Managing Digital Entities: Tools + Tips with Crystal Carter

⚠️ SMART, advanced episode! 🤓

In this episode of the Simple and Smart SEO Show, Crystal Waddell welcomes back Crystal Carter, Head of SEO Communications at Wix, to dive deep into the concept of entities and their impact on SEO.

Takeways:

• Consistency is Key: Your digital presence and how you describe your business should remain consistent across all platforms. Inconsistent messaging can confuse search engines and users.
• Entities are Everywhere: Anything from people to concepts can be an entity. Understanding how entities like Beyoncé or Barbie are connected can help improve your content and digital presence.
• Tools for Entity Management: Tools like TextRazor and SEMrush can help extract and optimize entities in your content. 
• Schema Markup Matters: Using schema markup to describe your organization, services, and products improves your site’s connection to the knowledge graph.
• Leverage Knowledge Panels: Strengthen your brand's online identity by ensuring you are represented on platforms like LinkedIn and Google My Business to feed accurate data into Google's knowledge graph.

Memorable Quotes:

• “Entities are essentially nouns—people, places, things, and even concepts that search engines recognize.” – Crystal Carter
• You have to be consistent. Even if you're doing a hundred things, you need to summarize it in a way that’s clear to both users and search engines.” – Crystal Carter

Listener Action Items:

1. Audit Your Digital Presence: Ensure your website, social profiles, and Google Business Profile present a consistent message about your brand.
2. Implement Schema Markup: Use tools like ChatGPT or schema.org to generate JSON-LD schema for your site to enhance its connection with search engines.
3. Leverage Free Tools: Use TextRazor, SEMrush, or other NLP tools to identify and optimize entities.

Carl’s tool: https://audits.com/tools/knowledge-graph-search/

Gus article: https://www.wix.com/seo/learn/resource/get-a-google-knowledge-panel

InLinks: https://inlinks.com/knowledge-graph-explained/

Connect with Crystal:
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Chapters

• 0:00 A lot of the, a lot of the core concepts of being consistent with
• 0:02 your digital presence being consistent with how you describe yourself.
• 0:23 Summarizing Your Digital Presence
• 1:16 Understanding Entities: Key Figures and Tools
• 1:54 Knowledge Graph and Beyonce Example
• 2:31 Google Photos and Entity Categorization
• 3:20 Entities in Search Results and Wikipedia
• 3:54 Entities and Digital Presence
• 4:36 Barbie Movie and TextRazor Analysis
• 6:00 Testing Entities with ChatGPT
• 6:40 Creating Your Own Entity Schema
• 8:38 Consistency in Digital Presence
• 9:30 Using Schema Markup for Businesses
• 14:33 Importance of LinkedIn and Digital Reputation
• 16:19 Connecting Profiles and URLs
• 17:35 Summarizing Your Digital Presence
• 17:57 Optimizing LinkedIn with AI Tools
• 18:09 Using TextRazor for Content Analysis
• 18:42 Reverse Engineering with SEMrush
• 19:10 Focusing on Relevant Entities
• 21:04 Understanding Schema Validation
• 22:56 Handling Google Merchant Center Warnings
• 24:15 Importance of Detailed Product Information
• 26:44 Vector Embeddings and Entity Relationships
• 30:02 Updating Information in Live LLMs
• 31:37 Correcting Misinformation in AI Outputs
• 33:24 Upcoming Speaking Engagements
• 34:00 Connecting Online and Final Thoughts

Transcript

[00:00:00] Crystal Carter 2: A lot of the, a lot of the core concepts of being consistent with your digital presence being consistent with how you describe yourself. 

[00:00:07] And that you understand the USP. And are consistent with your USP about your business. That's, that's not going to change going forward.

[00:00:15] But, people who are like, Oh, I'm doing this this week. No, but this week I'm doing this. No, but I also, did you know, I also act like chill with that. Pick one. 

Summarizing Your Digital Presence

[00:00:23] Crystal Carter 2: Do you know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? 

[00:00:25] Crystal Waddell: Yeah

[00:00:26] Welcome to the third season of the simple and smart SEO show the podcast dedicated to empathy driven brand building SEO. I'm your host, Crystal Waddell. I leverage my obsession with user experience to help business owners just like you optimize your website with confidence. Thank you so much for being here.

