Knowledge panels are information boxes that appear on Google when you search for entities (i.e. people, places, organisations and things) – but what purpose do they serve and how valuable is it for your brand to appear in a Google Knowledge panel?
Those are just 2 of the questions that I’m going to be asking my guest on Digital Marketing Radio, episode 247.
He’s been a musician, a screenwriter, a songwriter and a cartoon blue dog – but he’s currently the Brand SERP Guy – a digital marketer who specialises in Brand SERP optimisation and knowledge panel management. Welcome to DMR – Jason Barnard.
[00:00:00] David Bain: Jason Barnard on DMR talking Knowledge Panels on DMR.
[00:00:13] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): That’s beautiful. That is the nicest song anybody’s ever sung for me at the start of a podcast interview.
[00:00:20] David Bain: It’s the only one, isn’t it?
[00:00:23] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Usually, I get other people with my silly song, but you actually made the effort of playing a proper instrument or writing a proper song.
[00:00:29] David Bain: This is Jason’s fault, isn’t it? That I’m doing this or is it my fault? It’s probably my fault to begin with.
[00:00:36] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): In fact, the root of the problem is completely your fault because when I launched my podcast, I said to David, I have a song, and I think I might want to sing it live to people when we’re actually doing the interview, but I feel a bit nervous because it’s a bit weird and silly. And he said, you have to have the courage to do it, go for it. And I went for it, and it was brilliant. And I sang to Anders Hjorth was the first person I sang to, and it was so, so lovely. And he’s such a lovely chap, David, too. But since then, now everybody asks me to sing my little song every time or pretty much every time. And this is the first time that somebody sung one to me, and it’s so appropriate that it should be David.
A Brief Introduction to Knowledge Panels and Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)
[00:01:19] David Bain: Digital Marketing Radio episode 247: How to Get a Google Knowledge Panel in 2021.
[00:01:32] David Bain: Hi, I’m David Bain, and this is Digital Marketing Radio, helping you to stay on top of the latest tools, tactics, and trends for all of your digital marketing needs.
[00:01:42] David Bain: Knowledge Panels are information boxes that appear on Google when you search for entities, i.e. people, places, organisations, and things. But what purpose do they serve? And how valuable is it for your brand to appear in a Google Knowledge Panel? Those are just two of the questions that I’m going to be asking my guest on Digital Marketing Radio episode 247. He’s been a musician, a screenwriter, a songwriter, a cartoon blue dog, but he’s currently The Brand SERP Guy, a digital marketer who specialises in Brand SERP optimisation and Knowledge Panel management. Welcome to DMR, Jason Barnard.
[00:02:19] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Oh, thank you very much, David. And that first question is going to be brilliant because I’ve got lots of things to say about that. And it actually does tie into the musician, blue dog, songwriter, screenwriter, and so on and so forth. So, everybody stick around because I just thought, wow, this is really cool. I just had a good idea.
Being a Cartoon Blue Dog, a Musician, and The Brand SERP Guy
[00:02:35] David Bain: Well, I said that’s going to be two of the questions, not necessarily the first question. I’ll quickly say you can find Jason over at jasonbarnard.com. And as the first question, I’m going to say, what’s it like being a blue cartoon dog?
[00:02:47] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Oh, it was wonderful. If there’s two of the best jobs in the world, being a rock musician onto playing festivals and gigs and concerts, which I did in the nineties, and being a blue dog in a cartoon series on the TV in the noughties, I think I’ve had two of the best jobs in the entire universe, and I’m so happy and grateful.
[00:03:09] David Bain: I know you’ve got the third one. You’re The Brand SERP Guy and loving tweaking things and making things appear in places where people didn’t even know the places exist.
[00:03:20] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): The first one was all about being a punk rocker and being a rocker and thinking you’re going to be famous. The second one was about educating and entertaining children, which is wonderful. And the third one is about trying to figure out how Google thinks, how Google understands, and from an intellectual standpoint, how interesting is that. The answer is, by the way, very.
What Purpose Do Knowledge Panels Serve?
[00:03:42] David Bain: Absolutely. So, many people listening, watching would have seen Knowledge Panels. Less of them will be aware that they’re actually called Knowledge Panels. But what purpose do Knowledge Panels actually serve?
