Google Patents and Future Proofing Your SEO with Bill Slawski - Ep 241

Search Engine Journal Show

Do you want to understand search patents better?

With the various Google white papers that come out and the changes in their patents, keeping up could be a task. Ultimately, we are interested in understanding SEO, where it is going, and how it will affect our business.

Bill Slawski, of SEO by the Sea and Go Fish Digital, joins Loren Baker on this episode to discuss Bill's hobby of dissecting Google, Bing, and other search-related patents – and what they mean.

While patents change, Google is doing a much better job right now of picking up video and audio, not just written anymore. Image search has also been getting smarter.

Learn how this knowledge can keep you a step ahead of the competition and help future-proof your SEO with ethical, long-term strategies.

“You don’t need to have a brand mention to have value.” – Bill Slawski

“Even if your site isn't branded, having rich information will help Google understand it and regard it as a trustworthy resource” – Loren Baker

[0:00] - How Bill started

[04:15] - How companies like Google have decided to change our reality

[05:19] - What Microsoft was doing that got Bill into patents

[06:51] - Was it more difficult to find a patent search back then?

[08:00] - How Google uses content vs. how we think of content

[08:39] - How many patents does Bill see come to fruition?

[09:49] - The tweet on the metrics Google has patented to rank entities

[10:14] - The book example

[11:19] - The skyscraper example

[12:52] - The augmentation patent and what’s it about

[13:33] - The script that you feed Google

[15:35] - When Google introduced the Same As

[16:47] - Should you include competitors to backup the Same As?

[17:56] - How image search has become smarter

[19:15] - Bill’s writeup on Detecting Brand Penetration Over Geographic Locations

[20:12] - When Google acquired Skybox and what it had to do with images

[22:47] - Why the unbranded results of a car insurance company ranked much higher

[24:49] - Are brands ranking factors for search engines?

[26:00] - How patents apply to SEO at the end of the day

[32:20] - How Google can see how a product has evolved over time

[35:18] - What this means for unbranded sites

[36:29] - Other patents Bill has seen that are important right now

[36:53] - What Bill didn’t expect about patents

[37:55] - Search in audio and video

[40:49] - Searching for real-time results vs. links (Bill’s earthquake example)

[42:43] - How Google considers content vs. what younger people think about content

[43:29] - The limousine company story

[44:48] - The mistake other SEO professionals make

[46:49] - What Google has been saying since 1999

[47:36] - The Baltimore campaign

[54:45] - How to spread your entities’ influence

[62:56] - The story about the Reznor brand and how it relates to entities

[65:02] - What surprised Bill about the brand entity patent

[66:59] - What Google does when your search results aren’t getting clicks

“We're living in a time where not all content is written anymore.” – Loren Baker

“We're no longer going to look for your quote in knowledge graphs. We’re going to search for audio and video.” - Bill Slawski