Google is a Child that wants to learn – Understanding how SEO actually Works with Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)
Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) is an author and digital marketing consultant who specialises in Brand SERPs and Knowledge Panels. Jason’s first book, The Fundamentals of Brand SERPs for Business, was published in January 2022. He regularly publishes articles on leading digital marketing publications such as Search Engine Journal and Search Engine Land and regularly writes for others including WordLift, SE Ranking, SEMrush, Search Engine Watch, Searchmetrics, and Trustpilot. He has been studying, tracking, and analysing Brand SERPs since 2013.
To Know more about him, visit – https://withjasonbarnard.com
Introducing the Topic and the Guest, Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy), Who Is an Author and a Digital Marketing Consultant
[00:00:00] Prince Kumar Singh: Hello, everyone. Welcome to Digital Marketing Gyaan podcast, your favourite podcast, where we interact with different guests from the digital marketing world and try to understand the latest trends, techniques, case studies, and updates in this domain. I’m your host, Prince Kumar. And today, we are very much excited to discuss on the topic, Google is a child that wants to learn, understanding how SEO actually works.
[00:00:36] Prince Kumar Singh: And our guest for today is Jason Barnard. He is also called The Brand SERP Guy. Jason is an author and digital marketing consultant, who specialises in Brand SERPs and Knowledge Panels. He has recently published his first book, The Fundamentals of Brand SERPs for Business. He regularly publishes articles on leading digital marketing publications, such as Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, and regularly writes for others. Hi, Jason, and welcome on our show.
[00:01:21] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Thank you very much, Prince. It’s absolutely lovely to be here.
The Experiences of Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) in the Corporate World: Establishing a Record Company, Entertainment Company, and Digital Marketing Company
[00:01:24] Prince Kumar Singh: Okay. So, Jason, just to start with our conversation, can it help us know a bit about your corporate journey? Because definitely we know that you must be having a vast experience into this corporate world. So, can you just help the audience understand a bit about yourself?
[00:01:41] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. I’ve actually created, founded multiple companies over the years, but I’ve always created these companies to serve the purpose that I was trying to fulfill. So, the first company was actually a record company. We released a record because I had a music group and I wanted to release the record. So, I created the music company, the record company to release the record. The second one was a children’s entertainment company, because I wanted to make cartoons for kids. And we based that in Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, which was absolutely delightful living on a tropical island. That was a very successful business. We did very, very, very well for a few years.
[00:02:23] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And now I’ve created Kalicube, which is digital marketing focusing on Brand SERPs, the search engine results page for a brand name. So, what your audience sees when they Google your brand name. And Knowledge Panels too, which is a reflection of Google’s understanding of who you are, what you do, and who your audience is. And this particular company is incredibly technical and digital. The one before was all about cartoons for kids, and the one before that was about music in the folk punk environment, which is wonderful.
Jason’s Work Doesn’t Include the Overall SEO, But SEO Benefits Enormously From Brand SERPs and Knowledge Panels
[00:03:01] Prince Kumar Singh: Do you basically work on these two terms only, the Brand SERP and the Knowledge Panel, or you work for the overall SEO?
[00:03:09] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, I don’t work directly on the overall SEO, but the overall SEO benefits enormously from the Brand SERP and the Knowledge Panel. Basically, if Google has an understanding of who you are, what you do, and who your audience is, that is reflected in your Knowledge Panel on your Brand SERP. Once it’s understood who you are, what you do, and who your audience is, that’s the point at which it’s much more likely to offer your offers and solutions to its users when they’re searching for a solution to their problem or an answer to their question.
[00:03:45] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Because at the very foundation, what Google is doing is getting its users from their problem to the solution to that problem as efficiently as possible. And in order to offer you as a solution to any problem to the correct audience, it needs to understand, once again, who you are, what you do, and who your audience is. That’s where you win the SEO game. It’s the foundation of the house that is SEO.
Because Some People Don’t Understand Jason’s Courses, He Wrote a Book So That Anybody Can Have a Grasp of What He Is Talking About
[00:04:14] Prince Kumar Singh: You have given a bit of detail about what’s your work for. And so just aside of that, you have also recently launched a book. So, can you help the audience understand a bit about the book? What it is or what are the major contents that one can expect? What is the book or what are the rest of the book? And also, who are the target audience or who are the audience who should purchase this book or who should read it?
