Highlight your real-life authority in your online presence

Anthony says: “Take your real-life authority and put it online.

You want to develop your topical authority (entity SEO, EEAT, etc.) by taking that real-life authority and putting it online through various forms such as improving your About Us page, improving your bio pages, adding author bios, showcasing your qualifications, skills, and education, etc.

Think of it as your own LinkedIn and Wikipedia – but on your website for you to detail to Google and users that you are who you say you are.

You should still have all your stuff on social media, control those things, and make sure all of that content is correct. However, when we’re talking about SEO, you want to have it on your own website. That will make sure that you’re telling Google and users that the people who wrote this content and work in this business are who they say they are, and they are legit.

At the end of the day, humans buy from other humans so that’s what you want to talk about.”

If you have a personal brand and a business brand, should you have two different websites or can you just have a personal page on the business site?

“You could do a bit of both. Usually, you would have a page on the company website that leads to your personal site, but it depends on what you want that personal website for. If it’s just a portfolio and you only want people to check it out, that’s great.

However, if you really want to use SEO as a lead generator then you want to have all that content on there. Have blogs, create content for that, and treat it as a separate website. I don’t see the issue with having a bit of both because, if a lot of traffic is coming to your company website, you’ve opened up the door for the page that’s talking about yourself to lead them to your website – and you’re doing SEO for your own website by building up the authority on that too.”

On that page, what do you include about yourself and how should you talk about it?

“You would usually write in the third person. I also like to write the way that I talk so it’s more natural. You don’t want it to be like an encyclopedia, where it’s too structured and stiff, because humans buy from other humans. When people are reading that, you want them to get a sense of who you are and what you do.

Include the basics, like your education, qualifications, awards, articles you’ve written, places you’ve been featured if you’ve done PR, and things like that. If you’re an owner of the business, you want to highlight your experience, expertise, authority and trust. You want someone to read that and think, ‘I want to work with this person. They know exactly what they’re doing, and I trust them.’

Then, help Google to crawl that easily by having some simple, easy-to-create Schema Markup to clearly tell Google who you are.”

Does writing this content in the third person make Google more likely to feature that content in places like your personal Knowledge Panel?

“Potentially. However, you don’t want to over-optimize everything. Follow the guidelines and see what works, just make sure that you’re conveying the message to Google and users that you’re legit and you are who you say you are.

Think of it as a two-way conversation with Google. What do you do? Where did you go to school? Where did you grow up? How did you get into the game? Think of that conversation and try to replicate it online so that, when both Google and humans are looking at it, they get a real sense of who you are.”

If you offer other services, like SEO, should you include that in your about section?

“100%. It’s the same thing you would do as a plumber, an electrician, or a jockey. By detailing that experience, you’re detailing how long you’ve been in the game, the companies you’ve worked for, the awards you’ve won, etc.

You wouldn’t go to a doctor who had no qualifications. You’re going to go to a doctor who has all their awards and certifications on the wall, and you would make sure that they’re legit. People love that experience, and that’s what you want to be talking about and focusing on.”

Can you measure the direct impact of building your profile online and creating a great personal entity?

“Developing your knowledge panels and things like that are good indicators. Again, it’s not just related to your website; you’ve got other social signals that you want to control and develop as well.

There isn’t really a quantifiable number, but you can look at your traffic. Look at Search Console to see how much traffic is coming through. If you’re adding author bios and internal links to relevant pages, are people going through to those pages? How long are they staying on the website?

You can grab some numbers but this isn’t a 1+1=2 situation; it’s part of a holistic approach to SEO. You’re doing your best to tell Google who you are and what you do, and add that credibility. Even if you threw numbers out the window, you should be telling people that information anyway. You do it in real life when they walk through your store. Does there have to be a number attached to that? Think beyond the numbers and consider the real-world impact that this can have.”

Does having your own personal entity online help to differentiate yourself from ChatGPT content?

“I think so. ChatGPT is just scraping things from the internet. We had an inquiry come through because someone had searched, ‘best SEO agencies in Shoreditch’ on ChatGPT, and StudioHawk came up. We didn’t optimize for it; it just happened.

