SEO Camp Day Lorraine 2015
The SEO CAMP association has been bringing together the French-speaking SEO community since 2008. They frequently organize events and meetings in France and abroad to discuss natural SEO.
In January 2015, SEO CAMP hosted SEO Camp Day Lorraine at CESCOM in Metz, with a full afternoon of talks on search, web marketing, and digital reputation. The event was well-documented by the organizers, as shown in the official SEO Camp Lorraine 2015 listing on OpenAgenda, which provides the full event details and complete speaker lineup.
This event marked a milestone: Jason Barnard delivered his first-ever SEO talk, titled “Your Web Reputation: It’s Vital for Your SEO.”
Jason Barnard’s Talk: “Your Web Reputation: It’s Vital for Your SEO“
Slides from the talk
“Your Online Reputation: Vital for Your SEO! (Slideshare)
[0:06] Today I want to highlight the importance of web reputation.
[0:11] Oh yes, I’m English - please excuse my French mistakes for the next 45 minutes.
[0:23] Thank you, that’s very kind. I also want to draw your attention to a huge opportunity that exists in simply having clear and consistent information on the web. I repeat - huge opportunity.
[0:44] Today I’m talking about web reputation - for brands, sites, and companies. I’m not talking about people. All those negative articles about individuals online: that’s not my topic today.
[0:59] When I say web reputation, it’s a broad sense. It’s not just reviews from your clients; it’s all information about you on the web.
[1:09] Just earlier, Olivier touched on this subject a little. For me, it’s the future.
[1:19] Let me start with two definitions - a knowledge base: what is it? It’s a list of information.
[1:30] Wikidata is a huge knowledge base, a list of information in a knowledge database.
[1:40] A knowledge base is a relational database of knowledge; it’s the collected know-how on the web.
[1:53] I won’t go into this since it’s way into the future. Simply put, it’s the idea of a relational knowledge base, managed and filled by machines.
[2:10] Here we see the typical example Google always gives. “Painter” is linked to “Picasso”, which is indirectly linked to “Italy”, then “Benini”, “Oscars” - today I can tell you, Da Vinci doesn’t have any Oscars.
[2:32] Wikipedia is a very simple knowledge graph. It’s a presentation of the information in Wiki, allowing you to navigate between linked facts.
[2:55] Google and other companies are trying to create something far more ambitious than Wikipedia - to link all human knowledge rationally, to apply it to everyone.
[3:23] You might be scared if you wish. It’s not just Google involved in SEO or search; today we’ll focus on Google, since it’s key, but everything I say also applies to Apple, Yahoo, of course Google.
[3:48] Google doesn’t publish exact figures, but it’s at least 1,500 billion data points and 1.2 billion entities. An entity is a person, a building, a company, a website.
[4:10] Have you followed so far? It’s huge, right? Thank you, good response.
[4:21] But it’s incomplete. Less than 1% of the world’s human knowledge is in Google’s Knowledge Graph today.
[4:34] That 1% is actually really poorly organized, even if we can’t see that.
[4:46] First question: Is your company - your website, not yourself - one of the 1.2 billion entities?
[5:03] Not sure. Definitely not sure.
[5:09] We think it’s automatic - that Google goes around, gathers all information, and that’s it. Not at all. Here are companies - industrial cleaning, for example. Is someone from the Perrière Company here?
[5:37] Google knows their address and phone, but it’s in small, gray text - Google knows they do industrial cleaning, but, for example, HMS3D: is someone from HMS3D here? No.
[5:59] Both are in Google’s index, so they show up in search results. But only Perrière is in the Knowledge Graph, recognized as an entity.
[6:20] Being in the index (search results on the left) and being in the Knowledge Graph (panel on the right) are two different things. It’s very easy to be indexed - launch a site and get a link, and you’ll soon be in Google’s index. It’s much harder to be recognized as an entity.
[6:48:] Even if you’re in the 1.2 billion, are the facts about you in the 1.5 trillion correct and complete? Certainly not.
[7:13] I tried this myself. Like Jack and Mr. Hyde, the best scientists test on themselves. I fed Google explicit information about myself - it took three months to get into my Knowledge Graph.
[7:42] It took Google three months to understand and accept I was an entity, and that the information was actually about me.
[7:53] Here, we see my reviews, my super score (4.8 out of 5) - thanks to friends for those reviews.
[8:00] My little juggling squirrel (as an example) is there, to show how we must juggle everything all the time.
[8:18] My area of activity, France, even my car rental hours: open 9am-6pm, closing in 155 minutes. But again, it’s incomplete.
[8:29] Google doesn’t know my Twitter, my background, my clients - there’s lots it doesn’t know. We’re all misunderstood by Google.
[8:56] Google can’t guess information or connections; we have to tell Google.
[9:03] I did - three months later Google knows James Barnard (my company) better than the industrial cleaning firm.
