How To Get A Google Knowledge Graph For Musicians?

A few days back, I was having a discussion with my creative team regarding a post for ‘Guru Purnima’. And when I asked them, “What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about knowledge?” 

And I was not very surprised to hear a unanimous answer, “Google”. 

Well, yes. Google has become the ‘Digital Guru’ in this digital world. The knowledge and information that Google has been sharing are incomparable to any. Of course, there are other search engines, but undoubtedly, Google rules the kingdom. 

But have you ever given a thought, where does all this information and knowledge that Google proudly boasts about, come from? I am sure you are not hoping it to be some kind of magic or something. 

To answer this query, I thought of sharing some insights about Google knowledge graph. And since I have been getting a lot of requests about how to get a Google knowledge graph for musicians, I will be focusing on this one in particular. 

First things first. Let us begin with the basics. 

What Is Google Knowledge Graph?

If I explain it in simple language, Google knowledge graph is Google’s way of sharing the aptest and accurate information in a nutshell. When you search for anything on Google, you might have noticed a panel on the right-hand side, giving all the relevant information about the search term. Like, image, address, social media profile, wiki page information, contact, website, etc.

The information that you see in the knowledge graph completely depends on the type of SEO work done for that search term. 

For example, if you search for Drive Digital, on the right side, you can see a panel that gives you a brief info about the company like, a link to its website, directions, address, hours of operating, phone number, Q&A about the company, reviews from the web, a brief intro of the company, its social media profile links and updates by Drive Digital. 

In short, you get everything that you need to know at a glance. This not only saves your time of navigating to several pages before getting what you are exactly looking for but is also very convenient. 

Now going back to my previous question, how does Google get all this information? As I said, Google is no magician. It displays, what you feed. So if you are looking forward to getting your information displayed in the Google Knowledge Graph, you will have to revamp your SEO skills. 

Google knowledge graph was first launched in 2012 and over the years it has changed tremendously. Earlier, the knowledge graph displayed only static information, but of course, with the advancement in technology, Google had to upgrade. 

Let me explain with another example if you are searching for a movie, earlier you probably might have only got limited information like the release date, the cast and crew, reviews etc. But now, Google knowledge graph also gives you the option to directly book your movie tickets. 

Google keeps experimenting to provide the best results and hence do not be surprised if you regularly see any changes or updates in the Google knowledge graph. 

And regular updates means you need to be in pace with Google, to ensure you are not missing out on any SEO strategy and leaving a blank space in the knowledge graph. 

Now comes the next question….

How Does Google Knowledge Graph Work?

Google’s mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally available and accessible to all in the most useful way. And how does it achieve its goal? With your help.

If you search on Google, “What is knowledge graph?” you get this result - “The knowledge graph is a knowledge base used by Google to enhance its search engine’s results with semantic-search information gathered from a wide variety of sources.”

And to do this, the Knowledge Graph uses several different components in its algorithm to determine what information will be included in the Google knowledge graph.

1. Semantic Search: The first part of the knowledge graph is Google's understanding of semantic search, which is where they strive to understand the intent of the researchers and the contextual meaning of the terms. Google gets a better understanding of the context of the term by taking the search term and going through some of these filters:

• Word variations
• Word synonyms
• Concept match
• Natural language
• IP location

1. Entity search: Google continues to index and organize everything you need online to link relationships between things to create "entities". For example, if you search for “Amitabh Bachhan”, Google finds his relationships with all movies, TV shows, upcoming events, etc. for him as an entity.
2. User behaviour: the last important factor in the Google Knowledge Graph is user behaviour. For example, when we searched for "What is Knowledge Graph?" the answer was displayed from Wikipedia and not from Google, which is the creator of the Knowledge Graph. This can be an example of how Google examines websites that have high click-through rates and bounce rates compared to other websites on the internet.

All you need is a spark of an idea on how to create better content and engage with your target audience via the Knowledge Graph panel. Many people do it, including the musicians. If you are also a musician and are striving hard to be displayed in the Google knowledge graph, all you have to do is, get your SEO practices right. 

Now the next question is …..

How To Get A Google Knowledge Graph for Your Music?

