idiotically simple when you look at it on this screenshot.

Building a Digital Strategy From the Brand SERP Outwards: The Kalicube Process

[00:20:37] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Building a digital search strategy from the Brand SERP outwards. This is the Kalicube Process. This is what I’m here to talk to you about. Hold onto your hats. This goes really, really fast, but you can watch this again. You can download the slides, and you can use the learning resources at the end. Kalicube.com, absolutely full of free resources.

[00:20:57] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I think that’s a really important point here, is that I think we have a process that will work for any marketer. We cannot possibly serve the entire world, so we are sharing this completely free on Kalicube.com. If you want to learn and figure out how to implement this for your company or your clients, it’s totally free. Go to Kalicube.com. You will find all of the resources that you need. Obviously, we have a paid option, but that isn’t our focus. Our focus is to bring SEO, digital marketing into the realm of accessibility for any marketer on Earth.

The Three Types of Results: Knowledge on the Right, Recommendations on the Left, and Generative AI on Top

[00:21:39] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Three types of results. I love this. This was two or three weeks ago. Generative AI in search is totally new, and I can now implement it in every presentation I give. The right hand side of Google’s traditional search results is its knowledge. The left hand side is its recommendations. And now right at the top, they put the generative AI, the search generative experience. So, we have three aspects that we need to deal with now for search, assistive, and answer engines, generative, knowledge, recommendations.

[00:22:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And we have a case study, and this is obviously Kalicube, but the reason I want to use Kalicube is because I have built the Kalicube team over the last two years purely to implement the Kalicube Process. So, we are our best students, as it were. A lot of digital agencies will say, well, I don’t work on this because I don’t have the time. I’m working too hard on my clients.

[00:22:40] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I agree with that. I understand that. It’s a problem that we all have. An English saying is the cobbler’s children are the least well shod, i.e. the cobbler’s children have the worst shoes. I would like Kalicube to not be the cobbler’s children.

[00:23:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): We work on Kalicube, Allyssa and the Kalicube Pro team, who deals with our clients, who deals with the agents who use the Kalicube Pro platform, works on Kalicube as if it were a client. So, I’m paying Kalicube to work on Kalicube with the Kalicube process. And I think that’s hugely important. Because as you saw with the numbers plus 330%, that’s full implementation. And I fully expect to at least double our search traffic and triple our income over the next couple of years.

The Interdependence of Knowledge, Recommendations, and Generative AI: Each One Affects the Other

[00:23:39] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Importantly, knowledge, recommendations, and generative AI are all interdependent, and each one affects the other. You can’t simply say, I want to work on one aspect, knowledge or recommendations or generative AI. You need to work on them all because they all play off each other. They’re all using the same index. They all share multiple algorithms. So, you can’t isolate one completely.

The Kalicube Process Is a Holistic Approach That Any Marketer Can Learn

[00:24:05] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, the Kalicube Process is a holistic approach that any marketer can learn. And this is Marie Julie again. Jason coached the Ubigi team for several years and helped us build a modulable digital search strategy that we now manage in-house. I highly recommend his strategies. Working with him is a no-brainer in my opinion. And that’s because we built this entire strategy, knowledge, recommendations, generative AI, into their existing team and encourage them to take on additional team members to serve this search, but wider digital strategy that’s driven enormous increases in traffic, but also business.

[00:24:46] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, we can start with number one, knowledge. I’m starting with knowledge because knowledge is power. Knowledge is the foundation of everything for us as human beings and now for Google, Bing, and so on and so forth. So, teaching Google is what we’re looking to do. We want to educate Google about who we are, what we do, which audience we serve.

Establishing an Entity Home, Corroborating the Information on Authoritative Sources, and Signposting Using Links or Schema Markup

[00:25:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that starts with the Entity Home. In order to get a Knowledge Panel and to control a Knowledge Panel, you need an owned Entity Home. The Entity Home is the page that describes on your own website who you are, what you offer, and to whom, and why you’re a credible solution for Google’s users. That’s the About page about your company. If you don’t have a dedicated page about your company, create one today and explain who you are, what you offer to whom, and why you are a credible solution for Google’s users.

[00:25:51] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Then you need to make sure that you corroborate that information on trusted, authoritative third party sources. Consistency of that information is absolutely key. And then you signpost using either links or Schema.org Markup from your Entity Home out to these corroborative sources so that Google understands who you are, what you do, who you offer that to and why you’re a credible solution, not only from yourself, but from all of these different corroborative, trusted, authoritative third party sources.

[00:26:27] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And if you want to know more about that, search how do I get a Knowledge Panel using the Kalicube Process on Google. And the answer is there, three simple steps, anybody can do it.