[00:04:48] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, that’s a really, really interesting question because I wrote the book because I’d done, I’d created some video courses, so I’ve got online courses. And the courses sell very well, but some people couldn’t understand what I was talking about because it was a little bit too technical for them. It was aimed at people who understood digital marketing a little bit. So, what I then did is took the courses and wrote them as a book so that anybody can understand what it is I’m talking about, why it’s important, and how you can drive your entire online business strategy through simply looking at your brand through the lens of Google.
If the Result of Your SERP Is Not Showing What You Thought It Would Show, You Immediately Know That Google Has Misunderstood
[00:05:30] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, what Google shows when your audience googles your brand name is a reflection of its understanding of what your audience is looking for. So, as soon as you look at that result and you see it’s not showing what I thought it should show, you immediately know that Google has misunderstood. And if it’s misunderstood, that means that your digital footprint, which is what it understands you from, is incorrect.
[00:05:58] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And what you then do is rather than think, well, where shall I go first? Should I go to Facebook first or should I go to Twitter first to correct that? Or should I go to Crunchbase or get some articles in the Times of India, for example? You would look at your Brand SERP and you would say, well, what’s there? I can start there. So, it allows you to prioritise step by step how you go out there and make sure that your digital ecosystem is healthy and that you’re truly engaging with your audience, your real audience in the places that they really do hang out.
The Book Contains Advice About How to Manage Your Homepage, How to Get a Knowledge Panel, and How to Get Your Social Media on Your Brand SERP
[00:06:32] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the other thing, of course, is that it reflects back to the brand message that you are putting out there. So, you can immediately see, is the internet reflecting what I think about my own brand? So, that’s the foundational idea of it. It’s an incredibly simple approach to your entire digital marketing strategy.
[00:06:55] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And then on top of that, you can build lots of simple things, which are the book contains lots of good advice about how to manage your homepage so that it looks great at the top when somebody searches your brand name, how to get a Knowledge Panel on the right hand side, that’s the information box that Google shows on the right hand side on the desktop, how to get your social media channels to look great, how to get them to rank, how to get them up there onto the Brand SERP so that they can represent you to your audience in the way you want.
Your Brand SERP Is Your Business Card and Google Is Showing What It Understood About Your Brand and Where Your Audience Might Engage With You
[00:07:22] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Because your Brand SERP is your business card. And Google’s aim with that business card is to say to the user, it’s user, who are your audience. And remember your audience is a subset of Google’s users. Google is saying to them, here is what I have understood about this brand, this company, and here is where you might want to engage with them.
[00:07:47] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So if you look at Kalicube’s Brand SERP, for example, it starts with the kalicube.com site, then the Kalicube Pro SaaS platform, then Twitter boxes, then YouTube video boxes, then LinkedIn, and then Crunchbase. So, you can go down there and our users, who are searching for us, can choose how they want to engage with the company and its products.
The Book Is Accessible to Any Business Owner; An Agency Even Buys Boxes of It and Gives It to Their Clients
[00:08:10] Prince Kumar Singh: So, is this book for the digital marketers or even business owners can understand these? Do you have a strategy that you’re doing?
[00:08:22] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. It’s a great question. As I said, I actually got some help with writing the book from somebody who didn’t know anything about digital marketing. And between us, she basically said to me, this is too complicated, I don’t understand. So, we rewrote it together to make it so that it’s accessible to absolutely any business owner.
[00:08:43] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And one of the agencies that use our SaaS platform, which is a very geeky, complicated software as a service platform, buys a copy of the book and gives it to every single client he takes on. And he says, you read that book, you will understand where we’re coming from, why we’re doing this, why it’s good for your business. And they all read it over a weekend. At the end of the weekend, they come back and they say, I’ve got it, I’ve understood, I know where we’re going, I have in my mind a digital marketing strategy for my business, big or small.
[00:09:15] Prince Kumar Singh: Great. This is a great testimony that they have understood that, since your client are recommending it to their customers. And that can be the best thing there.
