Instant coffee, instant messaging and now instant information. Once again businesses have been thrust into an entirely new environment and must adapt to how consumers want to access information, or be left out of the game altogether.
AI channels like AI Overview and chatbots are changing how people get answers to the questions they type into search engines. They provide quick, on-demand summaries and remove the desire for users to click on website links. This means keyword optimisation is no longer enough to help your brand get discovered by potential customers.
One of the new methods of ensuring online visibility is merging SEO and content using knowledge graphs.
What is a Knowledge Graph?
A content knowledge graph refers to how the data on your website is structured. The idea is to make sure that all the information is organised into a network of interconnected ideas and subjects. This standardised language called schema markup creates a clear map of your brand’s expertise. Instead of forcing AI to guess the meaning of scattered information, this approach precisely defines the people, products and places relevant to your business and shows how they relate to one another.
Why is a knowledge graph needed now more than ever before? This way, AI systems can immediately ‘understand’ complex topics like “cardiology” for instance, and that it includes concepts like heart disease and cholesterol. Businesses that are on the ball and are already providing this structured data are influencing how AI platforms represent their brand. Take the cue and ensure that your expertise is accurately referenced and cited in search summaries and recommendations. Consider it a highly strategic move that gives your business a competitive edge by shaping its digital reputation and likeliness of being discovered.
Using Schema Markup (Structured Data) for Powerful Impact
Schema Markup is quite a technical aspect of SEO, as it creates a structured layer of data that makes your content more machine-readable. While it may not have received much attention in past SEO conversations, it is the key to creating your knowledge graph and boosting your brand to better visibility in AI summaries. Despite being technical, schema markup takes shape in your content. It helps to define your content and how it relates to your entities so AI can use it more accurately to target user queries.
Why you need schema markup:
Recognising entities: Provides product, service and location tags that machines can recognise so they put your business in the correct category and understand how it relates to similar topics online.
Machine-readable: Helps AI tools to single out your content from streams of others and make it visible to the user in cases where it is most relevant and helpful.
More brand appearances: Making this the foundation of your SEO content will prompt machines to pull up your brand name or website and refer users to your expertise, products and services more often.
Using this data to create a knowledge graph will ensure that the information available to AI and LLMs from your business is accurate and worthy of being referred to in search results.
Bring SEO & Content Together in Ways That Matter
SEO and content teams are being dubbed as the saviours for business in this unknown, perilous AI territory. These are two familiar marketing tools that we’ve used before and we’ve seen them work, but now they need to work together for a future-proof approach. Here’s how your business can merge SEO and content using a knowledge graph:
- Have clear goals and entities: Identify where you want to be seen as an authority and what topics you want to own to gain audience trust.
- Use schema markup: Use clear entities such as product, place and topics and relate them to each other so your brand will be recommended in AI results.
- Audit and fill content gaps: With your knowledge graph as the benchmark, check if all entities are represented in your SEO and content and spot opportunities for improvement. The audit results will inform how you fill any content gaps so AI can interpret and surface your content.
With a knowledge graph, your content is structured to be ready for queries, so AI can identify how best to answer relevant searches. For example, having FAQs on your website or in your blogs based on actual data about what people are asking will allow AI to cite, reference your brand, and even answer user questions with accuracy and not false information from public forums.
Conclusion: Don’t Lose the AI Battle, Master It
Need help merging your SEO and content for uninterrupted organic traffic? Affordable SEO can help you build a strategic knowledge graph based on data and gear your business for an AI-led landscape. Contact our SEO experts for advanced tools to future-proof your business today.