[00:03:57] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Well, I was talking to Bill Slawski, who’s a big kind of geeky expert on Google-y things, and reading lots of Google-y things about Google-y things. And I hadn’t really realised what the approach was. I just thought it was Google saying, here’s some facts about whatever it is you’re searching for. So if you search for Jason Barnard, you’ll see on the right-hand side on desktop, you’ll see a panel that says Jason Barnard, British musician, some of the songs I’ve written, some of the TV series I’ve done, and people also search for on my LinkedIn and Twitter profiles. And you think, okay, that’s just Google stating facts. But in fact, what they’re trying to do is pulling information from different sources on the web that they know to be true and provide them in that box so that you don’t have to click through on the multiple links on the left-hand side.
[00:04:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, the idea is they’re doing a summary of all the information that you might want to know about this person, this brand, this podcast, whatever the entity a Knowledge Panel appears for to save you from having to go and look at all these different sites. So, it’s kind of in French, because now I am in French, we can say a precis. It’s a concise summary of the person, the brand, or the entity.
The Current State of the Knowledge Panel of Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)
[00:05:14] David Bain: So, we’ve mentioned you’re a musician. Does that pose a challenge for Google? And what happens when people search you in this year Knowledge Panel? Are you a digital marketer? Are you a musician? Are you a blend of both when it comes to your Knowledge Panel?
[00:05:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, I’ve been many, many, many things. What’s interesting about it is that I experiment on my Knowledge Panel all the time. And basically, the idea for me is to see if I change this on that site, this on that site, and move this around and change the way I describe myself, how does Google react. And one of them is I was a musician for years. Then, it said that I was an SEO consultant. Then, it said I was an author. And now, it’s gone back to musician.
[00:05:59] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the interesting thing there is it can’t understand, sorry, can’t express that I have a multifaceted nature about me. If you search for Jason Barnard professions, it will show you four or five different professions including screenwriter. So, it does understand that, but I think they’re probably right. In the context of a Knowledge Panel, how useful is it to give somebody a list of four or five different roles or jobs or aspects of me. That multifacetedness is actually saved for the rest of the Knowledge Panels.
[00:06:31] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So what it’s saying is Jason Barnard is most known for being a musician. And although today I’m known as a digital marketer, somehow that’s fair enough in the sense that I was in a band in the nineties, I made four albums, then I was Boowa and Kwala, we made two albums, I’ve recorded 200 songs, I sold maybe a hundred thousand albums in my life, well, not me, myself, obviously, the groups I’ve been in, and that’s quite a weight of, I was going to say achievement, that’s probably not the right word, quite a weight of information about me, who I am, what I do that so far at least the digital marketing world cannot compete with. I’m not at that level in the digital marketing world yet.
Google Understands by Looking at Authoritative Sources
[00:07:16] David Bain: Authoritativeness, I was going to say, but then I was thinking, can I say that word because that’s a bit of a challenging word to say.
[00:07:24] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, the other thing, and this is actually kind of really interesting when you think about how Google understands. It understands by looking at authoritative sources. And authoritative sources that the machine has been trained on are resources that have been human curated, which means that human beings have gone in and put the information in. And so, Google says, right, we can trust this, and we can give that to the machine and say to the machine that is almost certainly true.
[00:07:51] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And platforms like Wikipedia, Wikidata, IMDb, MusicBrainz, Discogs, these are all platforms that have been curated by human beings that the machine has been using for the last 15 years. So, all the information about me as a musician, a screenwriter, a filmmaker, or a blue dog is in these trusted sources that Google has been using for years and years and years. And the digital marketing stuff hasn’t been included in that kind of resource for Google, resources it’s told the machine to trust. So actually, providing a weight of proof that outweighs this information in IMDb, MusicBrainz, Wikipedia, Wikidata, and so on and so forth is going to be very, very difficult.
The Significant Amount of Commercial Value for a Brand in Having a Decent Knowledge Panel
[00:08:40] David Bain: Is it a bit of fun or is there actually significant amount of commercial value for a brand to have a decent Knowledge Panel?
[00:08:48] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, the commercial value straight off the bat comes from when you search a brand name. If there is a Knowledge Panel, the brand looks professional. It looks like, it looks credible. It looks authoritative. When there isn’t one, now, today we think, oh, there’s something missing. We don’t necessarily know what it is, but that Knowledge Panel we expect to see it. We expect to see for a brand that information that Google has curated around the web as a summary of the brand.
