The Hidden SEO Hack No One Thinks Of with Jason Barnard

Want to stay ahead of the SEO curve in 2025? While most website owners chase traditional ranking factors, they’re overlooking a game-changing strategy: Brand Search Optimization.

Join us as industry expert Jason Barnard of Kalicube reveals:

• How brand search has become crucial for sustainable SEO success
• The profound impact of Google AI and ChatGPT on search rankings
• A proven process for establishing your brand’s online authority
• Why knowledge panels and entity SEO give you a competitive edge
• Strategic tactics to boost your website traffic and conversion rates

Perfect for: Website owners, digital entrepreneurs, and anyone looking for a success roadmap to future-proof traffic and sustainable growth in 2025 and beyond.

Exploring 2025’s Hidden SEO Opportunity with Jason Barnard

[00:00:00] Matt Raad: Today’s Digital Investor podcast, we are talking traffic and SEO and in particular a part of SEO that is super important for 2025, a part of SEO that most people don’t even think about yet. It’s quite simple. Now, we are really lucky to have the world expert in this very particular part of SEO that we’re talking. And it is Jason Barnard from Kalicube. Thank you, Jason, for coming along today.

[00:00:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Thank you, Matt. That’s a lovely introduction and I’m delighted to be here.

Future-Proof Your SEO with AI Through Brand Optimization

[00:00:32] Matt Raad: Wait, there’s more. But this is really important because there is important because. Because if you’re listening to this, I’m hoping you know what SEO. SEO is about driving traffic through the organic search engines. It’s a big part of what we teach here at the eBusiness Institute. It’s a really handy skillset to have or it’s an incredible money making skillset to have, particularly when it comes to renovating websites and why we’re so lucky to have Jason on the podcast today. Jason is the world leader in this space. Liz and I actually met Jason many, many years ago.

[00:01:06] Matt Raad: Jason speaks, is a famous speaker at lots of SEO conferences around the world. You can go and Google him. We’re going to talk about his Google results in just a minute. But what we wanted to share, what Jason and I wanted to share with you today is what’s happening out there in this space of brand or search optimization by using your branding either for your company or your personal name. And what it can do is help give you a really serious edge in SEO, driving traffic, and in particular, I think it’s a really handy way to be renovating websites big and small and particularly on the big one. So if you’re more advanced, you definitely need to be hearing this. Jason is the world leader in this space. If you’re an intermediate to beginner, you are.

[00:01:51] Matt Raad: This will definitely open your eyes to a whole new world of potential traffic, driving and renovation opportunities for your website. So let’s jump into it. Jason, thank you so much.

[00:02:01] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I would add one thing, Matt.

[00:02:03] Matt Raad: Well, there’s. I’m hoping there’s going to be lots that you can add, Jason, but what’s the one thing.

[00:02:06] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It’s an insurance for the future with AI.

Leveraging AI and Personal Branding to Dominate SEO in 2025

[00:02:10] Matt Raad: There we go. And I couldn’t have said it better myself. Thank you, Jason, because I. Well, you brought up something really important that’s really topical now is we’re going to be talking about AI today as well guys using AI to help us do this. And I think that’s changed the game for us in SEO as well. So Jason, welcome aboard. And I’m going to reiterate, you’re a bit of a legend. We’ve got to build you up a little bit more because you’re probably going to be way too humble, but you’ve regularly appeared with all the big names in SEO and I’m going to read out a quote here as well in just a minute.

[00:02:45] Matt Raad: But you’ve worked with Search Engine Land, Semrush, Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, Search Engine Journal, Trustpilot, Microsoft. Oh my goodness. Virgin. You built Joost de Valk’s persona online. Who is the inventor? Of course, everyone in our community knows should know who Joost de Valk is or you should remember the name the Yoast Plugin people. It’s a famous, world famous SEO plugin, one of the world’s most famous plugins, which we recommend here at eBusiness. Also, you’ve helped the founder of or the President of Kajabi, Jonathan Cronstedt. So you’ve.

