Don’t Let AI Happen to You: Schema and Knowledge Graphs Are the Solution

The search results pop up, you skim them, and then shout, “What the f_ck?!”

“Dude. What’s going on in there?” your coworker shouts over the cubicle wall.

“These new AI-generated search results list our organization, local business, and product information wrong!”

Big sigh from your coworker, then, “Damn. What now?”

The characters in this scenario let AI happen to them. They didn’t take control of their online information by ensuring that AI and search generative experience (SGE) understood their content.

But you can combat this issue by using schema markup to build your company’s knowledge graph, ensuring the search engines understand you and your content.

What Is SGE? Schema? Knowledge Graph?

I want to deviate from my story quickly to define some terms and explain how the concepts they describe fit into content marketing. 

“Search generative experience” (SGE) is the term we’re using to describe how Google is using AI to provide better search results. Google displays these AI-generated answers at the top of search pages, above or below the “sponsored” results. Incidentally, “sponsored” results are actually paid ads or promotions.

Gemini, Perplexity, and Bing will all cite the sources used to create the rich results.

“Schema markup,” or simply “schema,” is a standardized code created collaboratively by Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex to help search engines better understand web page content.

“Google’s knowledge graph” is a huge database of information designed to understand how entities (real-world details like name: Deven Bhagwandin, place: Guyana, year: 1975) relate to or connect to each other. 

So the knowledge graph would allow the search engine to understand that the person Deven Bhagwandin was born in the country of Guyana in the year 1975.

We can use schema markup to organize the knowledge graph. Search engines and SGE can then use the knowledge graph to provide answers with better context and information for the user’s search query.

What Do SGE Search Results Look Like?

I envision two types of people finding themselves in some form of the scenario I’ve laid out above: Business owners or the SEO agencies those business owners have hired to ensure this doesn’t happen.

Here’s what’s happened in my fictional situation: Imagine you opened an incognito window and initiated a search using your company or brand name, or one of your products or services. When the results page is displayed, the new AI-generated section at the top of search pages displays incorrect information.

These are examples of how SGE displays results on search engine results pages (SERPs). Essentially, these rich cards or rich results are to be thought of as better ways to display information or answers to users. 

You’ve been seeing rich results for years. I think Google thinks of them as a way to provide better information to help searchers. I also think that, underneath the premise that this is better for users, Google knows it’s another way to keep users on their site or browser. 

The ultimate goal is to show more ads to that person before they navigate away.

 It’s important that your information is correct in these rich results because they heavily influence what users do next. 

Do they click on your site for more information, possibly generating a warm lead or sale? 

Or maybe they feel they’re ready to buy, and you get a sale directly from the SERP. 

I don’t have concrete proof of this as yet, but I feel that inaccurate information about your company or brand in the rich results can seriously impact your revenue and ROI. 

This is exactly what happened before SGE answers appeared, so why would this be different? When I was working with Digital.com, we lost almost 25% of our traffic initially after the September 2022 core update, causing our affiliate revenue to drop by 46%. 

I was laid off in January 2023 because of this revenue drop.

I Spent a Long Time Contemplating SEO and AI-generated Search Results

I think the initial shock of AI and the cyclone of changes it ushered into online marketing are starting to level out. Don’t get me wrong, I still see new uses for AI daily, but I think we’ve all gotten used to the disruption and rapid developments.

This was bound to happen as people became more and more accustomed to working with AI as part of their daily lives. Incidentally, I think it will be a long time before something in tech and online marketing shocks us this deeply again.

I’ve spent several hours contemplating where AI is taking SEO and content marketing. I want to believe that AI isn’t going to pollute the internet with shitty-quality content, but who am I trying to fool? It’s been that way long before AI and SGE took over.

Part of my daily routine is to read Search Engine Journal (and numerous other SEO and content newsletters, so shoot me a comment if you’re interested in knowing which) to learn about new developments in online content. 

While doing this one day, I came across Martha van Berkel’s article from June 13th, 2024, titled Why Now’s The Time To Adopt Schema Markup. Van Berkel’s article finally helped me articulate thoughts that I had floating around my head and wasn’t able to bring together.

Thanks for doing that for me, Martha.

Brand Building Ensures Online Success

I’ve been preaching for years to my clients and brands outside of the search marketing industry. I’ve told them they need to concentrate on building their online brand as much as they do with their offline brand. I think many companies still define branding as a visual aspect asset instead of a search engine asset.

Martha’s given me an idea and method to better explain to companies why online brand building for search engines and AI are just as important.

What does brand building mean now, though?