I think we came up for a couple of reasons. One was location-based because they were literally just down the road. Also, the intent of the keyword. They used the term ‘Shoreditch’ and we came up as one of five. I don’t know the history of what they searched before on ChatGPT, but location was certainly one of the biggest factors.”

Should you create entities for everything, including your company brand, the products that you offer, and yourself?

“100%. I really love schema markup, and some of the team will dive deep into developing that, as well as improving our content offering and our ability to create content, working with clients to get better content out there, and pushing the EEAT and entity SEO idea – especially with the advent of SGE and AI in search.

That’s definitely something that we’re trying to do more of, for ourselves and our clients, and schema is a big part of that as well.

Although the bots are becoming more intelligent, I think schema still helps. It’s the basics, and there is no harm in doing it. Schema will have a role. As we’ve seen with SGE and Perspectives, Google will pull more from social signals and your presence on other channels where they can grab more information about you.

We are moving toward Google having a wider look at all these other social signals – because anyone can say anything on their website. Google will then look at other websites and other platforms to determine whether they have seen this person before and where they have come from. While schema will be a part of it, you will need to have a presence in other areas, to feed Google’s knowledge of yourself or your company. Being prevalent on other social media platforms and having your business and information elsewhere helps Google get more information.

It’s important to focus beyond just your own website. It’s a big world out there, so why not have a presence in other areas? It will help your SEO and it will help Google understand more about your entity or your business entity.”

Do you recommend that clients involve ChatGPT in their content creation process?

“You can use it to speed up your website and speed up the work that you do – it can make you more efficient and help you out with ideation and writer’s block – but don’t let it do 100%, and don’t copy and paste it. That’s what everyone else does.

Use the 80/20 rule. Use it to speed up your work, but don’t let it write the whole piece. You are the expert, at the end of the day.

We tell clients that ChatGPT is not going to replicate their 30 years of experience being a lawyer. It might be able to pull contracts together and do certain things, but the client has gone through those cases, they’ve fought those battles, and they’ve dealt with clients. You need to get that point across.

ChatGPT will help speed things up, just like the typewriter and the printing press did. People have been doing article spinning since before ChatGPT. Use it to speed up your work so you can be more efficient, but don’t let it do everything because it’s not you. Only you can be you.

When you’re creating content, it’s about quality over quantity. Who is your target market? Who are you trying to talk to? Who do you want to buy from you and engage with you? Once you have an understanding of that target market, what are they searching to find you? Create and tailor content around that. Put the right prompts into ChatGPT to give you some ideas, then create content, and then you can edit, tweak, and improve upon that. Don’t outsource your thinking, just let it help you.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2024?

“Stop getting stuck into the nitty gritty when a business owner just doesn’t understand SEO. You want to be doing things that will move the needle, such as good fundamentals and good basics. Work on your technical SEO: get your ducks in a row and make sure that’s clean.

However, the things that can really move the needle are jumping onto your Google Search Console and finding those second/third-page opportunities that you can move to the first page. Improve the metadata, page structure, and content on those specific pages. Those are some quick wins.

I’m not going to say that you can 100% go from page two to page one just by improving the basics. However, we have achieved that for some decent brands that we’ve worked with. They were around the top of the third page, and we improved the title, meta description, and on-page content – and we added internal links and fixed up the heading structure of those pages. In 3-4 months, with a bit of schema markup, we’ve seen them reach as high as the top three on page one.

With the way Google’s constantly crawling websites, you should be able to see an impact within a month or two. You can show your client the before and after of what you’ve done for the important pages that match up with their business goals. You can really showcase that impact through improved click-through rates, impressions, and clicks. That is something tangible that a client can see.

Don’t get too deep into the nitty gritty SEO stuff, especially if you’re an agency working with clients who don’t understand it. Focus on things that will have an impact and, like with football, the good fundamentals and good basics.”

Anthony Barone is Co-Founder and Managing Director of StudioHawk UK, and you can find him over at StudioHawk.co.uk.