[9:33] Why did it take three months? Google wasn’t confident. All the info on the slide was data I put in Google Plus. Still, it took three months to trust.
[10:02] So, juggling pins - yes, that’s right, Mr. Barnard. Suppose Google has an idea who you are and what you offer - how confident is it? If it’s not confident, you won’t get visibility.
[10:41] Keyword: confidence.
[10:57] If Google gets incomplete or contradictory info, it won’t have confidence.
[11:20] Here’s a typical example: trusted info in black, questionable links in gray - lots of white space for Google to fill in.
[12:02] So, 1.5 trillion facts isn’t much if most is uncertain. If given a choice, Google shows first what it trusts the most.
[12:23] It’s now reluctant to show untrusted info. That kind of company will be less visible.
[12:41] To build Google’s confidence in your information, you have to inform Google explicitly, completely, and accurately everywhere on the web.
[13:06] With good management, you get a readable, positive “graph”: partners, clients, Facebook, Google+, product details - it’s clear.
[13:36] That’s a well-understood company.
[13:43] Now, let’s look at traditional web reputation: how does Google know you’re the best?
[14:02] Quality signals: incoming links, mentions, reviews, ratings - Google My Business, user actions, click rates, bounce rates. All are signals Google tracks.
[15:02] Everyone agrees these are important for ranking - and for web reputation.
[15:46] So, good SEO is based on Google’s trust in your facts and relationships, and on your review quality and consistency. These are major Google ranking factors.
[16:26] Google gathers info and quality signals - Twitter, Facebook, Google My Business, press, citations - and forms an opinion to rank you against competitors.
[16:59] There are beautiful citations - directories, infographics, Google Business, Twitter, and so on.
[17:08] Your web reputation is cumulative, permanent, always accessible, ironically.
[18:03] Everything on the web stays accessible by Google. If something bad about you is online, you can’t pretend it’s not there. You have to face it.
[18:19] So, how do you convince Google of your good reputation? Two main tactics:
[18:36] Google is smart but still a machine. It likes structured information - here’s an example from my site.
[19:03]The more structured your info for Google, the better it understands. For your “About Us” page: address, phone, CEO, but does Google really know which is which? It’s just text to the machine.
[19:28] Using schema.org markup lets you explicitly tell Google what data you’re presenting: address, town, postcode, phone - it’s in English, sorry! Maybe some of you need English lessons.
[20:16] You need to be mentioned positively and with relevance. If it’s an unrelated site or market, it’s not worth much. If there’s an article in Le Monde about you, that’s fantastic - especially if it’s positive.
[20:46] Don’t forget, it needs to be positive. Google understands the context - if your company name appears next to “bad,” that’s negative; if next to “superb,” that’s good. Context is increasingly important; Google is getting better at reading the attitude around your company mentions. A mention is as important as a link alone.
[22:01] If you have a bad 1-star review out of 10, to get back to a 9/10 average, you’ll need eight 10/10 reviews.
[22:34] So, it’s in your interest to provide good service.
[22:43] If Google finds 2 stars on one site and 5 stars on another, that sows doubt - the machine doesn’t know which is right. It’s better to have 4 stars everywhere than scattered 2s and 5s; consistency matters.
[23:29] Again, Google will trust you if your information is consistent everywhere. If your name or address differs on different directories, it won’t understand you.
[23:53] Now, what about Norr (a knowledge graph managed by AI)? That’s for far off - if today’s web reputation is hard, that’s even harder.
[24:39] If someone says something great about you, link yourself explicitly to that info - a positive quality signal. Mutual linking confirms validity to Google and increases trust.
[25:29] Supply Google with as much relevant, accurate, and complete information as possible. Present your company as best as possible, but it’s never really complete - you’ll always be working on it.
[26:05] The key takeaway: help Google understand, and do it in a way Google likes - make it easy for Google.
[26:28] I suggest you start looking at SEO through the lens of web reputation. Ask: what’s my reputation? How can I improve it in Google’s eyes? Because users see you through Google’s results.
[26:52] Remember, half of all users discovering you have never heard of your company before.
[27:03] There’s a huge opportunity here. Many aren’t even in Google’s entity graph.
[27:17] Results are currently ephemeral and unstable; with my tips, you’ll be stable and enduring, thanks to a foundation of understanding and trust.
[27:33] In conclusion: your web reputation is vital for your SEO. It’s in your hands.
[27:56] Next week I’ll post more on this topic at the given link. There’s a great quote you can tweet if you’d like.
[28:08] Okay, thank you very much!
Other Speakers at SEO Camp Lorraine 2015
- Philippe Yonnet - Benchmark SEO of e-commerce platforms
- Olivier Andrieu - SEO: fundamentals and latest updates
Local organization was led by Zohra Belmahdi, delegate for Lorraine SEO Camp.
January 2015 - SEO Camp Lorraine at CESCOM, Metz Speaker: Jason Barnard, founder and CEO at Kalicube®