[00:03:20] Matt Raad: And plus many more. So there’s, there’s a. And what you do with these people and corporations. So in the past, say 10, 15 years ago when we first met you, you were the SEO legends. What do we call that? The good old fashioned days of SEO. But now you’ve moved more into this very specific or this very exciting new part of SEO using AI and branding. So can you start out by giving us an idea of, I guess, what it is that you do? In a nutshell, why is this such an exciting part of SEO in 2025?

[00:03:59] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Well, a really quick story. Why did I start doing this? Because Google misrepresented me when you searched my name.

[00:04:07] Matt Raad: Okay. Yep.

[00:04:08] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It represented me as a voiceover actor, which I was. But I needed to figure out how to get Google to represent me as a digital marketer, SEO and now an entrepreneur. So my initial thing was about my personal brand and using Google as my business card. So you search my name. Jason Barnard. J A S O N B A R N A R D. I look like a superstar.

[00:04:32] Matt Raad: Awesome.

[00:04:34] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I am. But what I’ve done is leverage what I’ve got to make myself look even better than perhaps I truly am. And self fulfilling prophecies. The more people see that, the more they believe how wonderful I am, the more wonderful I become because they keep inviting me on podcasts like this one. I get to speak, I get to talk with people, I get to network and the legend grows, as we say. So it’s a self fulfilling prophecy and a flywheel. That representation on Google is foundational.

Why AI Recognition Matters for Corporate and Personal Brands

[00:05:08] Matt Raad: And how can that, like for someone listening to this, how can that help, say, a corporate or a website owner?

[00:05:16] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, for Kalicube, it drives a lot of our revenue. People do business with people. When somebody comes to work with Kalicube, they say, brilliant, Kalicube can sort out my personal brand or my corporate brand for me. I’m talking to Jason Barnard. Oh, I’ll Google him and see what’s happening. Or today I’ll ask ChatGPT. If you ask ChatGPT, who is Jason Barnard, what do you think of him? It will write you a 800-word essay. Everything is correct, everything is accurate.

[00:05:41] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And at the end, if you say, do you recommend him? It will say yes, exclamation mark. Most people don’t have that, especially not the recommendation part, because these machines, be it Google, ChatGPT, DeepSeek came out recently. I tried it out. Deepseek already knows who I am. It’s already recommending me because the system we use ingrains my brand and Kalicube’s brand into the heart and the soul of all of these machines.

Optimize Your Brand’s Online Identity for Maximum Impact

[00:06:11] Matt Raad: So for you. So basically think of the listeners of our podcast. Typically, they’re not big name people, they own, all of us own, let’s call it relatively niche websites. So we could. The hidden part of SEO, I guess that most of those typical website owners aren’t thinking about. It’s they’re almost taking a spray and pray approach in terms of their branding to a degree. Whereas what you, you’re saying is we can pull that together obviously for personal names, but can we do it for corporates or for, you know, a website, you got a food blog. Can we, you know, make sure that that is being represented correctly and getting extra mileage through like the Knowledge Graph and things like that?

[00:06:58] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Which is a super question because it’s just as important, if not more so. So if you get Google and AI to understand, to represent your brand the way you want it, so you’ve spent time figuring out who you are. You spent time figuring out how you want to communicate, which photos you want to use, which your logo is, where you want to be present and where your audience are going to be impressed to see you, and then you sit back and hope that Google and the AI are going to figure out for themselves. Huge mistake, they’re going to get it wrong or they’re going to get it inaccurate or they’re going to get incomplete. So what we do at Kalicube is the Kalicube Process and it’s to bring all of that together in a very, very, very NEEATT package and present it to the machines in a way they can understand so that they can represent me, my corporation, even my products exactly the way I intended. And that is great for bottom of funnel. Anybody searching your name is somebody ready to do business with you in one way or another. And they’re going to be more likely to convert if they see a great result on Google or ChatGPT is singing your praises.

[00:08:04] Matt Raad: Okay, so this works.

[00:08:06] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): That’s just the start.

Ensure Your Search Results Reflect Your Brand’s Best

[00:08:07] Matt Raad: Yes, that’s the start. So it works. It’s very easy thing or particularly powerful for someone with a personal branded name. What if you own a pet blog and you’re talking about training German shepherds or something like that on there?