Authoritative Sources Are Not Generalised; Focus on What Is Going to Be Authoritative for a Specific Topic

[00:26:39] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And it’s important also to note that authoritative sources are not generalised. So, we all think about Wikipedia, but Jasonbarnard.com is authoritative for myself, for The Barking Dogs, the group I talked about earlier on, the punk folk group, and also the Boowa and Kwala cartoon.

[00:26:59] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, a very, very, very weak site like my own can be authoritative for a specific topic. So, don’t focus on the big hitters. Focus on what is going to be authoritative for your entity in your given situation. And in my case, Boowa and Kwala, the blue dog and yellow koala, or The Barking Dogs, my punk folk group, I’m an authority. That makes sense.

[00:27:26] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And importantly, and that does really bring to mind, now I put it at the top right hand corner so everyone can see it. One size does not fit all. People tend to think that it’s all Wikipedia, Wikidata, that IMDb will always trigger something. But if you’re in IMDb but you’re not actually an actor or a podcaster or in the film industry, IMDb is actually not a good source to use. You need to use the sources that correspond to your entity type, your geo region, and your industry.

Social Profiles, Entity Description, and First, Second, and Third Party Websites

[00:28:01] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Social profiles, easy peasy. Links in the footer or the header of your website, plus Schema on the Entity Home, or you can just add links if you don’t want to use Schema. Social profiles are the easiest thing to trigger in a Knowledge Panel. Once you have one, links in the footer of the header are often just enough, as long as you link to them and they link back preferably to your Entity Home.

[00:28:24] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): The Entity description, super tricky to do. But if you start your description with a semantic triple, Kalicube is a digital marketing agency, blah, blah, blah, that’s a semantic triple, subject-verb-object. Right clearly. Name check related entities and attributes in the text that you’ve given. And consistency across all first, second, and third party websites is vital. If you’re not consistent, it will simply not show a description.

[00:28:52] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): First party websites, websites you own and control. Second party websites, social media profiles, Crunchbase, things like that. You can edit yourself, but you do not control the website. Third party websites, any website that you have no control over at all. Inc.com or Entrepreneur.com would be great examples, where I cannot intervene directly. And obviously, third party websites are the most powerful for Google, as long as they’re authoritative and as long as they’re relevant.

Images, Consistent Visual Branding, Structured Data, Clear Copywriting, Third Party Sources, and Knowledge Bases

[00:29:25] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Images, consistent visual brand identity, logos, colours, and wording, you should be doing that anyway, plus consistent usage across first, second, and third party websites, and some image SEO. So, once again, we can see that we’re looking at branding, we’re looking at marketing across multiple platforms, and then SEO comes third. Number one is my brand. Number two is my marketing and my outreach. Number three is my SEO. Brilliantly reflected in a Knowledge Panel.

[00:29:54] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Now, Yoast, we worked with them two or three years ago on their Knowledge Panel. It looks much better now than it used to. Those attributes that we don’t yet have for Kalicube, those are going to be triggered by structured data, clear copywriting, semantic HTML5, third party sources, and knowledge bases such as Wikidata, Wikipedia, IMDb, Crunchbase, and so on and so forth.

Entity Statements: People Also Ask and People Also Search For

[00:30:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Entity statements, just think factual People Also Ask. Entity statements are basically People Also Ask presented as fact in the Knowledge Panel. You need to control that, and you would control it in the same way you would control People Also Ask, or get into People Also Ask, or trigger a featured snippet.

[00:30:34] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, if you have strategies and techniques for that, those is what you would use. And you would want to aim at the factual information about your company or about companies within your industry that Google would want to show to your audience. For example, parent company revenue, very typically questions or entity statements Google will show.

[00:30:56] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): People Also Search For, Google is showing cohort analysis. It’s showing who it thinks is closest to you within a cohort. If you don’t know what a cohort is, it’s your industry group, it’s your competitors, generally speaking. Although it’s a little bit more nuanced than that, but you should be looking here, People Also Search For at your competitors. And if it’s wrong, Google has a misunderstood which market you’re in, who are your competitors, who is your cohort.

Recommendations: The Importance of Updating Your Homepage

[00:31:29] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Any questions up till now? Okay, right, yeah. We can come back to that at the end. I’ve seen you writing notes, which is why I thought you might have something to say. Right. Number two, recommendations. I think this is hugely underestimated. Number one, update your homepage. SEOs say to me all the time, I rank number one, what do I care? You do care. That’s a branded message.

[00:32:04] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I’ll take Amazon as an example. I think it was Kevin Indig who pointed this out. Their meta title on their homepage was Cheap Books, Hi-Fi, and More. And they only changed two years ago to Smile More, Pay Less, Amazon. Smile More, Pay Less is a branded message. Cheap Bikes, Hi-Fi’s, and Books is absolute rubbish trying to rank for those general keywords.

