What role does confidence play in educating Google about my brand?

Confidence plays a crucial role in educating Google about your brand because it directly influences how Google represents and promotes your brand on its search engine results pages (SERPs). Here’s a detailed explanation:

  1. Understanding vs. Confidence:
    • Understanding: Google may understand the basic information about your brand, such as who you are and what you do.
    • Confidence: However, understanding alone is not enough. For Google to confidently display this information to users, it needs corroboration from multiple trusted sources.
  2. Corroboration by Third-Party Sources:
    • When third-party authoritative sources consistently provide the same information about your brand, it reinforces Google’s confidence in that data.
    • This is akin to a child hearing the same fact from multiple trusted adults; they become more confident in its truth.
  3. Impact on Brand SERP:
    • Once Google is confident in its understanding of your brand, it will start promoting you more prominently on the Brand SERP.
    • A high level of confidence means that Google’s representation of your brand will be accurate and positive, reflecting exactly what you intend.
  4. Consistency and Credibility:
    • Consistent messaging across various platforms helps build this confidence.
    • Credible sources like being listed as an author on authoritative sites further solidify Google’s trust in the information.
  5. Long-Term Investment:
    • Building this confidence takes time—often years—of consistent effort and presence across relevant platforms.
  6. Analogy with Educating a Child: Jason Barnard uses an analogy where educating Google is like teaching a child:
    • You need to repeatedly provide clear and consistent information for them to understand fully.
    • Once they are confident in their understanding, they will share that knowledge widely with others.
  7. Control Over Brand Message:
    • By building Google’s confidence through education and corroboration, you gain control over how your brand message appears online.
    • This ensures users get an accurate impression of your brand rather than relying on incomplete or incorrect interpretations by Google.

In summary, building confidence involves ensuring that all available data about your brand is consistent across various credible sources so that when users search for related terms or directly for your company name, they receive reliable and positive results reflective of what you’ve worked hard to establish online.

Helpful link: Why Do You Need to Fully Educate Google? >>