[00:08:26] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, Rand Fishkin did a study and I think it was 60% or something like that of all searches and navigational to websites. So most SEO traffic is actually just navigational to the website where people already know where they want to go. You want that result to look brilliant because it’s before your homepage. So technically it’s more important than your homepage. It’s like somebody walking past your shop window. They haven’t even come in your shop and your window is really dirty and it doesn’t have anything nice in it. Nobody’s going to come in.

[00:08:56] Matt Raad: Yeah.

[00:08:57] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So your homepage is the entrance to your shop. When you’re inside, Google is the facade of your shop. Let’s make that facade look as super duper wonderful as possible.

Why Controlling Search Results Matters

[00:09:08] Matt Raad: And because on that note, we actually are teaching this to our community members, Jason, just before Christmas. So Christmas at like at the beginning of this year, 2025, there was a big study. I just read on, I think it was on Search Engine Land. Yeah, you’re right. 51% of traffic is still questions like how to type things. So everyone looking up contents of questions and I think they were saying of all the. It was a really big study. Over 30% of traffic is direct traffic, looking up specific brands.

[00:09:39] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I’m glad you had the numbers because I just doubled it and said 60. It’s actually 30. Thank you for correcting me.

[00:09:44] Matt Raad: Yeah, it’s 30%. And what I was saying to our members is we can’t ever compete with that because people are looking. But now you’re saying we can definitely influence that. We can have a massive impact with that 30% of traffic. And if you’re not there yet with a brand guys. You need to keep listening to Jason because we’re going to talk about this is what Jason does he helps you build up that brand or using these techniques. And by the way, I do want to say people can do this themselves too, once they figure it out.

[00:10:11] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yes. It’s easy peasy. Well, I’ll tell you the strategy and it’s really easy in terms of the actual theory of it. Doing it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. But the theory is three things and I can explain it in less than a minute.

[00:10:23] Matt Raad: Let’s do that.

[00:10:23] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): That’s coming up. Well, that’s coming up. But first, if we come back to that result for your name, people say, I’ve heard it in the SEO community so many times. I rank number one. What do I care?

[00:10:33] Matt Raad: Yes. Yep, that’s right. I’m a little bit like that.

[00:10:37] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Couple of problems with that, Matt, sorry to disappoint you. Number one is people will scroll so people will look at the rest of the results. You do have to care what’s there because your shop window isn’t just the big sign at the top, it’s the whole thing.

[00:10:49] Matt Raad: Yeah.

[00:10:50] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): On the right hand side, you’ve got a Google Business Profile or a Knowledge Panel that’s starting to be. It’s becoming more and more prevalent. Somebody else could steal that. Your competitor, an ambiguous term that relates to you, especially if you’re, if you’re a blog that has a relatively ambiguous name. That’s the first point, is that whole page is your business card and maybe 30% of people will just look at the first result and you’re fine. The other 70% are looking at the rest of it. And that impression, it’s like walking into a room with a lovely hat on, but looking really shabby from the neck down. That’s not going to hack it.

[00:11:26] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Unless somebody just looks at your hat, in which case you’ve nailed it. So let’s say the hat is the homepage and the rest of the thing needs to be sorted out. But the huge, huge problem you’re going to have in the future is with Generative AI, ChatGPT, Perplexity, DeepSeek that I just mentioned. They summarize not only the first page, the first few pages, plus the information they have in their brains. So you have to have that control over the entire result because they’re going to bring it all together in one chunk and you can’t escape that.

Secure Your Spot in AI Driven Search Results

[00:11:58] Matt Raad: Awesome. Okay, and so you’re saying we should be setting this up now. Any website owner, or particularly any personal branded person or a corporate branded person, or even big and small businesses, doesn’t matter. Anyone with an online presence should be thinking about this now because of something you just said. And you said this to me off the camera as well. With what’s happening out there in AI over the next few years, you want this dialed in properly.