If we have a look at the Google knowledge graph of the famous singer Arijit Singh, you can see the following information. 

• Available on
• Wikipedia page link
• General information
• Awards
• Movies
• Songs
• Profiles
• Events.

Now, as a musician, if you also want all this information on your Google knowledge graph, you need to get a few things cleared. 

The first thing you should know is that Google will decide for itself how to display your knowledge graph. Therefore, you will need to use certain SEO techniques to ensure that the search engine bots can access all the information you need.

With that in mind, let's look at some of the steps you can take to give yourself the best chance of success. Before we get down to actual business, there are a few steps that you should follow. Though these will not ensure a display in Google knowledge graph, it is probably the best way to let Google know about your existence.

1. Set up your Google account: I am sure you have a Google account by now. If not, time to wake up, you are living in an entirely different era.

Log in to your Google account and stay logged in while you complete the rest of the steps. 

1. Create a Google brand account: by doing this, you are informing Google that you exist as a brand or a musician. Put in all the necessary information about you, your brand and your music. This should also include links to your social media pages, website, etc. 

1. Put your music on Google Play: by uploading your music on Google Play is another way of telling Google that you are indeed genuine and an authentic musician. 

1. Register your website in Google search console: another important step, highly recommended by Google itself, is to connect your website to your brand account via the Google Search Console.

Rather than just logging in into it from your Google Plus profile, this method verifies that you own your website and establishes an official link between your brand and the website that Google will recognize. 

This is also very useful in the long run because once you have been recognized as the representative of your brand, you can propose changes to your knowledge graph directly in the future.

These were some basic steps, which may or may not get you to the Google knowledge graph. Now let’s get down to the real business. 

Publish A Wikipedia Page:

If you have noticed by now, one of the most essential parts of Google knowledge graph is the Wikipedia page. So if you do not have it by now, you are already late. 

A published Wikipedia page is a great way to show your reputation as a musician. In addition, Google uses Wikipedia to obtain information for your knowledge graph.

The information you provide must be authentic and verifiable. This means that it must be approved by a trusted third-party source, for example, a media publication instead of your own brand website. The best way to get third-party approval is through:

• Publishing several articles about your music or tours
• Adding your singles or albums in the official chart
• Prominence with a specific genre
• Awards and competition wins
• Music featured on media like movies, tv shows, etc
• Involvement in politics
• Work with other famous musicians
• Performances at major events or festivals.

Publish A Entry At MusicBrainz:

MusicBrainz is an open music encyclopedia that collects musical metadata and makes it available to the public. This is another resource that Google uses to find information about music bands and musicians. It is similar to Wikipedia but focused only on musicians. 

The site has its own guidelines for publishing. First, verify that you are not yet on the site and if not, add all of your band or artist details to the database, including the website and all available album or song information.

Remember to be as complete as possible and follow all the rules to make sure your registration is accepted.

Use Optimized Images:

If you have noticed, the first thing that the Google knowledge panel displays is the image of the artist or the music band. So you need to ensure that you optimise your images in accordance to Google so that it recognises you. 

Upload lots of high-quality images to your website and make sure your band or artist name is in the image file name and alt text.

For example, if your group name is “Rock Band”, before uploading an image, rename it to something like rock-band-press-shot.jpg

Then when you upload it to your site, set the alt text to "Rock Band Press Shot". I would also recommend that you try to get multimedia publications that publish your images to do the same or at least provide images with optimized file names.

Note: images from your Google Brand account and YouTube thumbnails can also be used in your knowledge graph.

It is not any rocket science and is not as difficult as it sounds. Paving your way up to the Google knowledge graph is not all that difficult. If you make sure that your SEO practices are well up to the mark and if you follow the above-mentioned step, you can see you Google knowledge graph in no time. 

Now let us understand….. 

What Is The Relationship Between Search Results And Knowledge Graph?

If you have ever noticed, whatever search term you put into the search bar, Google bolds those search terms in the results. Have a look at the below screenshot.

For example, if you are searching for Google knowledge graph for musicians, in the first result, if you can see the search terms or keywords Google and musicians are in bold. In the second result, the terms, Google, knowledge and musicians are in bold. 

