With about 83% of online research being done on the Google search engine, it has arguably become an indispensable tool for small business brand building. However, you must know how to package your content to help Google achieve your business goals. In today’s podcast, Jason Barnard from Kalicube and Stephen Halasnik from Financing Solutions discuss ‘Brand SERPs and Knowledge Panels- Managing Your Brand on Google.
Summary
Brand SERPs and Knowledge Panels – Managing Your Brand on Google
The small business world is full of competition, and the advent of digital technology has made the competition even more intense than ever. However, smart business owners that know how to manage their brand on Google are ahead of the curve.
As a small business owner, you should strive to manage your Brand on Google SERPs to build your business visibility. This involves optimizing your content to help Google perform and achieve its goal, which is ensuring that your content always ranks on its first page of the Search Engine Result Page.
How Google presents your brand on any search result page is incredibly important. Hence, you need to proactively educate google to represent you as you want to your audience. Google’s understanding of who you are, what you do, and what audience you serve is essential to the growth and development of your company. And it’s a function of your knowledge of Google SERPs.
With this in mind, we will walk you through brand SERPs and how you can manage your Brand on Google.
What Is SERPs
Search engine results pages are web pages users see when they search for something on the internet using a search engine such as Google. When users input their search query using relevant keywords, the search engine presents them with a SERP.
Moreover, SERPs usually have two types of content- organic results and paid results. The organic search result is unpaid listings on the search result pages. In other words, ‘they are free listing in Google Search that appears because it’s relevant to someone’s search term‘. However, your web pages can only make it to the first page of SERP when your content is relevant and optimized to meet the standard practice of Google.
If you want your web pages to grow and rank organically, you should consider getting a search engine optimization professional.
On the other hand, paid results are ads paid for by businesses to rank pretty fast above organic results. Business owners invest in paid search result because they want to boost their website visibility when a user search specific keywords.
Why Is Managing Your Brand on Google Important?
With Google being the dominant search engine with a 94% market share, it has become an effective marketing tool for small businesses. In fact, according to research, 81% of retail shoppers conduct online research before making a buying decision.
Optimizing your content help Google achieve your business goals. Google users search for answers or solutions to their problems. It is Google’s sole aim to provide its users with the ideal and best solutions to their problems. 
And like in business, Google places a premium on customer satisfaction and will only recommend content it deems a perfect fit and can satisfy its users. Therefore, you must consistently tell Google through content that you’re an expert and authority within your industry.
How Can You Manage Your Brand on Google?
Not managing your brand well on Google can mean that your competitors are only visible in result pages, and your target audience might not even know you exist.
Below are the tips you can manage your Brand on Google and take your business to the next level:
Research and Use the Proper Keywords
Keyword research helps you identify the right words for your website when writing content.
The appropriate keywords make your web pages appear when people search for terms or words related to your product.
As a small business owner, your keywords should help you stand out from the pack and champion your unique offerings. At the same time, you should showcase high-level authority in your niche by producing quality content that resonates with the target audience.
Show Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness
Expertise means that you have a deep knowledge of your niche. In other words, the content on your website should be created by a subject matter expert. For example, a medical practitioner is more qualified to write on health-related issues than someone who reads a few posts about health.
Authority refers to your website’s reputation, especially among other experts in the same niche. This can be measured by Google by the number of backlinks you are getting. Pages with high backlinks tend to have high organic search engine rankings.
Finally, you need to convince Google that you’re a credible solution to its subset of users who are your audience. Your content becomes trustworthy when they are legitimate, accurate, and transparent.
Optimize Your Meta Description
The meta description not only helps your target audience understand the content of your website but also helps Google understand the content of your web page.
A good meta description will affect your website’s click-through rate and traffic. It tells users what your website content is about, allowing them to click on the URL if it’s what they want.
User Header Correctly and Clean Your Webpage periodically.
Managing Your Brand on Google entails that you must optimize your header tags. Google uses headers to claw through a page to determine its relevance and know how to rank it. Headers also help people to discern your content quickly. Moreover, It makes your content scannable, as users rarely have the luxury of time to read a whole piece.
Further, you should ensure you periodically assess your web pages to remove content that is no longer relevant to your brand. This helps Google not to misrepresent your website and brand.
Learn About Our Guest
Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) is an author and digital marketing consultant. He specializes in Brand SERP optimization and Knowledge Panel management. Jason has over 2 decades of experience in digital marketing, starting in 1998 (the year Google was incorporated) with a website for kids based on the characters Boowa & Kwala that he built up to become one of the 10,000 most visited sites in the world. In the 1990s he was a professional musician with the Punk-Folk group The Barking Dogs.
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