[00:12:23] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah, exactly. You want it 100% dialed in properly. Now, to explain that the underlying SEO thing that’s going on here is if Google, AI, Bing, Siri, Alexa, all of these machines work the same way. With an understanding of who you are, what you do, who you serve, and trying to present you when you are the best solution to the user. If it can represent your brand correctly when somebody searches the name, then by definition it’s understand who you are, what you do, who you can serve, and if it’s given you a great result, it thinks you’re credible. That’s a winning formula. So if you can look at that Brand SERP, we call it a Brand SERP search engine results page for your brand name, be it personal or corporate, the better that is, the more representative that is, the more accurate, positive, and convincing it is, the more you’re in a position where these machines are more likely to recommend you. Because at the end of the day, all they are is recommendation engines.

[00:13:24] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): What they are is the biggest influencer in the world. Billions of people asking billions of questions, incredibly niche to machines that they trust. If the machine likes you, trust, sorry, knows you, likes you and trusts you, you’ve won the game.

NEEATT Builds Credibility and Boosts Your Brand

[00:13:41] Matt Raad: Yeah. And I guess, Jason, for those of our listeners who are a little bit more advanced, we’re also, obviously, we’re touching on Google’s favorite, you know, idea of the last few years is EEAT double E A T the EEAT format, expertise, authoritativeness, and a trustworthiness and experience. And you’re saying we can bring all that together and actually hand it on a plate to Google?

[00:14:06] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yep, exactly. And the EEAT is credibility. I would add notability to that.

[00:14:14] Matt Raad: Yeah, I like that on your website. I think that’s really. I really like. I think that’s very clever. So if you’re listening to this, this is so. Which obviously you are for our listeners, for someone listening to this who knows a little bit about SEO, this is this. The light bulb should be going on here. This is a very powerful concept that Jason’s talking about.

[00:14:35] Matt Raad: And for those who are beginners, I did want to clear this up a little bit for that. You know, we have a wide range of students here at eBusiness. Jason, listening to this podcast. For beginners, can you explain what the Knowledge Graph is and how they might find it for a website or for an individual. I know it sounds a very simple question, but it’s seriously important to understand this.

[00:15:02] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. And it ties really neatly into EEAT because EEAT is simply Google’s measure of credibility. So we call it NEEATT with a notability. N, E, E, A, T, T. We are transparency too. You need to be transparent. So NEEATT Credibility.

[00:15:19] Matt Raad: Yep.

[00:15:21] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So I just say credibility to our clients because it makes sense to them. How can Google attribute any kind of E, E, A, T, NEEATT or credibility signals if it doesn’t understand who you are? If it doesn’t understand who you are, none of that means anything except the links. And we’re still. We’re back to links, which is, you know, old school.

Google Now Focuses on Understanding

[00:15:40] Matt Raad: Old school. I was just about to say it’s very old school. Even Google themselves now, I notice, are saying that’s old school.

[00:15:46] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah, they play a role. Links are still very, very important, but they’re not the dominant force that they used to be. Just like keywords aren’t a dominant force they used to be. Because if Google can understand who you are, it can attribute credibility to you. So your awards, your education, the people you know who have their own credibility that reflects on you, the people you’ve worked with, the companies you’ve worked with, all of that adds to your credibility. But only if Google’s understood who you are. And what you said was the Knowledge Panel, which is the information box on the right hand side. When you search for somebody famous or somebody who’s managed to make themselves look famous, like me, it’s that information box on the right hand side that demonstrates Google’s understanding of who you are, at which point it can start to accumulate all of those EEAT credibility signals, such as awards, people you’ve worked with, companies you’ve worked with, education.

[00:16:42] Matt Raad: You see it a lot.

[00:16:42] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): With previous companies.

[00:16:44] Matt Raad: You see it a lot with authors. So I think anyone listening to this, if they’ve typed up someone in, you know, that’s written a book, if you’re listening to this, you’ll go and type up someone who’s written a book, an author’s name, and you’ll see the Knowledge Panel will come up, it’ll be quite big, and especially if they’ve done lots of online stuff and what your. So for individual website owners, presumably, you know, for most small micro sites, they’re probably not much of a Knowledge Panel unless they’ve listened to this podcast. Now you’re going to go out and create one, I would imagine the first place it would pull info from would be an about page, but I’m sure there’s a lot to that.