[00:09:24] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): They’re not just recommending it. They’re buying it for their clients. They’re buying big boxes and giving them away, which is great.
Some of the Major Trends Dominating the SEO Industry: The Move Away From Keywords and the Concept of E-A-T
[00:09:31] Prince Kumar Singh: Amazing. So, since we’ll be talking about SERP, along with that, we’ll also try to understand from your point of view, what do you think are some of the major trends that are dominating the SEO industry as of now?
[00:09:50] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. That’s a lovely question, because the biggest trend of all is the move away from keywords, the concept of what somebody types into Google, to what are they actually looking for, what is their intent, what is their problem. And Google’s getting better and better understanding that problem. So, it’s less and less about matching words on your page to the words in the search query and more and more about matching the solution on your webpage to the problem that the user has expressed to Google. That’s point number one.
[00:10:24] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Point number two is E-A-T, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. Google, because it wants to send its users to the best possible solution, it’s looking for a solution from a provider who is expert in the field, authoritative within that field, and trustworthy. Let’s say credible, a credible solution. And we talk a lot about expertise, authority, and trust. Google says E-A-T. That’s all about you ensuring that you focus on your core topic and that you provide the best possible solution to your end user.
Look More on Serving an Intent and Focus on Who You’re Trying to Serve and How You Can Communicate and Educate Google
[00:11:02] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, we’re looking much more at topicality, authoritativeness, trustworthiness, and expertise to serve an intent, which is represented by the words that people type into Google. So, as businesses, we need to start thinking much more, interestingly enough, as businesses. As an offline business, you would expect somebody to come back because you’re expert, you’re authoritative, and you’re trustworthy, and because you serve their need.
[00:11:29] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It’s exactly the same with Google online. You want people walking, let’s say, walking in off the street that is Google. Google is a street. People are walking down there looking for things. You want them to walk into their shop when you can actually provide a solution. You don’t want somebody looking to buy a pen walking into your electronic store. It’s a waste of everybody’s time.
[00:11:51] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, you’ve really got to focus on who you’re trying to serve and how you can communicate to Google, educate Google, as we’ll see later on, educate Google about who it is you serve, with what solutions, and why you are the best in your market.
More About Keywords and Intent and the Topic: Google Is a Child Who Wants to Learn
[00:12:06] Prince Kumar Singh: But eventually, you have given that kind of note, one of the most kind of trend that should be dominating. And that trend is dominating and that is what we need to understand, because working on the keyword was the work of the past. Now we need to understand what are the intent of our work.
[00:12:24] Prince Kumar Singh: Coming to the topic that we have planned for today, this is something that is very interesting and people want to know more about it. You have mentioned that Google is a child that wants to learn. So, can you help us understand why the statement is there and what is the reason behind it?
[00:12:45] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. This move away from keywords is linked to Google becoming more intelligent, let’s say. So, I did some air quotes there because intelligence is a relative idea for a machine at least. In the old world of SEO when Google was, let’s say, a bit stupid, it would look at the characters in a word and it would match it to the words on the page. And it would say, well, if that page has the same set of characters, JASON space BARNARD, it must be about Jason Barnard.
[00:13:20] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that’s a very simplistic thing of saying we match the words in the query to the words on the page, but you immediately come across a big problem, which is words are ambiguous. Intent isn’t always obvious. Intent is sometimes explicit, buy red shoes, but sometimes it’s implicit, great red shoes. I’d be looking for great red shoes because I want to buy them. So, that’s an implicit intent to buy. And Google’s trying to understand that intent.
Google Is a Child Who Is Working Through This Massive Encyclopedia, Which Is the Web and Is Trying to Organise the Information to Understand the World
[00:13:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But in order to understand that intent, it needs to understand the world. And it’s trying to understand the world much like a child tries to understand the world. So, what we have is if you imagine a child who has an encyclopedia, let’s say the child is looking at Wikipedia. It can look things up in Wikipedia and it’s terribly happy and it’s got the facts in front of it.
[00:14:12] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Google is a child with Wikipedia times a hundred million. It has so many facts in front of it. And what it’s trying to do is work through this massive, massive encyclopedia that’s the web, but the information is disorganised. And so, it’s trying to organise the information in its mind so that it can understand the world correctly.
