Go deeper into managing your local knowledge panel

Claire says: “If you’re a local business, you need to think about your local knowledge panel – beyond what you can manage via the NMX (New Merchant Experience). For those who don’t know, NMX is a very silly name for what replaced the Business Profile dashboard, and everyone calls it something different. Basically, businesses lost the ability to manage their Google Business Profiles via the old interface, and everything went into the SERP. Now, if you Google your business name and you are the manager of a business listing, you’ll see a little box at the top. It’s a bit like the CMS for your website, and a lot of editing functions exist within that box.

If the SERP isn’t triggering the NMX for some reason, then go to business.google.com. You can click on the business there and it will take you directly to the NMX. However, it should be triggering now. When it first changed over, it didn’t trigger sometimes because Google was still a little bit lost. If you haven’t got one, you obviously need to set up a Google business listing. Do the beginner bits first.”

Why has Google changed it so that you’re managing your business on the SERP instead of logging into Google Business Profile?

“Why is the sky blue? Google obviously knows a lot about what we do and will read a lot into why we do it. They know how we use all of our logins, and they know what actions we take. They probably found that smaller businesses didn’t use the interface as it was before.

Hopefully, they thought that they were basically taking away a step from the process. For a small business that only manages one listing, they’re going to see that as soon as they Google their business name. They probably thought that it was quicker and easier.

As SEOs, we sometimes struggle with change, and we like to make a big fuss about it. Now, you can find most things via the NMX, and we’ve got used to using it – unless we’re managing profiles in bulk using a third-party tool via the API. The NMX is okay; we quite like it really.

It is easier to go in there and tweak things on the SERP instead of having to log into something else, especially because Google Business Profile serves a lot of small businesses. I’m sure that Google, in their infinite wisdom, decided that this would make it easier for small businesses to keep things like their hours updated, and make other important micro-changes that affect how people interface and the information they get from their Business Profiles.”

If you are managing multiple businesses, can you still do that within Google or do you need to use a third-party tool?

“It depends. If you’ve got 10 locations in a location group then you can always update via bulk uploads, which is pretty quick and easy, and you don’t need to use a third-party tool.

There are ways that you can update things without having to pay for a tool – even if you are managing multiple locations.”

What are the initial key elements that a business has to optimize within its online local presence?

“Everyone needs to go and have a little look at the Local Search Ranking Factors survey that Darren Shaw puts together every year. He surveys 30-40 people from our industry who work with a lot of local businesses, and they will talk about what they think is most important. If you’re wondering what you need to do with your Business Profile, definitely go and have a look at that.

All of the things that you need to do to completely fill out your Business Profile, you can do via the NMX. That includes the basics: name, address, phone number, correct category, and correct secondary categories. Then there are all those fun things that you should be doing that give your Business Profile lots of content and encourage people to click through or take an action.

That could be photos, booking links, appointments, admissions, experiences, products, and services. It can be all singing and all dancing, and then people will take action within your Business Profile. Treat it as if it were the home page of your website and you’re trying to entice people in – either to your website or to take an action on that Business Profile. You want to make sure that you look more compelling than your competitor.”

How do you demonstrate more trust to Google, and describe your business in other spaces online to further influence the knowledge panel?

“Obviously, Google is also a large repository for reviews – so that’s a big trust factor. You want to encourage reviews in and on Google, but there are also other elements that can get pulled into your local knowledge panel, like reviews from elsewhere around the web.

It is very important that you keep visiting your local profile to understand what is being pulled in and featured on your Business Profile. If you need to go and do a little bit of reputation triage, then you need to head off to those websites. First, learn from those bad reviews, and then try and get more, better reviews in those places to make your Business Profile look better.”

How do you know where to drive customers and encourage them to write a review?

“We do keep coming back around to Google, so we know that you need reviews there. Aside from that, it is very useful to just Google your brand name. Have a look at what appears in the first two pages of the SERP (especially the ones that have got review schema of some kind), because those are the types of sites that might get eyeballs.

Aside from that, you need to know your marketplace very well so that you understand what the touchpoints in your ideal consumer’s journey are going to be. Consider what else they might be consuming, in terms of reviews and content, and make sure that you’ve had a positive interaction at some point along that journey.”

What might Google be taking from other places and incorporating within a local knowledge banner?

“This is the exciting bit. I’ve been looking at this for years and not really understanding where a lot of stuff was coming from. You can learn a lot about brand management from an organisation like Kalicube, and a lot of that spills over into the local marketplace. Soon, local businesses are going to be seeing more information pulled from elsewhere and you need to think about how you can manage that now.

An example we might see now would be a description coming in from Wikipedia. There are other elements that you can’t control like ads and third parties that you work with, which also appear in your knowledge panels. You’ve got your editorial summary that Google writes that you can’t directly influence as well.

More and more, you want to ask those questions. How did that get there? How do I get rid of it or how do I get one of those for myself? If your client is saying that they don’t like it, and asking how to get rid of it, you may have to explain that you can’t, because it’s based on Google’s understanding of your entity. It’s a difficult conversation to have with a business.

Do a bit of a stocktake of who you are, what it is that you do, and who you do it for. That data needs to be the same everywhere – and you need to own that information on your own website.”

Should a relatively small local business be trying to get a Wikipedia page if they haven’t got one?

“No, because I don’t think Google will be pulling in Wikipedia unless it is for educational niches, attractions, and important brick-and-mortar establishments. It appears in the type of hybrid knowledge panel that brings in information from a branded knowledge panel plus the local knowledge panel.

If you go and look at Madame Tussauds, Blackpool Tower, the Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower, or any big university, you’ll find a very extensive knowledge panel which is pulling in data from lots of different sources. Wikipedia is only really important when you are managing a brand that has brick-and-mortar as well as being a notable entity. Those are the types of businesses that are going to see a busy knowledge panel that brings in information from those different knowledge verticals.”

Is it important for a local business that leads with a personal brand to build up that personal brand, and is there anything different that they need to do for that?

“You need to map it out because you can have several different ‘brands’. I’m ‘Claire Carlile Marketing’, which is my local business, but I’m also ‘Claire Carlile’, which is a person, and I’ve got a Knowledge Graph ID for that. I’ve also got another one from Google Scholar for my academic writing.

I’ve got all of these different ways that Google is seeing me as an entity, but it isn’t joining them up at the moment. My next project will be to help Google join that together a bit more. If I became a published author or released an album then that would put me in a different knowledge vertical. It’s about mapping that out beforehand. If I’m being ‘Claire Carlile’ as an individual, then I’m a person. If I’m ‘Claire Carlile Marketing’, then I’m a local business. If I’m ‘Claire Carlile’ in Google Scholar, then I’m a scholar.

Jason Barnard's process is having an entity home, corroborating that, and then corroborating that corroboration. It’s a process. This sounds complicated, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. You just have to have a very clear understanding of who you are, what it is you do, and who you serve. That’s key.”

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?

“Go back to basics. We get very lost in tactics and tactical implementation, and we forget the strategic element. You should at least have some sort of strategy behind the things that you’re throwing against the wall to see if they stick.

Come back to who you are, what you do, why you do it better than your competitors, and who you serve. You should have that very deep foundational marketing understanding of your business – because you should know all of those things before you take yourself online and start considering your different entities.”

Claire Carlile is Local Search Expert at BrightLocal, and you can find her over at BrightLocal.com.