[00:09:17] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the other thing, of course, is with bigger brands who have low Google My Business listing. Sometimes, that Google My Business listing will rank, will appear on the right-hand side, and that makes them look like small fry. And if you can get a Knowledge Panel, it will tend to dominate the Google My Business if you can convince Google you are actually more than just a local business. So, your credibility in the eyes of your users, your audience who are searching your brand name, who are bottom-of-funnel, post-funnel, i.e. the most important people to your business, their perception of your brand through that Brand SERP is deeply affected by the Knowledge Panel, whether it’s there, whether it’s not there, whether it’s full, whether it’s empty, whether it’s accurate, whether it’s inaccurate, and whether or not it replaces your Google My Business.
Bringing Together the SEO World and the Brand SERP World
[00:09:59] David Bain: Have you ever tried or do you know if anyone else has ever tried to do some research to actually, to see what kind of impact that perceived level of increased authority actually has on purchasing decisions or willingness to consider a brand to do business with?
[00:10:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I don’t know anybody who’s done that kind of study, but I suspect. In the SEO world, the kind of people like me who come from the SEO world, we tend to think about ranking keywords and the Brand SERP, the idea that when somebody searches your brand name, it’s important and we can manage it, doesn’t tend to come up very often and on the marketing side, where brand is incredibly important. The SEO side doesn’t come up quite so much in that aspect of what people see when they google your brand name doesn’t seem to them to be so important.
[00:10:45] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): We need to bring those two worlds together and get the SEOs working on Brand SERPs, and the market is thinking about how much does that SEO work on the Brand SERP affect buying decisions. And I’m sure that’s going to happen in the next couple of years, but right now, no.
Is It Necessary for a Brand or a Key Executive Individual Within the Organisation to Have a Knowledge Panel?
[00:11:01] David Bain: Great. Great thoughts there. And what about the specific Knowledge Panels some questions? So is it more key for a brand or an individual within our organisation to have a Knowledge Panel? Is it necessary for both to have one? And if there’s a key executive within a company, is important for them to have a Knowledge Panel as well as the brand?
[00:11:22] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, for brands, it’s phenomenally important. The CEO is always going to be very important, the founder. And what you’ll see is with a good brand Knowledge Panel, you will see a link to or you will see founder, the name of the person, and you can click through it, and then you can see their Knowledge Panel.
[00:11:38] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, all of these Knowledge Panels are interlinked. What Google is saying is his, our summary. We have, for example, Kalicube. The founder is Jason Barnard. You click on Jason Barnard. It shows you Jason Barnard’s Knowledge Panel. And in that it says, companies founded: Kalicube when you go back to Kalicube, but then it also says, movies made: Boowa and Kwala. So, you can actually then do what I do, what I call Knowledge Panel hopping, which is a lot of fun, is to look at the information and say, what interests me. Click on it. Go and have a look at that. And you can actually hop. It’s like the Six whatsits of Kevin Bacon is that you can end up on pretty much anything at every given point.
[00:12:18] David Bain: Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
[00:12:19] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. That was it. And it was Julia McCoy. I managed to get from Julia McCoy to, I think it was Thelonious Monk in three or four hops. And you end up with this really bonkers relationships that you never really thought about. And it’s a really good way to waste an afternoon.
What Kind of Information Is Important for a Brand to Have In Their Knowledge Panel?
[00:12:37] David Bain: So, what about information? What kind of information is important for a brand to try and get in their knowledge Panel?
[00:12:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It actually depends on industry, interestingly enough. In a Kalicube Pro, we’ve actually got a database of 70,000 brands and people, and we divide it all down by industry to figure out what are the, we call them attributes, the information around the brand that Google’s going to show. And it varies quite a lot between industries. So in some, the stock price, obviously, if you’re a publicly traded company. The customer care number, the founder, the year founded, the revenues, the pricing. Yoast, for example, has got a pricing attribute in it.
[00:13:21] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, Google is basically saying what piece, I can’t put all the information about this brand, what are the pieces of information that are important. And on an industry level, it’s going to tend to be reasonably stable. So, you can look at what other people, other brands in your industry have, and aim to get more or less that with what I would call a bit of smart intelligence of thinking, my brand has some specifics about it that means that there might be an extra piece of information that would be useful or a piece of information that would tend to be useful within my industry that probably isn’t for my audience.