[00:14:36] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And as you well know and I well know, human beings are not consistent. Human beings have a tendency to be a little bit random. So, what the child has is an incredibly confused set of signals to try to understand us in particular. I’m talking now at the micro level. My company probably doesn’t explain itself as well as it possibly could. It isn’t clear to the child.
The Steps in Educating Google: Explain Who You Are, What You Do, and Who Your Audience Is and Confirm It Through Consistent Corroborative Sources
[00:15:02] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, the first step we need to do is say, how am I explaining who I am, what I do, and who my audience is to this child. And I do that on my website. And the child sees that on my website and it says, okay, I understand that because you’ve been very clear about what it is you do, who you serve. And then we can point it. We can say to the child, well, go over there to my LinkedIn profile, go to Crunchbase, go to Wikidata, go to IMDb, go to the Times of India. And it will say the same thing. There is corroborative information.
[00:15:34] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But crucially, if the child goes there and it says something different or it says the same thing in a very bizarre, strange manner that it doesn’t understand, you are not helping the child to learn. The child needs to learn by consistent corroborative sources saying the same thing that confirm what you’ve already said about yourself. And it needs to find that information on authoritative trustworthy sites. So, we come back to that idea of authoritative and trustworthy and expert.
[00:16:08] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And when it goes to these sites, it’s not necessarily, for example, the Times of India, you don’t need these big, big, big press or sources. You want to look for something that’s niche and geolocally pertinent. So, for me in Paris, the Times of India isn’t the best source for me to get this confirmation for the child of who I am, what I do, and who my audience is. It would be the local Parisian newspaper because I live in Paris in France.
[00:16:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And so, you want to look for these corroborative sources. Get that information onto them so the child can see this corroboration, this confirmation from sources it trusts within your niche, both industry and geo.
Google Is Moving Towards Providing Information Directly on the SERP to Get the User to the Solution as Efficiently as Possible
[00:16:58] Prince Kumar Singh: This idea you have given, this is why I guess you have mentioned earlier on. And that is why the reason because Google is still into the learning. Google is trying to understand what an object can do. So, how do you think that Google will be evolving in the future or let’s say we cannot predict the future, at least for the next one to two years? How do you think that Google will be evolving?
[00:17:22] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Google is moving increasingly towards providing information directly on its search engine results pages. So, the next one to two years, we’re going to see more and more information being provided by Google on the search engine results page, the SERP. So, people won’t need to click through to the sites.
[00:17:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Because if we come back to what I said earlier, Google’s aim is to get the person, the user to the solution to their problem as efficiently as possible. And it’s more efficient on the search results page than having to click through to your website. That’s very unfortunate for the website, but we have to learn to live with that because that’s what’s going to happen.
Google Is Also Giving Its Users the Choices They Didn’t Initially Search For, Like How People Also Ask Shows Additional Questions
[00:18:02] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): The other thing it’s going to do is try to help its users along the journey that it thinks they’re trying to take. So, what that means is it will increasingly give us choices that we didn’t deem initially search for. And one example of that is People Also Ask. You see them all the time. It’s the additional questions that people also ask that Google puts in the middle of the results, and they’re related questions to whatever it is you search for.
[00:18:31] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So if I search for Brand SERPs, it will show a related question, what is branding in SEO? Another related question, what is SEO? Another question, what is a SERP? And what Google is doing is saying, well, if you’re interested in Brand SERPs, you are potentially interested in these related questions. So, what it’s doing is guiding me, the user, through a journey using the SERP to provide me with what I think they call them educational moments, where they think they can help educate us and help us move towards our ultimate goal.
[00:19:07] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Because when we’re searching for something, Brand SERPs are very vague. If Google can get me to be more specific by proposing different paths through the SERP, that’s very interesting. So, that’s where we’re going. And as businesses, we need to understand that Google’s aim is always to provide the solution the most efficiently it can to its user.
The Content You Produce Is a Representation of Your Brand; Make Sure That It Is Aimed at Your Audience, Not Google
[00:19:29] Prince Kumar Singh: So, since you have mentioned that Google is trying or the plan of Google is somewhere to show the end result at the SERPs. So, how do you think that the digital marketers or the SEO guys need to rework on their strategy so that they can get the best one?