I think that a lot of marketing teams feel that building an online brand boils down to how much content you can produce quickly and post it to any and every channel. It’s like the spray and pray method. 

Go to any social media app, and you’ll see millions of (useless) posts from companies essentially advertising their services but disguising them as posts. Engagement on these posts is typically low. They’re typically only liked or shared by the few employees who bother to follow the company.

This is caused because search engines and social platforms are increasingly changing their algorithms to force businesses to pay for advertising. So companies try to avoid the ad spend by throwing up a quick post like this one:

To be fair, there is an image and company logo for this post, but I’ve left those out purposely. But do you notice the post is essentially an ad, and this agency is hoping that it will somehow generate business or help their online profile? 

It doesn’t spark engagement. 

It’s not really memorable or exciting. 

It sort of gives me the impression that this owner told their team to put something up, but they didn’t put any thought into what they’re posting. 

In fact, the person in charge of this task probably has a million others they’re supposed to be managing or completing. So, posting to social media has probably become an inconvenience, if anything. 

That’s an example of how bad-quality content is simply a waste of time and does nothing for you. Incidentally, that post was only shown in seven feeds. But it probably took a total of 30-45 minutes of manpower to:

1. Brainstorm and write the text.
2. Create the image.
3. Format the post and schedule it.

All of that for only a handful of people to see it. It definitely didn’t reach new prospects interested in using this company’s services.

So bad content doesn’t rank, doesn’t help if it is seen, and wastes everyone’s time. 

Alternatively, high-quality content: 

1. Meets technical SEO benchmarks so it can rank highly and get clicks.
2. Engages and informs the reader.
3. Is deemed useful by search engines, so it will display more and more.
4. Encourages the reader to take action.

These four create a repeating cycle, growing trust in your brand from the search engines and your target audience. So you’ve seen more and more, which grows your brand…you get the point.

Remember: When I say “high-quality content,” I’m not only referring to written content. This goes for videos, podcasts, and offline materials.

Solution: Your Content Is Important, So Make the Effort, and It Pays Off

Annnd finally, we get to the solution.

How do we ensure that search engines better understand our content so that we grow our brands and reap the ROI?

First, start with putting effort into your content. It’s freaking hard, I know. We’re business owners who have businesses to run, and all of this organic marketing effort is actually fucking annoying. For me, it gets in the way of my daily operations…AND I OWN AN ONLINE MARKETING AGENCY!

So if it bogs me down, I know it gets in your way. I was with a friend just recently who is finding a lot of success running several small eCommerce stores. He’s fully aware that he must think of each site as a brand itself and knows content is king. But he’s also lost the ability to create the content himself, hence the reason for our meeting. 

Imagine running your store, providing all customer service, ordering products, maintaining products and updating the website, monitoring logistics (or managing it yourself), keeping track of accounting, directing marketing, and directing sales. 

You can do it when you start, but as you grow, your time is increasingly spread thin. You get to a point where you need more than one person to help you. This is why you should hire an agency or dedicated person to spearhead your online efforts if you want to maintain growth. 

Remember that every company is now a media company. Yes, yours is, too. This is why bigger companies and brands can spend more time and money on their content. It’s also why their brands keep growing. 

It’s part of the snowball effect that starts by creating better content to build your brand which enables you to rank higher or appear more helpful to users which increases your revenue which increases your content marketing budget, etc., etc., etc.

The big disconnect with content marketing is writing for human audiences, but hoping the robot indexers and search engines understand your content enough to serve it to users is still a crap shoot, in my opinion.

This is where the combination of excellent content production and technical SEO will put you ahead of your competitors. Remember, search engines need a way to interpret your website content to better serve it to users who are now using more and more long-tail search terms. So using schema.org to markup all of your blogs and webpages will frame your content in a way that the robot indexers understand.

Keep Your Content Working for You

Building your online brand is about consistency and creating a cycle that you can maintain. If that cycle does well, you’ll grow and HAVE to get outside help. I don’t know of any companies that want to grow without having to hire help.

Before you hire a company, try creating this content yourself. 

Google Ads tools and Google Analytics are free. I use Google Docs to write all of my content and share it with collaborators. 

You can use Canva to create images. 

You can post your social media and schedule it out if you want to create posts in bulk. 

You can write your own video and podcast scripts, then use CapCut and Spotify for Podcasters to edit video and audio.

I don’t like to do this from my personal blog, but if you’re here and realize it’s time to decide on hiring content marketing help, visit me at Penpixel Creative. Here, we help businesses of all sizes create a brand building content strategy, and maintain that strategy through all growth phases. 

If you’re not ready to work with an agency yet, feel free to follow me here or over on LinkedIn.