[00:17:21] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yes, that’s exactly it. And we can come on to that and that will be the three step process to build a Knowledge Panel and build that understanding. The important thing to understand is that when you search somebody’s name, if the Knowledge Panel doesn’t appear, or if the Knowledge Panel of somebody else appears, that doesn’t mean to say it hasn’t understood you, because your Knowledge Panel might exist, it just doesn’t get shown. And that’s why notability is so important, because if you take notability into account, that’s why my Knowledge Panel triggers. But the other Jason Barnards, there are 10 Jason Barnards with Knowledge Panels. There are 3-4000 Jason Barnards in the world. Mine triggers, theirs doesn’t. Because I’m more notable or I’ve demonstrated myself to be more notable.

[00:18:02] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that’s why notability is key, because the EEAT signals are still being applied to all these other people who have Knowledge Panels. But notability aspect is stopping it showing. So you need to build a Knowledge Panel whether or not it triggers is actually not as important in terms of SEO as you might imagine. Whether it triggers or not, when somebody searches your name in your region, that’s very, very important. So if you’re an Australian website, your Knowledge Panel would trigger in Australia if you’re relatively more notable than the same person or the same company with the same name in America, where theirs would trigger. So Google is very geo sensitive, so you need to focus on your home terrain, on yourself or your company. And you need to get that Knowledge Panel because that Knowledge Panel represents understanding. At Kalicube, that’s the first phase of our process, which is understandability.

Take Control of Your Online Presence

[00:18:58] Matt Raad: So does it shine once you’ve got this Knowledge Panel from an SEO point of view or from any point of view of an online business. And so action point, go on, Google your name or Google your brand name, whatever it is that you’re representing online and check if there’s a Knowledge Graph for it. If there’s not, keep listening to this podcast.

[00:19:19] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right, exactly. And that’s phase one of the Kalicube Process. And you can’t do anything else if you haven’t done that. So you need the Knowledge Panel, then you can build credibility on top and then you can build deliverability, which is where the results come in terms of ranking either on Google or being cited and recommended in ChatGPT, which is what we’re doing for the future. In fact, what we’re doing for today, we get clients that way too. So it’s understandability, credibility, deliverability. Does it understand you? Does it believe you’re credible? And is it able to deliver you to the subset of its users who are your audience? So those are the three key questions you’re asking.

[00:19:52] Matt Raad: Okay.

[00:19:53] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And then the understandability phase in terms of the three tiers of SEO. And if you go to Search Engine Land, you can read my article about this is content level optimization. We’re all doing it. We’ve been doing it for years. Keep going, knock yourselves out. Super important, don’t stop. But if you add on…

[00:20:10] Matt Raad: And I’ll just jump in there. So this is what we teach at eBusiness. And Jason, for your own sake, we’ve always taught, I guess you call it the foundations of SEO. So that’s your tier one of the three levels of the three tiers of SEO. Now today, for our listeners, you’re going to share with us what are these powerful tier, two and tier three parts of SEO?

[00:20:36] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right? Well, Google. Well, yeah, Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, CoPilot, Siri, Alexa, DeepSeek are all asking the same question.

[00:20:48] Matt Raad: Okay. Yep.

[00:20:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): This content is great. I’ve understood it. It looks amazing. Who created it? Do I trust them? Are they an authority? So it’s trying to figure out who actually created the content. If it can’t figure out, it just takes the signals it’s got, which is the foundational level of SEO. If it can figure it out, you’ve got an extra layer of bonus. Then it thinks, okay, I’ve understood. Jason Barnard wrote this article.

[00:21:13] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Jason Barnard is an expert in SEO. Therefore this article is more valuable than the article written by Matt Raad, who I haven’t understood and who isn’t recognized by me as an expert in SEO. Sorry, Matt.

How Author and Publisher Credibility Elevate SEO Rankings

[00:21:25] Matt Raad: But that’s the perfect example is that’s a really. I love it. That’s it in right there. We actually teach this as well, but this is coming out at a different level in a much higher advanced process. You’re doing this very step by step. So can I just repeat it back so our beginner listeners understand this?

[00:21:42] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Go ahead.

[00:21:42] Matt Raad: That is basic foundation, which we of SEO, which we teach here. You know, good on page SEO, even off page SEO, all that sort of stuff, that’s kind of 101 stuff like you just said. I think that’s a really great example. Google then looks for these other signals. Who actually created this content? That’s the next most important thing. And that’s what you’re saying we can influence. And most people aren’t actively doing that.