[00:19:51] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): That’s a great question. The content that you produce is a representation of your brand. And every piece of content you produce, Google digests it, and it sees it as one tiny piece in the puzzle that makes up your entire brand message and your entire brand presence. But each of those pieces has an opportunity to appear on a SERP or in Google Discover or on Google News.
[00:20:17] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And you need to make sure that the content you’re making is aimed at your audience. Don’t aim it at Google. Don’t create content because you think Google will like it. Create content because it’s useful, helpful, and valuable to your audience. It provides a solution to a problem they truly have, and that it is truly your core audience that you created the content for. When you create the content, you create it for the user and then you package it for Google.
Packaging Your Content for Google Is All the SEO Techniques; The Better Google Understands, the More Likely It Is to Present You to Your Audience
[00:20:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And packaging it for Google is all the SEO techniques. It’s making sure that the wording is understandable. It’s making sure you’re using the headings within the text. It’s making sure that when you make a video, you do a transcript and you do subtitles, and you add schema markup as well. And that means that Google can digest this content, understand it more easily. Because the better it understands what it is you are offering and to whom, the more likely it is to present it to your correct audience.
[00:21:12] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And things like Google Discover is Google, once again, pushing this content towards a user. Google Discover is all about pushing a specific kind of content. Google is saying, because we know who you are, because you have a Google account or you have an Android phone, we can suggest content that we think is interesting.
[00:21:35] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, as a marketer, we need to now make sure that Google understands who our audience is, because then it can potentially push our content to that audience without that audience actively searching for anything in particular. So, we get pushed towards our audience, the subset of Google’s users, who are truly our audience. And that is very powerful.
The Foundational Aspect of SEO for Every Brand is How Well Does Google Understand Who You Are, What You Have to Offer, and to Whom You Can Offer It
[00:21:58] Prince Kumar Singh: You’re right. Very right. So, since you were mentioning about the Google Discover, so similarly we have Google Knowledge Graph and Google News. So, can you help us understand what’s the opportunity in these platforms or in these mediums that the SEO guys need to explore to get a good increase into their overall? Because they are considered as a gold mine, if we mentioned about industry. So, can you help us understand how we can leverage these, all of these, the Google Knowledge Graph, the Google Discover, and the Google News?
[00:22:38] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. I think the most fundamentally important thing is the understanding that Google has. You mentioned the Knowledge Graph. We’re talking about Discover. The foundational aspect of the future of SEO for every brand is how well does Google understand who you are, how well does it understand what you have to offer, and how well does it understand to whom you can offer it, i.e. your audience, and have you convinced it that you are the best solution.
[00:23:11] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And everything in SEO will be based on that. As I said earlier on, it’s the foundation, and SEO is the house you put on top of it. If you just aim for keywords and you do SEO for SEO’s sake, let’s say, you won’t have any foundations, and the house will fall apart. You need to build the foundational understanding that Google has in order to build your SEO house so that Google can then serve the content.
You Can’t Expect Google to Understand on Its Own; Do a Spring Clean, Work on Your Expertise, Authority, and Trust, and Build Confidence
[00:23:38] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the other important thing is you can’t expect Google to understand all on its own. As I said earlier, the information about us is fragmented. We tend not to be very consistent when we talk about ourselves. Your profile on LinkedIn contradicts your profile on Twitter, it contradicts Crunchbase. And your website says something different and entirely different again.
[00:24:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And from that perspective, if you start now cleaning up, doing a spring clean on your brand house, let’s say, making sure that all of this information corresponds, so that Google the child can get a clear picture of who you are, what you do, and who your audience is. That’s the place to start, the spring clean on what currently exists. Then you’ve built the foundation of understanding that Google will be able to get in its brain.
[00:24:25] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And then you can start working on your E-A-T, expertise, authority, and trust, by indicating to Google, building those sound foundations more and more solid by convincing it that it has hundred percent understood, because you have understanding and then you have confidence in that understanding. So, the first thing is to build understanding by doing your spring clean. And the next thing is to build confidence in that understanding by presenting reliable sources to back you up.
