Google Knowledge Graph

Google’s “Knowledge Graph” is another strong step forward by the preeminent leader in online search. It is also a clear and resounding endorsement for rich content. Search is absolutely being influenced by social media today. My contention is that Google+, whilst not having the engagement metric Facebook enjoys today, will be the safe, more value-rich bet for the future.

Photo and video content has enjoyed a recent serge in the past year due to the Panda and Penguin search algorithm updates. Now, with Knowledge Graph, online users and businesses alike should recognize an even greater value potential in creating rich, unique, and engaging content.

The leaders in this effort will not only create and distribute this rich content, but also optimize that content with the search-friendly Schema.org markup vocabulary. Schema.org is a collaborative effort between Google, Yahoo, and Bing that helps organize, translate, and contextualize pieces of content for search bots. The better these bots can understand the text, photos, and videos (people, products, organizations, recipes, schedules, etc.) on your website/blog, the better and more appropriately they can rank your link in SERPs (search engine result pages.)

The greatest takeaway here is that, according to tech analyst Greg Sterling, Google is looking to deliver “answers, not links.”

My advice: Take content creation very seriously and seek the council of those fluent in social media and search engine optimization on best practices to best optimize this content. (In this, beware of the “old-school” SEO pro; most of their tactics are now being penalized.)

And finally, take the time to understand the concept of Social SEO. Social Media isn’t a thing, and it certainly isn’t a fad, it is a paradigm shift in the way the Internet is fundamentally organized. If you can be agile in this paradigm shift, you will perform better in Search, and ultimately, connect more efficiently with your end user.

Note: Actionable tactics regarding Social SEO can be found en masse on Tier10lab.com. For any specific questions, please leave them as a comment below.