[00:00:43] Let's jump into another great episode.

[00:00:45] Crystal Carter 2: All right, guys, I am back with one of my favorite people in SEO.

[00:00:49] It is Crystal Carter, the head of SEO communication at Wix. She is here to break down something that often sounds very complicated, but in fact is a little bit more common sense than we might think. But Crystal Carter, thank you for being here on the Simple and Smart SEO Show Podcast. Welcome back. 

[00:01:06] Thank you so much, Crystal.

[00:01:07] It's always a pleasure to be here. And yeah, well done with a wonderful show. 

[00:01:11] I don't, are we recording now? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Now. So if we're recording now, there's there's some folks. 

Understanding Entities: Key Figures and Tools

[00:01:16] Crystal Carter 2: So people that I think I look to, to understand entities are Gus Pelogia. He's got a great article on the knowledge graph on the Wix SEO learning hub.

[00:01:24] So do check out what he's written there. Okay. Also lots of other folks have talked about it as well. I'm pretty sure that Jamie Indigo has discussed it. There's lots of stuff around the knowledge graph. That's really useful. So so Carl Hendy has a great tool. It's a knowledge graph checker.

[00:01:39] So if you want to see whether or not you have a knowledge panel, for instance. You can check that out. And you can see what that looks like the team and links also have a really good tool that helps you map out the the knowledge graph and the knowledge graph and entities are really closely related.

[00:01:53] So that's why I'm bringing that up. 

Knowledge Graph and Beyonce Example

[00:01:54] Crystal Carter 2: Okay. For instance, if you were to look up Beyonce, for instance. On Google, then she gets like a special panel, right? And it's like her, and it'll say her spouse is Jay Z, and her child is Blue Ivy, and her other child is Rumi, who's on the new Cowboy Carter album and so it will say those things, it'll say how old she is, and it'll say where she, that she was born in H Town.

[00:02:14] I'm like, shout out to H Town. I've never been to Houston, but I'm a big fan of Beyonce and Megan Thee Stallion, so shout out to H Town. Anyway so it will say those things, right? All of those things in themselves are also entities, right? And the TLDR of what an entity is essentially a noun, right?

[00:02:28] It's a person, place thing. Even a concept. 

Google Photos and Entity Categorization

[00:02:31] Crystal Carter 2: So a really, another really good way to get your idea, your head around what is an entity is if you use Google, if you use if you use Google Photos, when you go to the explore page, they categorize all of your pictures into stuff. So they, so Google years ago, wrote this article about things and strengths and stuff like that.

[00:02:49] And I can't remember the exact name of it, but I can look it up. And basically. If you go to, if you go to your photo reel, then it will say it will sort everything into category. So it will say these are pictures of dogs.. 

[00:03:02] These are pictures of coffee. These are pictures of of shoes.

[00:03:07] These are pictures of chairs, but it will also sort them into things that are a little bit more ephemeral. Like these are mountains. Or this is fog. Or these are sunsets. 

[00:03:15] And so Google understands, understands that those are entities. Those are things that exist. 

Entities in Search Results and Wikipedia

[00:03:20] Crystal Carter 2: So if you see something that shows up that gets like a special treatment on the SERP on the search engine result pages. If when you type in blog, it has like a knowledge panel on the side that says blogging is this: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:03:32] That means that it's part of the knowledge graph and there's something like 8, 000, 000, 000 entities. I think that are part of the knowledge graph. 

[00:03:37] And another way. Another way to if you're not sure if it has a Wikipedia page, generally speaking, it's an entity. So there will also be like an entity for blogging.

[00:03:45] What is blogging? And there'll be an entity for headless CMS. That'll be something as well. There'll be an entity for I don't know pick something microphones. 

[00:03:52] They'll be things like that as well. 

Entities and Digital Presence

[00:03:54] Crystal Carter 2: And so when you're thinking about how an entity relates to your website.

[00:04:00] And your digital presence, you should really think about the entities that are related to who you are. 

[00:04:05] For instance, if I was to think about myself. It would be like, my name. 

