Have you ever done a Google search and seen a bunch of information about the company in the search engine listing? This is called the Knowledge Graph. With a little code, your company might be able to show up in this way, too.
If someone searches Google for your brand name, what do you want them to see? A bunch of links or a featured set of information? Which of these options do you think will make the biggest impression on your customers?
Showing up in the Knowledge Graph gives your company credibility. In a sense, it looks like Google is vouching for your company. People trust Google. This trust might extend to your company, too.
The short answer: schema markup. You need to send Google information about your company in a certain way, for Google to understand it. Once you send Google that data it can decide to show it in the Knowledge Graph. Please note: there is no guarantee that Google will show your website information in the SERPs, even with properly encoded schema data. But unless you send them this data, they will not show this in the SERPs.
Pro Tip: if you use Yoast’s SEO plugin on your WordPress website, it can add most of the following information for you.
If you’re not using WordPress, I’ve created a Google Spreadsheet that will create the Schema markup you’ll need to use in order to make this happen.
The most simple way to show-up in the SERPs is by adding your company’s logo. To add a logo to the Knowledge Graph you need to have a logo image saved on your website and provide that URL in the schema. I’m just speculating here, but I believe that logo needs to be hosted on your domain, for Google to render it in the SERPs.
If you’re using the spreadsheet I created, you just need to enter the URL in the second green box, after your homepage’s URL, to get the schema.
Not only can you show your logo, you can also provide contact numbers in the SERPs. This does more than make it easy for people to reach you. It also makes your Knowledge Graph box larger and stand-out more.
If you’re using the spreadsheet, put the information in the green cells. Not all these cells are required. Please read the notes for each cell, so you know what you need in each one. For instance, only certain values are accepted in “contactOption”. Also- if you want to have more than one phone number appear in the Knowledge Graph, take the information provided within the { and } and separate them with commas.
A third way you can grow your listing in the Knowledge Graph is by listing your social network sites. At this point Google is only accepting the following social networks:
Using the spreadsheet, enter the full URLs for each of the social networks that you want to appear in the SERPs.
Another way of showing up in the knowledge graph is to allow Google to provide a site search box- right in their search results. To do this you first need to have the ability to search your website. Most modern CMSes have search features that make this easy.
Once you know your website can be searched, you need to determine the internal search query string for your website. To do this,
Of course, all this work might be in vain. Google only allows the biggest websites to have site searches in the SERPs. Most websites won’t get this feature (even if they can figure out their most simple search string.
If you’re using the spreadsheet to install this schema, you have to use the Website tab. This also needs to be within a separate <script> tag than the Organization markup. Just fill-out the REQUIRED fields with your information and test the script before adding it to your homepage.
Here’s a link to the Organization and Website Schema Spreadsheet, again.
If you have any trouble with this, or my directions need some clarification, please feel free to ask in the comments, below.
Reliable Acorn will help you create a custom digital marketing strategy that does just that.
Ready to Talk?