[00:22:06] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Exactly. And the important thing to know is that I might create content on my own website and on Kalicube’s website, on a Search Engine Land on Search Engine Journal and on Authoritas and on Forbes.com. How does it know it’s the same person if it doesn’t understand who you are? It doesn’t know it’s the same person. So all of those credibility signals you’d potentially get from publishing on Forbes or Search Engine Land or Search Engine Journal are lost.

[00:22:30] Matt Raad: Okay, all right.

[00:22:31] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Full stop. It’s not even you’ve got a bit of them. It’s nothing. So if you’re not understood, you’ve got zero. So that’s the first point. And then the second thing they’re asking themselves is, is who published this, which company published this? Or even which person, if it’s a personal website, who’s behind this content? Who’s the guarantor of this content? In my case, it’s Kalicube. Does it understand Kalicube? Does it believe Kalicube is an expert, authoritative, credible solution, and in what space? Kalicube is an authoritative, credible solution in the personal branding, SEO, digital marketing space.

[00:23:08] Matt Raad: Okay. Yep.

[00:23:10] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And corporate branding. If Kalicube publishes one of my articles, it’s got the content level stuff that you talked about earlier on, plus my credibility and my authority and Google and the AI’s understanding of who I am and what I talk about and all the back information, all the stuff they know, I already say they can add information implicitly, plus another level which is Kalicube. So all of a sudden the links that I’ve got for my content seem very small when it’s compared to the credit links of credibility signals to the credibility signals I can then add on with the author and the publisher. So those are the three tiers of SEO. And if you author isn’t understood and your publisher isn’t understood by the machines and that’s represented, the KPI is the Knowledge Panel. You don’t even get to play the game on the next two tiers. You’re stuck on tier one. And your competitors have got two extra tiers and a huge advantage.

Boost Your Online Presence with EEAT and Entity Recognition

[00:24:12] Matt Raad: There you go. That is brilliant. That’s really cool. Because that can give for our more advanced people a big edge in what they’re doing with their online businesses. So basic SEO, but now who wrote the content, EEAT signals around that and making sure that the the AI agents can see that and line it up and then who’s the entity behind who published this content? Not just who wrote it, but who published it. So in your instance, like you said, it’s Kalicube or whatever your website is. So they want to see these entities say, okay, this is very, very exciting. It’s very exciting for all our listeners.

[00:24:51] Matt Raad: How do we start?

[00:24:52] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, before we do that, how should we start?

[00:24:56] Matt Raad: So you’re going to let us know. How to do it, aren’t we?

[00:24:57] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I will, I will. It takes a minute, a really quick part at the end. I’ give you some downloads, they’re free, and you’ll be able to do it yourself. Knock yourselves out. No problem at all. The important thing is, some people say to me, this is. This isn’t real. They don’t believe it.

[00:25:12] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It’s a bit like kind of this, this Peter Pan thing going on. But if you don’t believe it, just ask ChatGPT or Gemini if you’re a Google fan about yourself and then about your favorite star and about your competitor, and then about me, they can tell you accurately exactly who I am, what I do, who I serve, why I’m famous, why I’m important, why I’m authoritative and what I talk about. The machine understands. And I was. Somebody said to me, machines don’t understand. It’s vectorial spaces. They were getting very geeky and it was a bit boring. My daughter is doing a PhD at Oxford.

[00:25:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I just thought I’d throw that in there. And her friend, who does robotics, who’s doing a PhD in robotics, does just the eyes of the machine of a robot. And I said to her, she said, oh, sorry, everything goes fine until the, until the robot starts walking around, at which point it all goes out the window because it can’t handle time and space at the same time.

[00:26:06] Matt Raad: Okay, yeah.

[00:26:08] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But then I asked it, okay, so it understands when it’s sitting down. You just said the word understand. Does it actually understand or is it just vectorial representation? Bloody blah. Geek, geek. And she said, well, technically, what the geeky people are saying is true, but to all intents and purposes, the machine understands. And there is no point as a scientist nitpicking about that. It doesn’t make any sense. To all intents and purposes, it understands.