[00:13:54] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And then if you take a step back and say, what will Google think is useful to my audience, you can get a good idea from all of that kind of thought process what you want to aim for in your Knowledge Panel.
The First Steps a Brand Can Take To Have a Knowledge Panel and the Idea of Reconciliation
[00:14:04] David Bain: So if a brand doesn’t have a Knowledge Panel, what are some of the first steps that they can take to get one?
[00:14:10] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Well, John Mueler, who’s the guy from Google, the Google-y guy who tells us all what Google-y are doing at any given moment, was talking about reconciliation. And it’s a really interesting point is the biggest problem the machine has today. Because it’s no longer fully reliant on these curated sources like Wikipedia, Wikidata, IMDb, MusicBrainz, and so on and so forth, it’s actually going out there. And it’s collecting the information itself, and it’s trying to make decisions itself from information it finds absolutely anywhere on the web.
[00:14:42] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, it’s kind of they’ve taken off its training wheels, if you like. It was on it’s little tricycle, and they’ve taken off the training wheels. Now, it’s riding on its own. That’s probably not a very good analogy, but we’ll use it. And he was saying the biggest problem it has is reconciliation.
[00:14:58] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Now, what does he mean by reconciliation? He means that the information out there is fragmented, and it’s sometimes contradictory, and it’s certainly confusing for a machine. And what the machine is trying to do is say, okay, I’ve got all this information. It’s all very fragmented. I’ve got this bit here, that bit there. How do I bring it all together and try to make sense of it?
Be Active and Proactive in Making Your Entity Home
[00:15:17] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that is where you come in. And that’s where you can be active and proactive. You say, here is a page on my website. The About Us page, for example, is a good candidate. Here is the page that where I will state that defragmented version of who I am, what I do, and who my audience is. And that is what I’m calling the Entity Home.
[00:15:42] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And what that then allows Google to do is say, okay, I have a reference of what the horse says. So, it’s straight from the horse’s mouth. It’s what I say, who I am, what I do, who my audience is on the Entity Home. Then, Google can find all this fragmented information and compare it to the Entity Home or the information it has on the Entity Home, and it gives it the defragmented version that allows it then to reconsole with the other information and decide what is true and what isn’t true. So, you’re setting out the stool as it were. Sorry.
Focusing On Yourself All the Time Is One of the Mistakes You Can Avoid to Get a Knowledge Panel
[00:16:14] David Bain: And what are some of the mistakes that brands make on their Entity Home or on their About Us page? And what is an example of good practice in terms of the text that you have in your About Us page?
[00:16:25] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Biggest mistake is our mission statement is to provide the world with the best thing in the entire universe ever, ever, ever. All our clients love us because we are wonderful, and we have all these delightful people working for us and selling things to people who love us more than anything in the entire world. It’s this kind of self-centred, self-focused loving that gives no pragmatic and practical information to anybody, let alone Google.
[00:16:51] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, the first mistake is to talk rubbish or talk gush. Let’s say, the first mistake is to gush about yourself. Second is to focus on yourself all the time. We, we, we, we, we, me, me, me, me, I. And what Google is looking for is a more structured factual page that describes who you are, what you do, and who your audience is. I’ve said it three times already, but I’ll probably say it another two or three times before the end of this program in a clear, concise, and truthful manner.
[00:17:25] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And if it can have that, then it can start to compare that information with the information it’s found around the web and decide if you’re telling the truth or not. If you’re telling the truth, you’ll get an Knowledge Panel. Simple as that. Telling the truth and the corroborative information is there.
Sharing About Lesser-Known MarTech Tools Like Kalicube Pro and SE Ranking
[00:17:39] David Bain: Well, again, this is another conversation that could go on for hours. I’m sure. But let’s segue to part two of our discussion. It’s now time for Jason’s thoughts on the state of digital marketing today starting off with secret software. So, Jason, share a lesser known MarTech tool that’s bringing you a lot of value at the moment and why that tool is important for you.