Google News Is Not a Great Target for SEO; Answering Simple Questions in FAQs in a Simple Manner Is Great for Your Audience
[00:24:56] Prince Kumar Singh: So, can you also help the audience understand if they have a business or if they have a website? So, what are the best things or what are the things that they can work upon to get their website visible into Google News? Because getting the visibility in Google News, it’s not easy. Because Google News has a restriction that it should not be used promotionally, something like that. So, can you help the audience understand what can be the basic things that we should prepare if we want that our website should be visual into Google News?
[00:25:32] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. Google News is really tricky because the idea of news is very much media based. So, it’s going to be newspapers and magazines and TV channels. So, as a small publisher, it’s very difficult to get any traction at all in Google News. And you’re competing against very big websites.
[00:25:53] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): The other problem is that Google News and Google Discover for that matter are very short term. They’ll peak very quickly and then they’ll disappear. So if you can’t hit it right on the nail and get the timing exactly right, you’ve lost all your efforts. So, unless you’re a news outlet, I wouldn’t recommend Google News as being a particularly great target for SEO. You want to look for the evergreen content, the content that your audience are always looking for.
[00:26:20] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, from that perspective, things like FAQs are great. Answering the simple questions in a simple manner for your audience the questions they will always be asking. So, I’m not saying don’t go for Google News. I’m saying it’s time sensitive, it’s difficult, and you’re competing against the big guns. Whereas if you go for FAQs, it’s simple and you’re competing for your audience’s attention with simple, helpful answers to simple questions. And I think the second option for me is more powerful and more reasonable for a smaller business.
In the World of Zoom During the Pandemic, Google’s Representation of You in Your Google Business Card Became Phenomenally Important
[00:26:58] Prince Kumar Singh: So, you have also talked about Brand SERP optimisation being as designing your Google business card. Can you expand on that?
[00:27:09] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. I think the world of Zoom that we’ve been through during the COVID pandemic has been interesting from the perspective of when you meet somebody face to face before COVID, you would then walk out of the room, go home. And if you were interested in working with them, you would google their name on your computer. And I was saying that’s your Google business card, but you don’t really know it because people do it themselves, but they don’t think other people do it to them.
[00:27:38] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But during Zoom, the Zoom period, let’s call it, of COVID, I’m talking to you. I’m sitting here on my phone pretending to listen to you, googling your name to check out who you are. So, it’s actually now this source of information for us all talking to each other remotely like this. So you can imagine that while I’m in a meeting with you as a potential client, let’s say, we’ll be googling each other. And that is your business card.
Your Google Business Card Needs to Confirm Your Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness, and Credibility
[00:28:09] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): What you are saying to me is great, but the business card that I’m looking at while I’m talking to you needs to confirm. And it needs to confirm, and I’m coming back to it again, the expertise, the authority, and the credibility, and the trustworthiness. Because if I’m talking to you about working with me as an agency to help you with your Brand SERP or your Knowledge Panel, if you search my name and it says something along the lines of Jason Barnard is a doctor in philosophy from Liverpool. You’re not going to trust me to help you with your Brand SERP and your Knowledge Panel.
[00:28:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But if it says Jason Barnard is The Brand SERP Guy, he specialises in Knowledge Panels and Brand SERPs, and there’s lots of videos of me talking about it, and there’s a Knowledge Panel that also says the same thing, Google is recommending that aspect of me. So, you are looking at my Google business card and you’re thinking, wow, yeah, he does do what he says he does. He is an expert. He is authoritative. He is trustworthy. He is credible. And Google has confirmed it.
[00:29:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And ask yourself the question, why did you look on Google? Because you trust Google. So, Google’s judgment on who you are, what you do, who your audience is, and Google’s representation of you through your Google business card is phenomenally important.
[00:29:29] Prince Kumar Singh: Definitely, definitely. Very rightly you have said that because before COVID, people used to when they were used to interact, then they used to have that intro and by that only they were making sense. But now, we have that approach to that. If we are meeting everyone online, at the same instance, we can check their complete profile, get complete bio, the experience, these all things, and we can get a better understanding of the person. And that also, it’ll be hardly in five to ten minutes that you can take out the complete info.
