How to add Social Media profiles in your Knowledge Graph?
The Knowledge Graph (or knowledge panel) information boxes appearing in Google search results since 2012 has evolved a lot from the technological front. This is Google's "famous things-not-strings" initiative where Google wants to display direct answers.
The information for the knowledge graph is directly pulled from high authority trusted encyclopedia or information directory sites such as Wikipedia, Amazon Brand Registry pages, CIA World Factbook etc. For social media assets on the Knowledge graph, however, they trust the brand website to link the right social media handle (or page link)
This article will help you in
- Understanding what mistakes to avoid if you want your social icons to appear in the knowledge graph.
- What steps to take from you end to expedite the process of appearing in the knowledge graph info-box.
Why spend time in structuring your digital assets for Knowledge Graph?
Over the last 8 odd years of its existence, the search result consumption behavior of the users has drastically changed. Click through rate of the SERP links are dropping as users are just reading through the knowledge graph information and passing by. This has made the importance of knowledge Graphs inevitable for brands. Today brands are fiercely fighting to get their content on the knowledge graph and have all their linking-social media assets appear in their KG.
But, it is not easy!
Why?
Google pulls this info using bots and some deciding algorithms. Read Google's announcement on this! You do not have much of control on what and how your info appears in KG.
Now here is what you can do from your end:
How does one appear on the Knowledge Graph?
1. Get the brand identity basics right.
Your brand name shall be uniform by character across all the platforms. Google identify your digital brand assets (Webpage, Social Media Pages etc) using a bot that considers the character uniformity. So make sure the slug of the page permalink is standard by spelling.
Eg. www.example.com, www.facebook.com/example, www.twitter.com/example, www.instagram.com/example, www.youtube.com/user/example
Keep the brand name ("example" in this case) same across all portals. If your name is not available, you can also use the domain name. Eg. www.twitter.com/example.com
2. Get listed in Google's Freebase
The primary source of Google's Knowledge Graph information is a database of entities and topics known as Freebase. It collects facts about real-life people and objects from reputable website such as Wikipedia, Open Library Project and many others.
3. Use structured data for your web page code
What is structured data? It's semantic markup formats (such as Schema.org, OpenGraph templates, Microformats and others) that help search engines better understand the meaning behind the words on your page – hence 'semantic markup'.
Use the structured data testing tool to check if you have got your webpage codes right for the Google index.
In order for Google to recognize structured data as social profiles, you must use the schema vocabulary in JSON-LD markup format. [More Wisdom]. You must also ensure that you fulfill these requirements:
- Make sure this markup is on your official website
- Pages with these markups aren’t blocked by Googlebot by robots.txt
- Include your organization's web assets links in your markup with the following code snippet:
[code]
<script type="application/ld+json">
{ "@context" : "https://schema.org",
"@type" : "Organization",
"name" : "Your Organization Name",
"url" : "https://www.your-site.com",
"sameAs" : [ "https://www.facebook.com/your-profile",
"https://www.twitter.com/yourProfile",
"https://plus.google.com/your_profile"]
}
</script>
[/code]
- “url” is the url of your official website
- “sameAs” is the URLs of your official social profile pages
You can add this script block on the head or body of the page. To test and verify that your markup is correct, use Google’s Structured Data Markup testing tool. If the tool reports “no structured data present,” then go back and check your markup for syntax errors.
Now that you have updated your web page codes to indicate crawlers to consider your social media pages, submit your webpages to Google Search Console to notify them to update their index.
If all goes well, your social media icons shall start appearing in the knowledge graph.
What MORE you can do?
- Test your website for Search Engine Indexability and SERP Friendliness. Here is a list of tools from Google to test your website health.
- If you have a great backlinking structure, mentions in notable third party websites, and have a credible digital reference, You shall definitely try to get a Wikipedia Page for your brand/company. Wikipedia pages are the source of more than 90% of the knowledge graph results. Check my detailed guide on Wikipedia pages for Branding > Read on Medium | Read on LinkedIn
Now its time to implement it for yourself!
Good Luck. Drive insane amount of traffic from Knowledge graph! Should you have any queries on this topic, feel free to drop a comment below.