[00:17:55] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. The first one is my own tool, which is Kalicube Pro which actually basically helps you to get a Knowledge Panel. And it also helps you to manage, control your Brand SERP to make sure it’s positive, accurate, and convincing, but that’s self-promotion. And that’s shameless and shameful both at the same time.
[00:18:13] David Bain: That’s not the first I know. But as long as if it’s relevant and useful, it’s fine.
[00:18:18] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, I’m going to be a bit more fair. I actually, I’ve been starting to use SE Ranking as a SEO platform. And I’ve been really, really, really pleasantly surprised by quite how good it is, how fast it is. Obviously, there were lots of tools are out there like SEMrush that I also think are great. But SE Ranking, lesser known, definitely worth taking a look at.
Canva as a Marketing Tool That Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Wants to Test
[00:18:40] David Bain: Moving on from something that you currently use to something that you’re going to use. So that is next on the list. So, what’s one marketing activity or tool that you haven’t tried yet, but you want to test in?
[00:18:51] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Canva. I’ve always been kind of slightly dubious about a graphic design tool online. Being a bit of a snob, I think I should be using Photoshop or whatever. But in fact, what I’ve done is I’ve got a graphic designer to do an entire graphic designed bible with the logos, the colours, templated thumbnails and images and social media sharing stuff. And then, I’m just going to try putting it all together in Canva. And I have to admit, it’s not something I’m going to use. It’s something I started using a couple of days ago. And so far, it looks like it’s going to be a big success.
[00:19:27] David Bain: That’s great. I love that idea as well. I’ve used Canva in the past, but I’m not actively using it at the moment. My intention is to create more templates that I can easily get, a graphic designer simply to add other elements to, and perhaps someone else to post in social media as well. I think it’s a wonderful social sharing tool when you’re outsourcing certain aspects of what you do to a virtual team.
Warning: It’s Important to Not Think That Doing Canva Is Being a Graphic Designer
[00:19:51] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. And I think, just as a warning, I think it’s important to not think, oh, I’ve got Canva, therefore, I’m a graphic designer.
[00:19:59] David Bain: Yeah.
[00:19:59] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): The design aspect is a whole career and job thing of its own. What you can do with Canva is put the elements together. And if the graphic designer can prepare these templates and these elements and tell you which colours go together and you’ve got a colour template, it actually becomes reasonably easy and you can make a pretty good hash of pretty much anything. But the fundamental foundation is still a graphic designer.
[00:20:22] David Bain: Oh, absolutely. That’s what I was talking about. There’s the templates to begin with. And then once the template is done, all the virtual assistant has to do is go in there, edit the text, and maybe add a photograph in there as well. And hey, presto, you’ve got a lovely looking image that you can share.
[00:20:36] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Hundred percent. The Kalicube graphic design, if you look at that, you’ll see that it’s fairly standardised, and it looks pretty good. And we’ve been using the templated idea for a long time, just not using Canva, but Canva just makes it so much easier. Oh, sorry. That was a bit strange. And I have no relationship with Canva at all. It’s just I’m kind of keen because it’s fun and easy.
Doing a Quick Response to 10 Questions Round
[00:20:57] David Bain: That makes it wonderful to use. Let’s move on to the this or that route. So, this is the quick response round. 10 quick questions. Just two rules here: try not to think too much about the answer, and you’re only allowed to say the word both on one occasion so use it wisely. Are you ready?
[00:21:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Yeah. That’s clear.
[00:21:17] David Bain: TikTok or Twitter?
[00:21:18] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Twitter.
[00:21:20] David Bain: Facebook or LinkedIn?
[00:21:22] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): LinkedIn.
[00:21:22] David Bain: YouTube or podcast?
[00:21:25] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): YouTube.
[00:21:26] David Bain: Traffic or leads?
[00:21:30] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Traffic.
[00:21:31] David Bain: Paid search or SEO?
[00:21:33] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): SEO.
[00:21:34] David Bain: Ads or influencers?
[00:21:37] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Influencers.
[00:21:38] David Bain: Google Ads or Facebook Ads?
[00:21:41] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Google Ads.
[00:21:42] David Bain: Email marketing or chat marketing?
[00:21:45] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I don’t know what the first one is.
[00:21:47] David Bain: Email marketing.
[00:21:48] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Oh, email. Oh, email marketing. Sorry, I didn’t understand.