[00:26:35] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Stop there and get on with what we’re trying to do, which is move forwards in the world. And that was so powerful from that woman.

[00:26:41] Matt Raad: Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So anyway, that’s my little rant.

Mastering Entity Management for AI and SERPs

[00:26:46] Matt Raad: Well, that’s very relevant here, though, isn’t it? Because you’ve got to start Thinking of, I’m not just going to say Google, but all the SERPs and all the AI machines out there do understand these entities and who we are and everything. And what I like what you’re saying to everyone is it’s not just now. We need to be thinking out, okay, over the next few years, what’s all the data that these things are going to start collecting and putting together? They’ve already got it together, but it’s just going to become more and more important. So I think this is, like you said, insurance for your future.

[00:27:22] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah, it’s insurance for the future. And I looked at DeepSeek yesterday. Somebody introduced me to it. They said, oh. It was actually Leanne who said, oh, DeepSeek. I cannot resist. First thing I do is download it and ask it, who is Jason Barnard? What is Kalicube? A new machine. I’ve never thought about it, didn’t know what it was.

[00:27:38] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It can answer right out of the box, full answers, just like ChatGPT, Gemini and the others, because they all use the same technology, they’re all using the same data source, and I’m managing it in the same way for all of them. So there’s one strategy works for all of them. And now we can tell you how to do it.

Strengthen Your Digital Presence with the Hub-Spoke Framework

[00:27:57] Matt Raad: There we go. Awesome. All right, yeah, let’s. Now, yeah, let’s get into the fun bit. How. Okay, you’ve got us all shaken up thinking, all right, we’ve got to get onto this and start doing it. What’s the essence? Like you said, challenge for you, Jason, in the time remaining. Can you teach us how to do this?

[00:28:13] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yes, I can. So it’s what we call the hub spoken wheel model based on an entity home. The entity home is the place online where the machines are looking for information about you from you or about your company from your company. So it’s the about page, which you mentioned earlier on, that states who you are, what you do, who you serve, why you’re credible. You create that and you create it very clearly, and you explain very clearly your perspective on yourself and your brand narrative. The machine reads it and it says, okay, I understand what you said. That’s brilliant, but I don’t believe you. So you then need to go around your entire digital footprint and update every single profile, every single mention, every single important page about you to reflect the same message that you’ve put on your entity home, the hub.

[00:29:03] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So you’ve got a wheel going all the way around like this with a hub in the middle. It all says the same thing. But the machine can’t make the connections. So you add links, the spokes. You add a link from the entity home to every single corroborative source. That helps the machine corroborate, understand, and become confident it’s understood that what you’re saying is true. And if possible, a link back from that corroborative source to your entity home. So the machine just goes backwards and forwards like this in an infernal, internal, ongoing cycle of repetition until it finally understands by pure repetition.

[00:29:40] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So a clear, consistent digital footprint with a hub spoken wheel model, you will get a Knowledge Panel. There isn’t any doubt about that. We get them 100% of the time. And we can get the AI to explain who you are, what you do, who you serve, and why you’re a credible solution 100% of the time with that very, very simple system.

Ensuring Consistent and Connected Online Identity for Credibility and Control

[00:30:02] Matt Raad: Okay, so you can do that with. Can you do it with really small websites? Yes, you can. Because if you’re building up a about page and you’ve got a series of expert writers who may even be pseudonyms, we’ve got clients that are doing that with LinkedIn profiles, connecting to all their writers, Facebook pages, mentions, guest posting, mentions. So you’re talking like in. We do a guest post, the author bio marries up with what’s on the about page and on LinkedIn and even so, simple little things like that.

[00:30:39] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): The whole thing is very simple. And the kicker. And the difficult. Sorry, the kicker, the difficult part is that every time something is disconnected, the machine has a doubt. And you never want the machine to have a doubt.

[00:30:49] Matt Raad: So what do you mean by disconnected? Just explain that little bit. What do you mean? Like a simple. Like a. It does different information.