[00:30:04] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. The fact that people research each other and they research companies and they do it through Google is something that is blindingly obvious when you think about it because we all do it. And the fact that you can control what people see when they are researching you through Google, basically optimising the lens through which Google is magnifying you. It’s something we can do. We can educate this child that is Google to show us to our audience and people researching us in the best possible light. The child wants to represent us honestly. It just needs to understand, and we need to explain.
For Individuals Looking for a Job, Your LinkedIn Profile Is Important Because Recruiters Will Look at It
[00:30:50] Prince Kumar Singh: Perfect. And I guess the best example that we can see is in the recruitment. Because previously, they are falling also. But nowadays, whenever most of the recruitment happens, the recruiters have a glance of the complete profile on Google, on LinkedIn, or on the online platform to make an impression. So before, you are appearing for a one to one interview. Your impression has been created based on your personal brand that you have on Google.
[00:31:22] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Exactly. Yeah. For individuals looking for a job, you need to think about LinkedIn a lot because recruiters will look at LinkedIn, but also yes, Google. They’re not going to go through, as a recruiter you would want to investigate as much as possible, but what does Google provide? Google provides a summary. So, it’s really easy for them to just go, well, go through Google and look at that very quickly. And because it’s providing a summary of the person, it’s a really easy way for them to research without having to go to multiple sites.
[00:31:58] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But in the case of recruitment, I don’t think the Brand SERP, the personal Brand SERP is so very important because by definition, our names are quite ambiguous. So, researching through Google, unless the person has an unusual name, is going to be relatively difficult.
[00:32:16] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, from a recruitment point of view, I would look more, now I think it through having started the question saying, yeah, your Google business card. Focus on LinkedIn first, focus on where the employer is going to be looking within your industry, and then start thinking about Google, because for all of us, Google is going to be phenomenally important. Come what may, Google is going to be important as individuals and as businesses.
Last Piece of Advice From Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) for Businesses for the Future of Google
[00:32:49] Prince Kumar Singh: Good. So, thank you. I guess you have given a lot of insight today. Before ending the show, can you just give any last piece of advice to the businesses on how they should be prepared for the future with our trend in Google?
[00:33:08] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Great question. Start thinking about marketing rather than SEO. If you’ve got a business, then you have an understanding of marketing, so you’ve got off to a great start. Your marketing, just like you would in the real world, but it’s on the digital platform. It’s on, not just Google, but Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, Times of India, and so on and so forth. It’s marketing but in the digital world.
[00:33:41] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And if you want to prepare for the future, you need to think like a marketer, create content as a marketer that is useful truly to your audience, and then you can start packaging that for Google. So, as a marketer, moving into the future and building a sustainable business online, Google isn’t your first priority. Marketing to your audience is your first priority. Packaging it all for Google comes further down the line.
Get Your Priorities Right, Build a Business Online, Bake Google Into The Packaging of Your Content, Think Ahead, and Become a Marketer
[00:34:13] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, my advice for the future would be get your priorities right, build a business online, and bake Google into your packaging of your content. If you understand bake into, it means make sure that when you are building your content, the packaging that you are going to do for Google is already present in the content wherever possible.
[00:34:36] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, think ahead, become a marketer. Google becomes the bonus that you get after you’ve built this content that’s already become profitable, because it’s so helpful and useful to your audience wherever they happen to be online.
[00:34:57] Prince Kumar Singh: Thank you so much for your advice. So with this now, we have come to the end of today’s episode. Once again, thank you, Jason, for sharing valuable information about how the SEO actually works and how the business owners or even the SEO guys need to plan their strategy with the ever evolving Google.
[00:35:22] Prince Kumar Singh: And if we are able to work according to the changes or according to the changing of the strategies of Google, then definitely we will succeed. But if we are on the other track or if we are thinking or if we are going with a keyword trend only and these all things, somewhere we will be lacking. So, there were a lot of information and a lot of takeaways, which the audience can learn. So, thank you so much. And I look forward to have you again on our show and discuss a lot more about SEO. Thank you.
[00:36:03] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Brilliant. Thank you so much, Prince. That was delightful.