[00:21:51] David Bain: MarTech stack or all-in-one platform?
[00:21:56] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): MarTech stack.
[00:21:58] David Bain: One-to-one or scale?
[00:22:01] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): One-to-one.
[00:22:04] David Bain: No use of both. No need for the use of both. That was relatively easy.
[00:22:07] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I’m a decisive guy.
Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Explaining Why He Chose YouTube Over Podcasts
[00:22:09] David Bain: You are. Would you go back and change any answers?
[00:22:12] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Potentially, YouTube or podcasts. I would have said both if I’d known that I was playing my joker safely.
[00:22:19] David Bain: Who is too early in the list just to be sure about it.
[00:22:23] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. I was saving the joker for a moment when I might really truly need it.
[00:22:28] David Bain: So, why then did you actually choose YouTube? Because, obviously, you went for that one there as well. Are you getting more volume from YouTube?
[00:22:37] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Actually, no. It’s because I watched a whole thing about YouTube Shorts, and I’m currently building a plan to do some YouTube Shorts. And I’m, basically, I’m like a kid. Whatever you told me last, I’m going to be most enthusiastic about today. And it happens to be YouTube Shorts today. If you ask me tomorrow, it might be podcast.
The Plan of What Video Content Will Be Shared on YouTube Shorts
[00:22:54] David Bain: So, what is your plan then? What kind of video content are you going to be sharing in Shorts?
[00:23:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I’m thinking about doing The Daily Brand SERP. It’s a series, a hashtag series that we’ve got going on Twitter and LinkedIn where we pick a Brand SERP every day and isolate or identify one specific thing that’s either good, bad, or just interesting about it. And then, we’ve been tweeting and LinkedIn-ing about it.
[00:23:23] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I thought that would be a really nice kind of short 32nd video where we say, here’s, for example, Nike, here’s their Brand SERP in the US. Here’s something that’s interesting. They’ve got video boxes. Why is that interesting? How do you get them yourselves? So, it’s this really kind of quick introduction to Brand SERPs, why they’re important, which elements of a Brand SERP you can be looking at, and how you can actually start to manage it in 30 seconds.
[00:23:49] David Bain: Great. Yeah. I’ll just tell the listener or viewer I’m intending doing the same thing just after we finished recording. I’m going to ask, Jason, the question. Well, what’s one thing that you wish you did share, but you didn’t have the opportunity to share? And I’m going to include that as part of YouTube Shorts as well. So, that lot to be interesting just to see if we get much traction, but obviously you have to keep the videos to under a minute in length. They have to be vertical as well. So, it’s a slightly different type of video or potentially even audience that you’re aiming for.
[00:24:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, yeah. It’s a different set of rules. It’s YouTube competing with TikTok. It’s fun because I’ve never heard about it until yesterday morning. And yesterday afternoon, I researched it. And today, I’ve decided I’m going to do a series of them which is just silly but fun.
What Would Jason Do if He Was Given $10,000 to Grow His Business?
[00:24:32] David Bain: I look forward to seeing it. So, let’s move on to the $10,000 question. If I were to give you $10,000 and you had to spend it over the next few days in a single thing to grow your business, what would you spend it on? And how would you measure success?
[00:24:45] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Oh, right. I didn’t realise it was the next few days, but I would actually pay for somebody or a team to redo the UX of Kalicube Pro and actually implement it because the coding is difficult for me because I think the UX is good. But I truly believe that the single most important thing for a SaaS Platform is how comfortable the user feels using it because if they feel comfortable, they’ll get more value. If they get more value, they’re happier. And right now, I think, although we have a great UX, it could be better. So, give me 10,000 pounds today, David, and I will have spent it in a week, and Kalicube will be a lot better. When do I get the 10,000?
People Expect Things to Be Handed to Them on a Plate as Part of UX (User Experience)
[00:25:31] David Bain: Well, I use the subjunctive tense. I said were. So, it’s not a definitive thing that was going to happen. But in relation to UX, what’s one thing that users are looking for nowadays that probably didn’t exist or wasn’t part of good UX five years ago?
[00:25:52] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, I don’t know if it’s always been part of UX, but people expect things to be handed to them on a plate. If there’s any kind of complication or confusion, people just drop it. And I think this is, it’s not people in general, me too, is you go in, you say, I click on a button, I click on a button, I click on a button. It’s all set up. It gives me the answer, and that’s me, done. And if I have to think about it and analyse it and try to understand the thinking behind it, I’m going to give up.