[00:31:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): You mentioned either. Different information. And because we’re human beings, we’re very inconsistent. So you’ll find that you wrote something five years ago and you’ve completely forgotten about it, and it doesn’t say anything like what you said today. Take the time to go and correct it, because the machine will think that’s somebody else by default, which means that whatever credibility or understanding that can bring to the table will not be associated with you. The other is that you mentioned a bio on an article. If that bio links to the LinkedIn but the LinkedIn doesn’t link back to your entity home, that bio is effectively orphan.

[00:31:36] Matt Raad: Okay, all right.

[00:31:38] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So you need to make sure that the machine always has a way back to the entity home. It’s like one of these children’s stories. The bot can always get home. So think about that. And the quicker it gets home, there’s fewer. The fewer hops it needs to get back home, the better. And the fewer hops it needs to get from the home to the most credible important references and sources about you, the better. So you need to reduce the number of hops, simplify the voyage, make sure the machine is consistently seeing the same thing over and over and over again in the most credible sources first, the less credible sources or the less authoritative sources second.

[00:32:21] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And what we found is that anybody can do it because the machines have got pretty smart. But if you want to do it really well and have that real control, when you search my name, Jason Barnard, you’ll see the control I have. You mentioned influence. This is control. Then you need to do it incredibly consistently, incredibly well. Data driven, which is what we do at Kalicube, we have a database of 3 billion data points that tells us exactly how to join the dots. Our machine joins the dots for us. We stick it in front of the machine.

[00:32:55] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): The machine is happy as a lark and we do it over time. So we need to maintain that incredibly close knit HubSpot wheel model over a long period of time and you gain control. And that’s when new machines like DeepSeek come out. And all of a sudden it already knows who Jason Barnard is, who Kalicube is, because we’ve done it for such a long time. All of the machines are using the web as a source of information and they’re all using the same system to understand and be able to represent us.

[00:33:24] Matt Raad: It’s like with local sites, getting the nap right across.

[00:33:27] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): All exactly the same.

Boost Your Brand’s Online Visibility with Proven Strategies

[00:33:29] Matt Raad: It’s the same concept. So for those of you who’ve built websites for local businesses and stuff, this is kind of just the next level beyond that. It’s just we’re doing it with content sites or personal branded sites. It’s exactly the same concept, but at a, it’s a much, it’s a very powerful result. So it’s the same kind of idea. Making sure the name, address, phone number is consistent across the Internet for local businesses is a very powerful or, and particularly in years gone past, a very powerful renovation technique for local sites. And you’re saying here, this is a really great renovation technique for anyone with a sizable, particularly a sizable online business. I would think this, this is super important going forward.

[00:34:10] Matt Raad: Now, any of you listening? If you’ve got a seriously sized website, you would be crazy to not be checking out this stuff that Jason’s talking about. So Jason, how do people get hold of you? Those that have got big websites are all going to be panicking now. Or have you got, you mentioned you’ve got some free downloads or something that people can learn how to do this themselves.

[00:34:35] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): You can download the free guide for all of this stuff here. There are multiple free guides going on. There’s one for personal brands, 60 pages. One for corporate brands, 60 pages. The instruction manual for a Knowledge Panel with the 17 things you need to do to get a Knowledge Panel. Do it yourself. Absolutely no problem at all. Four guides about how to protect your company in a world of AI.

[00:34:59] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Make sure that you’re present and recommended by these recommendation influencer engines in the future. Download them. Knock yourselves out. Go do it. I’m sharing. It’s really simple. Anybody can do it.

[00:35:11] Matt Raad: Awesome.

[00:35:11] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): If you want somebody to do it properly and you know it’s important and you want to spend your time doing something else that makes your company money, we can help you. Come and talk to me. I’m really happy to help people because we have the experience, we have the knowledge, we have the data and we’ve been doing this for 12 years. We know the ins and outs. Oh, we’ve got the machine, the technology.

[00:35:33] Matt Raad: Yep, perfect. So there you go. So, Jason, thank you so much for coming along today. It’s just unreal having along and I think what we’ll do is we’ll probably do a. I’d love to do a follow up interview with you later on in the year because this is going to be a fascinating year in SEO and particularly in this brand search optimization field. So it’d be great to have you back on and thank you so much for coming along today.