[00:32:40] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): The homepage is for your brand. It’s for people who know who you are already. And that’s the first place that you should start to improve. Kalicube, Specialists in Brand SERP Optimisation and blah, blah, blah. We could improve on that. We’re working on our branding. And that’s the interesting part about the Kalicube Process. We’ve been two years working on it and we’re still working on it, and I can still see here that we could do better.

Rich Sitelinks: What You Can Do, What People Can Do With Your Page, Why They Should Use It and Engage With You

[00:33:05] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Number two is those Rich Sitelinks. Takes up a huge chunk of real estate that you control. Google will typically show About, Teams, Login, Contact Us. And these pages are typically pages that don’t have great meta titles and descriptions because they’re not SEO focused and worse, they don’t have content.

[00:33:27] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Write a small paragraph about what you can do, what people can do with this page, why they should use it, why they might want to engage with you through this page. Login and make your Brand SERP better. Login and start the Kalicube Process with us. That would immediately be better than just password and email login. You’re speaking to your audience right there on the Brand SERP. So, that will be number two on my list.

Picking a Social Channel: Are My Audience Engaging on This Channel Within My Industry?

[00:33:55] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Number three, pick a social channel. Twitter gets those lovely Twitter Boxes. I’m not sure that’s going to last with Elon Musk now in charge. YouTube is another opportunity. TikTok is a potential opportunity, even Facebook. All of these social channels, you would want to look at them and say, what can I do with this? Are my audience engaging on this channel within my industry?

[00:34:16] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And within the Kalicube Pro platform and within the Kalicube Process, it’s super important, not only to look at what you’re doing, but also what your industry is doing, which social channel in your industry will dominate. So, pick one, focus on that, get it working. These Twitter Boxes took us six months to get from no account at all to Twitter Boxes that look absolutely awesome. And we have total control over what’s being shown.

Client Reviews: Making Sure You Have Positive Reviews That Demonstrate What You Actually Do

[00:34:47] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Client reviews, scary. I don’t like asking clients reviews because I’m scared that they’re going to say something negative. Take it on the chin. Learn from it. If they’re saying something negative, then you’re doing something wrong or you’re not serving the right clientele.

[00:35:03] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Work through that and make sure that you’ve got these positive reviews that demonstrate what it is you’re actually doing for people, what problems you’re solving, what pain points you are relieving. And if you can do that, Google will rank them on your Brand SERP. And you look impressive to the next set of clients that are about to come through the door.

Video Strategy: YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, or Your Own Site

[00:35:24] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Further down the Brand SERP, video strategy. Here, it’s all YouTube. And you’ll notice these are all self-made videos. We’ve made videos about Kalicube, and they’re all ranking. Google wants to show our audience what we have to offer them. And if we are the best source of information video-wise of what they can expect from us, Google will allow us to display our where’s, as it were.

[00:35:52] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): All of these are ours. They’re all on YouTube. YouTube obviously dominates, but you can also use TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, or even your own site. So, don’t just stop at YouTube. Look at where your audience hangs out, where they’re engaging.

[00:36:08] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And also if you can, what we do here is pull in the videos onto our own website. It hasn’t worked in this specific case, but we could have people clicking through to Kalicube’s website instead of clicking through to YouTube if we had done our Schema Markup better. So, an improvement for Kalicube there.

Picking a Second and Third Social Platform and Having Additional Multiple Owned Sites

[00:36:30] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Then pick a second social channel. Work on that. You can immediately see here that it’s ranking. Google understands that our audience is hanging out there. They engage there. Our cohort is focused on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a huge, huge platform for B2B. It wouldn’t be for B2C. Make sure you’re focusing on the right platform. Don’t just focus on LinkedIn because I said it today, because one size does not fit all.

[00:36:57] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): In this case, pick a third social platform. But it could be a profile, it could be Crunchbase, it could be Wikidata. It doesn’t matter. Whatever is there, whatever is reasonable to be there, whatever is going to be helpful, valuable, and interesting, and engaging for your audience, work on it. And as you can see here, we’ve worked on images. And I think that’s something that’s vastly underestimated. Make sure your visuals are incredibly impressive. That looks cool, and that isn’t difficult to do.

[00:37:29] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And then additional owned sites. We have multiple sites. This is our podcast site. Once again, we have a visual that looks pretty cool as a square. And we control this, so we control the message. Controlling the message with owned websites, the ultimate, ultimate control is what we call doing a Disney. Because the Disney Corporation controlled their entire Brand SERPs with their own websites. I don’t advise doing it, but it is a lovely example of how much control you can have with owned websites.

Generative AI in Search: The Kalicube Process Sets You Up for Success in Generative AI in Search

[00:38:50] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And now the fun part, the modern part, the new part, only two weeks old, generative AI in search, Google search, generative experience. How on earth can Kalicube have this result just one week after Google launched this? And the answer is the Kalicube Process sets you up for success in generative AI in search.