What’s coming forwards more and more in UX is handing it to people on a plate… From my brain to their actions, it should be seamless.
jason barnard (the brand serp guy)
[00:26:20] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, for me, what’s coming forwards more and more in UX is handing it to people on a plate, making sure that all of the stuff that’s going on into my brain that I’m trying to communicate through this platform to help them is actually seamless for them. From my brain to their actions, it should be seamless.
[00:26:39] David Bain: And easy to find. I was watching the launch video yesterday of Captivate 2.0. Captivate is the service that I use to host and publish my podcast on. And they were saying as part of the launch, they were changing the platform just to make it as easy as possible for people to find anything. So, there’s a more search functionality, and you can quickly type in something that you’re looking for, and then you’ll quickly and easily uncover, instead of having to click through about three or four different elements or go through different sub menus to find something.
[00:27:08] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Yeah. We’ve got a small problem with the sub menus, and I would love to figure out, sort that out, but all I need to do now is go and look at Captivate, steal all their ideas, job done.
[00:27:17] David Bain: The new version, I think it’s Wednesday it’s launching. So, you can check it out after that. Let’s finish this.
[00:27:23] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It’s too late because I already will have spent my $10,000.
[00:27:26] David Bain: Well, there we go. There we go. You’ll have to find another $10,000 from some other generous benefactor.
Giving Shout-Outs to Marketers Like Nik Ranger and Paige Hobart
[00:27:34] David Bain: To finish off, let’s shift the focus to someone else who deserves it so that is a magical marketer. So, who’s an up-and-coming marketer that you’d like to give a shout-out to? What can we learn from them? And where can we find them?
[00:27:46] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Well, I was going to say Nik Ranger, but apparently, Anton Shulke said it last week. So, Nik Ranger gets a shout-out, but that’s, I’m allowed a second one because that’s a double as it were. So, Paige Hobart, who was neck and neck with Nik Ranger of being super smart, super interesting. What I love about Paige is she’s incredibly interested in SERP features, all of those Rich Elements you get, including Knowledge Panels and Knowledge Graphs. And every time we talk about it, we start off with saying, oh, we’ll talk for 15 minutes. And it ends up being an hour. She’s phenomenally interesting, phenomenally intelligent, phenomenally knowledgeable, and a delightful human being to boot.
The Summary of What The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard) Talked About For This Episode
[00:28:29] David Bain: Lovely. Well, this was episode 247 of Digital Marketing Radio where Jason Barnard from jasonbarnard.com shared superb specific tips about Knowledge Panels. So, Jason, you were sharing about how to grow your brand authority, how SEO and marketing should work more together for things like the brand value on the SERP, and how much additional authority and probably likelihood to purchase that that leads to someone.
[00:28:59] David Bain: You talked about the About Us page being an entity’s home and about the importance of not having any loving on your About Us page and to talk about who you are, what you do, be very specific about what you do in the About Us page to give you that initial Knowledge Panel on Google. Your secret software was Kalicube Pro and also SE Ranking. Next on the list, Canva. And your magical marketer was going to be Nik Ranger, but turned out to be Paige Hobart.
Connect With Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Through Twitter to Follow His Experiments
[00:29:27] David Bain: Everything, Jason, that you mentioned in today’s show and more will be available in the show notes at digitalmarketingradio.com. Jason, what’s the best social platform for someone to follow you and say, hi?
[00:29:38] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I like Twitter a lot. It’s fun. I tend to tweet my experiments. I do experiments on Knowledge Graphs and Brand SERPs on multiple mad things like cartoon characters, myself, music, my music albums, all of these stuff. And I tweeted out onto Twitter. So if you’re interested in following mad experiments on Knowledge Panels and Brand SERPs, follow me on Twitter.
[00:30:00] David Bain: Do that. Well, thanks so much for coming on. I’ve been your host, David Bain. You can also find me producing podcasts for B2B brands over at castingcred.com. And remember, wherever you’re tuning in, comments and reviews are richly appreciated. Until we meet again, stay hungry, stay foolish, and stay subscribed. Aloha.
