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The Google Knowledge Graph
What is the Google Knowledge Graph?
Launched back in 2012, the Google Knowledge Graph was created to boost search results with semantic-search information collected from a range of sources. The Knowledge Graph (KG) anticipates and answers questions by providing information instantaneously in a search result in addition to the typical links. It allows users to use this basic information to answer their queries without having to dive into sites and piece it together themselves. Basically, it’s all that stuff shows up either on the right side or above the organic results.
What does the Google Knowledge Graph mean for SEO?
As always in the world of SEO, these new Google search updates always make our jobs a little bit harder; we are constantly adjusting our techniques, analyzing Matt Cutts’ tweets, and looking for ways to outsmart good ole’ Googs while still playing by their rules. So what can we do to ‘combat’ this? What does the Google Knowledge Graph mean for SEO?
Don’t think like a search engine optimizer --
The Knowledge Graph makes suggestions based on past user’s subsequent searches. This means we must think of how a user would find certain information and what else they might be looking for. If I’m searching for the BBC show Doctor Who, what else might I be looking for that could be recommended in the Knowledge Graph? I could be looking for the cast, the year it started or what was that one alien called that the Doctor defeated in that one amazing episode. Any one of those could result in a subsequent search. If you think this way during your keyword research and while updating old content or writing new, you could receive traffic from people looking for the show who may have been recommended by the Knowledge Graph to search for the actor, year, or aliens, or vice versa. In shorter words, if your content is relevant and ranking on terms people are subsequently searching after the initial Doctor Who search, you can get traffic from both. Keyword research is becoming more than just using the new AdWords Keyword Planner. Great SEO isn’t when you think like an optimizer; you think like a user.
Higher quality, more targeted traffic –
Sites can receive better targeted traffic because of the Knowledge Graph. If I do a search for Bend, I get results for both the city in Oregon and the actual definition of the word, bend. The KG allows searchers to easily narrow their search down. Searchers don’t have to sift through pages of SERPs to find what they’re looking for anymore. One click and their results are narrowed; this is good! You don’t want traffic from people looking for the word bend, when you are a Bend, Oregon site. You might also not be ranked for bend, but it could be ranked well for Bend, Oregon.
