As the most popular search engine on the planet, Google has the power to make or break a digital marketing business. That’s why you must be nimble and prepared to navigate Google’s frequent algorithm updates. David Kauzlaric, Chief Marketing Officer and co-founder of Agency Elevation took the stage at the 2024 Traffic & Conversion Summit to explain how to adapt to Google’s changes, future-proof your business, and maximize the success of your local SEO.
Understanding Google Updates
Google has a long history of updates, but David describes the modern age of SEO as especially volatile. Over the past few years, Google has made frequent, often significant, changes to its algorithms in an effort to make more money. To keep users coming back, they must always give the best possible search results. As a result, they’re always looking for new ways to weed out low-quality or untrustworthy content.
Common Issues Businesses Encounter
Many digital marketing agencies and their clients have found it challenging to cope with Google’s evolving outlook on SEO. David sees many businesses struggling because of these problems:
- Too many ads or using pop-up ads
- A lack of unique content
- Service area and location pages that regurgitate content with minor changes
- AI content
- Too many similar content pages focused on the same topics
When Google identifies these issues, it can penalize a single page or apply a sitewide filter. For example, if you’ve published multiple blog posts about the same topic, Google might determine that the content is unhelpful and penalize your entire site.
Entities and the Future of SEO
The way to dominate content and excel at local SEO isn’t keyword stuffing or publishing the longest posts. Instead, you should shift your focus to entities, which David breaks down into four categories:
People
Places
Things
Ideas
Google creates an entry for every entity in its Knowledge Graph, a database that it uses to display responses to search queries quickly and accurately. When you conduct a search, you see information from the Knowledge Graph in a knowledge panel without having to click on a page link.
Building Knowledge Graph Panels
Google will include you in its search results if it trusts your brand, and that requires having a Knowledge Graph panel. To get one, David recommends that you connect various entities, including:
- The business brand
- The owner
- Employees
- The city where the business is located
- Google Business Profiles (GBPs)
- Domains
Each entity has its own Knowledge Graph ID within Google, and linking them together underscores your site’s trustworthiness.
Connecting Entities With EEAT
Entities tie directly to Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust (EEAT), a core principle of Google’s algorithms. Making connections between your business and those working there proves you have EEAT.
How to Tie Together Entities for EEAT
David explains that you can link entities with specific elements on your website, such as:
- Author bios
- Biographical blurbs and photos in sidebars
- Company about pages, which should be separate from author pages
- Location pages
- Schema, or special code that helps search engines understand your website
Incorporating these components into your site and directly backlinking between Knowledge Graph IDs strengthens your EEAT.
Using Signal Generation for Local SEO
Signal generation is much more important to local SEO than linking. To evaluate your site’s EEAT, Google relies heavily on user signals, including:
- GBP reviews from trusted user accounts
- Responses to reviews
- Questions on a GBP profile
- Uploaded user-created photos of the business
Entity signals are another important contributor to local SEO. Linking to a GBP profile, posting contextually relevant content, and including information about your business, industry, and location all affect how Google views your EEAT.
Become an SEO Superstar With Help From T&C 2024
For more awesome, tried and proven, actionable content and specific tools and tactics check out Traffic & Conversion Summit where you can hear from the world’s leading experts on all things Tools & Tactics. Traffic & Conversion Summit is the BIGGEST digital marketing event in the US for entrepreneurs and agency owners. Check it out here!