What I am trying to explain is, for Google the relevance of what the user is searching is more important. 

Knowledge Graph is Google's own database, where the relevance of all data collected from billions of web searches is assessed. When Google starts to understand exactly what you are typing on your site, it starts sending you more traffic and improving your ranking.

Optimizing the knowledge graph is simply the process by which Google understands the topic of your website. This is the future of search, a fact that became apparent after the launch of Hummingbird.

Let’s take another example for better understanding. Suppose you are writing something about ‘Deserts’. The success of this writeup about deserts depends greatly on how aptly you are able to convey the real intension of the use of the word ‘desert’. 

I mean desert could mean a sweet dish taken after lunch or dinner. It could mean a dry, barren land, or it could also mean abandoning someone. Now you see, it can get difficult for Google search bots to interpret the actual meaning that you want. 

This is the reason, knowledge graph optimization is important. 

Thanks to the optimization of the Knowledge Graph, Google can determine exactly the meaning it uses, based on its meta description, its title, its keywords and its content. It can then synchronize your content with the appropriate intention of the user.

According to HubSpot, 76% of all of the content marketing efforts should be focused on helping users find what they want, quickly and easily. Pay more attention to the user experience. This includes colour, design, buttons, positioning, call to action, content and research, including optimizing the knowledge graph.

There is no doubt that with the advancement in technologies systems will evolve and be updated. But according to psychological research, human behaviour does not change at the macro level. And your main focus is humans and the search done by them and not the system.

This means that you need to focus on the humans instead of paying attention to the system. Your prime and the ultimate goal should be to satisfy the search queries to the nearest accuracy. 

And for this, you need to do two things:

1. Human Content Optimization
2. Google Content Optimization

Let us take one at a time.

Human Content Optimization:

Your content should be focused and optimized for humans. Ask yourself, “Is my content relevant and helpful enough? Will the user get the information that he is looking for?” One of the major tasks of optimizing the content is using the right keywords at the right place. 

You should think about what search terms the users can use because these are the keywords that the users give to the search engines. At the minimum level, your keywords should be aptly present in your 

• Title
• URL
• Meta description
• Image name
• Image Description
• At the beginning of your post and in the conclusion.

Adding keywords is important but remember, overstuffing keywords is not going to help. You need to understand the user behaviour and go behind the reason of why a particular keyword was used. 

Based on your research, you will understand what type of audiences you want to attract, what type of search terms they use and exactly what information they are looking for. When you have an answer to all of these, you can accordingly curate and create a content optimized for the human and not the system.

For perfect content, your write up should include:

• Headline
• Subheadline
• Subheadings
• Bullet points
• Conclusion

Include your keywords in each of these elements for best results.

Google Content Optimization:

Google Knowledge Graph provides personalized search results for the user based on location, calendar, historical searches and other factors. It's the knowledge graph that lets Google know what people want to see when they're looking for information on famous people, especially when they work in similar industries.

Likewise, if you search for "Arijit Singh", Google includes a list of other famous singers and celebrities because they realize that users may want to know more about these other musicians too.

When you optimize for Google, your goal is to "feed search spiders" with your content. Make it as easy as possible to find their search terms on your page.

Google Spider is a program designed to search the web for all new content. And, the spider follows a well-structured path when exploring the World Wide Web.

However, the spider is not the one who clicks on your search results, but your search visitors. However, Google's algorithm was written to provide answers to certain search queries directly on the search results page -  this is where knowledge graph comes into the role.

Google will extract responses from a trusted site and serve them to the user. 

Essentially, the sites with the best user experience will win in the long run. This means that sites with content, media, good quality, etc will tend to rank higher for a longer period of time. If you as a musician are looking forward to appearing in the Google knowledge graph, you need to add the above points to your SEO skills.

Being in the digital marketing industry for over a decade now, I completely understand that optimization for search engines and SEO writing is not a cup of tea for all. So, instead of doing all the hard work, you can leave it to us and we will take care of all your needs, with a complete satisfaction guarantee.

Drive Digital is the best digital marketing company offering its services to thousands of happy clients. We will be more than happy to take your musical career to new heights. Give us a chance and we promise you will not regret it.