[00:39:16] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): You can see here the brand voice represented in the description. That’s all to do with consistency, writing a great description, making sure it’s consistent across the web, making sure the Entity Home is recognised by Google, which feeds back to the Knowledge Panel that we were talking about earlier on.

The Importance of Google’s Understanding of Your Brand Because People Trust Google

[00:39:34] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And we can see that it understands we’re a French software company, not just a software company. And we use AI to help digital agencies. What we’ve got there in that top line is exactly what we do and who we do it for and what we then do, because we help them to manage digital ecosystems for their client. And I’ll bet my bottom dollar, if you search your company name on Google’s search generative experience, you won’t see something quite that impressive.

[00:40:05] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): We offer at the bottom online video courses to impart blah, blah, blah, blah. This is a great, great text. We wrote it, but people when they search our name think that this is Google’s invention and Google is recommending us. And that’s vital because people trust Google. They search on Google because they trust Google, and this looks like Google’s own words. It is Google’s own words, but it’s actually just our own words reworked in Google’s manner.

[00:40:42] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Next is the Entity Home. Make sure that Google has understood your Entity Home. It will almost always put it into the generative AI at the top there.

Client Recommendations, Social Profiles, and Questions That Bring the Prospect Down the Funnel

[00:40:51] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Client recommendations, Google is super keen on that. It wants to push the recommendations from clients. Obviously, if you’ve got negative reviews, it’s going to put negative reviews there. You want to identify the dominant review platforms within your cohort and prioritise those. You will also often get reviews from journalists.

[00:41:11] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Social profile, Google will tend to want to put a social profile there because it wants to give you the opportunity to engage with the company. So, identify the dominant social channel in your cohort, once again, and prioritise that.

[00:41:26] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And this is the lovely part, questions that bring the prospect down the funnel. Fabrice Canel from Bing, who’s the principal project manager at Bing for Bingbot and now I think even more than that, was mentioning or was talking to me about the idea that Bing Chat and generative AI on Google are the same thing. The aim is to bring the user down the funnel.

[00:41:53] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, you need to provide the answers to common questions through an FAQ, clear service pages, and a well-structured website so that the machine can understand how you want to bring your users, your audience down the funnel. And they will simply repeat your own funnel if your funnel is clear enough. That is key, and it’s hugely simple to do, but it takes a lot of time, takes a lot of resources, and you need to do it in a strategic manner.

The Kalicube Process is your universal future-proof strategy.
Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)

[00:42:25] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, we finished. So, the reminder now is that the Kalicube Process is your universal future-proof strategy. You need to build your digital strategy, let’s say digital search strategy, but it’s actually your entire digital strategy, from the Brand SERP outwards. Start with what your users see when they google your brand name and work out from there, using that as your prioritisation list and as your KPI.

Final Advice About the Kalicube Process From Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)

[00:42:53] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): You want to communicate with Google. You want to communicate knowledge. You want to improve the recommendations that it’s giving your audience about what’s helpful, engaging, and useful to them. And you want to feed the generative AI to make sure that in all of these different aspects, Google and Bing will always represent you to your audience in the way that you intended.

[00:43:23] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And by making sure they represent you to your audience in the way you intended, you are necessarily going to be building up the knowledge and the recommendations and dominating and controlling that search result for your own brand name.

[00:43:37] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But also I would argue, becoming the center and the focus of your cohort and dominating through what a lot of geeky people such as Koray Gubur, who is an absolute genius, called Topical Authority. Topical Authority is being the centre and the reference of your cohort. So, I would argue you need to work on both Topical Authority, but also becoming the centre, the focal point, the absolutely perfect representation of your cohort for Google and for Bing.

[00:44:11] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, the Kalicube Process, in my opinion, is the future of digital search. And that was my afternoon, was thinking, wow, I’ve just understood after 25 years.

Some Resources From Kalicube: Case Studies, FAQs, Brand SERP Support Group, and a SaaS Platform

[00:44:22] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Here are some resources. There are case studies and FAQs on Kalicube.com for everybody. If you’re more adventurous, join our Brand SERP Support Group where we talk about Knowledge Panels, Brand SERPs, the Kalicube Process, generative AI. Google Brand SERP Support Group or Kalicube Brand SERP Support Group, and you’ll find it. And then if you’re an agency, we have the SaaS Platform where we help you, or the platform helps you to optimise brands across search with Kalicube Pro.

[00:44:51] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): If you’re interested in working with us as to help you with your Kalicube Process, please do just contact us. We do work directly with clients, although that’s very limited. We have a limit of 20 clients at a time. And that was it. Thank you very much.