Personal Brand Coach - Kaj Kandler

I coach notable people to become visible in search engines. I provide coaching to promote your personal brand online.

Personal branding in a Google first world

Exchanging business cards was yesterday. In the eyes of the people you network with, your brand is shaped by what they can "google" about you. How well are represented in modern search engines like Google and Bing?

Search engines have gone ca. 2012 from matching strings (keywords) to matching entities (things). Search engines now understand the semantic meaning of words. They can interpret a surname and a family name and connect it to a person.

Google and other search engines create special databases of things. These databases are called Knowledge Graphs ¹. A knowledge graph ¹ consists of things. A thing in a knowledge graph can be a person, an organization, a book, a movie, an event, or a concept. Each thing is formally described by properties. Common properties are name, description, url, worksFor, knowsAbout, and many other descriptive attributes. Some of these attributes are special as they connect one thing to another. For example, "worksFor" can connect a person to an organization. Another example is knowsAbout, which connects a person to a concept.

With semantic search search engines recognize a name as a person. This only happens when the search engine has enough information about this person. More importantly, Google needs to connect the different sources of into a coherent set of data.

The goal - A rich Knowledge Panel and Knowledge Cards

The goal for personal branding online is to be found in search engines by name. Furthermore, you want the search results to show you in the best light possible.

Google displays knowledge cards ² if it understands a person very well. Google displays a knowledge panel ³ if it has enough information about the person. See below how different this can look.

In technical terms, the goal is for Google to recognize your name as an entity. Furthermore, you want this entity to be rich in information about you. Last but not least you want Google to associate a search for your name with you as the dominant entity.

The Process - from Invisible to Dominant Entity for the name

In my coaching, I follow a four-step process to make Google take note of a Person:

1. Brand Search Visibility Audit
2. Assessment of the desired visibility
3. Establishment of an entity home
4. Optimization of brand consistency

We monitor the process by measuring the visibility in the search results for the brand.

The coaching process requires strong participation by the subject and their technical staff. Without participation, it will not succeed. We will provide the assessments and monitoring, as well as an agreed-upon action plan. We do not provide a service to build the website or do technical SEO to the website. All online assets remain in the ownership and responsibility of the client. However, we will advise on technical questions, such as schema markup and how to implement it.

Such an action plan can consist of:

• Technical Improvements
  • Building Links
  • Adding Schema Markup
  • Optimizing Schema Markup
• Content Improvements
  • Optimizing Social Media and Author Profiles
  • Optimizing Text on the page(s)
  • Adding pages for services, authors, etc.
• Increasing Notability
  • Adding a social media presence
  • Adding public images and videos
  • Writing articles, books, and publishing other creative works
  • Seeking interviews in the media
  • Seeking press coverage

Glossary

Important terms to understand the technical aspects of personal branding in search engines