[00:04:09] Or we think we were talking about Beyonce, her name and some people will have so she's Beyonce Giselle Knowles Carter.

[00:04:15] We all know that's her real name. And but if she was somebody who's who that wasn't her real name. If maybe she was born as, I don't know, Becky, but she wasn't. 

[00:04:22] But maybe she's born to something else. Then it would say that she's related to that. So when you think about the entities that are related to you, you want to make sure that they're consistent and that you're consistently showing that across your digital presence.

[00:04:34] The example that I really like to use. 

Barbie Movie and TextRazor Analysis

[00:04:36] Crystal Carter 2: is is the Barbie movie. So if you look up the description for the Barbie movie, it says something like, and I'm not quoting exactly, but it says something like Barbie and Ken go on an amazing adventure and hilarity ensues or something, right?

[00:04:49] It says something to that effect. Never says anything about a toy. Never says anything about Mattel. Doesn't say anything about a doll. Doesn't say anything about her car or her, the Barbie dream house. 

[00:04:58] Doesn't say anything about that. But if you go into a tool called TextRazor, Is something that is an, it's an NLP tool.

[00:05:05] So it, and it extracts, entities and extracts, the relationships between the entities in a particular piece of text. It's free to use, you can try the demo for free. It's an oldie but a goodie. It's been around for ages. 

[00:05:16] Because that's the other thing is that a lot of this machine learning stuff has been around for a long time.

[00:05:19] And basically what, when you put that piece of text from the Barbie movie through text razor, for instance, it says the entities that it pull out, pulls out our fashion doll. Mattel. Toy. 

[00:05:30] Things like that. Now why it's doing that is because the named entity the name entity that it understands that Barbie in proximity to Ken is Barbie, the doll, right?

[00:05:41] There are other Ken's there's Kenny Rogers. There's Ken Griffey Jr. There are other Kens in the world, right? I'm pretty sure there's other Barbies in the world as well. It's a shortening for Barbara. There's gonna be other people called Barbie in the world. 

[00:05:52] Crystal Waddell: My MUM 

[00:05:52] Crystal Carter 2: is 

[00:05:52] Crystal Waddell: named Barb. 

[00:05:53] Crystal Carter 2: Exactly. Okay. So when you get, but when you get Barbie and Ken in proximity, they're going to assume that if you're talking about Barbie and Ken, you're talking about Barbie and Ken the doll.

Testing Entities with ChatGPT

[00:06:00] Crystal Carter 2: Now, if you go in and here's where it comes in with with chat GPT etc. If you go into chat GPT, and you said, can you tell me a name of a fashion doll? It will say Barbie. So the entities that it understands to be associated with Barbie and the entities that ChatGPT understands to be associated with a fashion doll are similar.

[00:06:18] I tested this as well with Wix, for instance. Wix's entity is is related to a cloud based CMS. That's what it says on a Wikipedia page. That's what we do. And if I go to ChatGPT and I say, can you name me a cloud based CMS? They say Wix. And I say, can you name me a cloud based CMS? They say Wix.

[00:06:31] Right that's 1 of the 1st ones there. 

[00:06:33] Now, that means that our entity is in good condition. That means that's that we're doing something well there. But this is also something that you can do that. 

Creating Your Own Entity Schema

[00:06:40] Crystal Carter 2: You can do for yourself as well. 

[00:06:42] Today, literally today because I don't know, because I'm self obsessed or so, I don't know who knows don't quote me on that, but I Google myself and I, so I don't have a knowledge panel.

[00:06:52] My colleague, Mordy has a knowledge panel. And I think part of it is because he's been writing. He's been a writer for a long time. And he's written in a lot of publications. And I've written in, in, in a few, but not as many as Mordy has. And so he has a knowledge panel and it says he's an author and it goes to his page and it goes to the things, right?

[00:07:08] I don't have 1 yet. However, when I go to, if I went to chat GPT today and I said, who is Crystal Carter? And it came back and it's, they've updated. So previously the first iteration of chat GPT had data that was going up to, I think, 2022. 

[00:07:22] And so they only had so much data.

[00:07:24] My career probably didn't start getting, like getting bigger or, particularly noticeable until around that time anyway. So it makes sense when I first did this, they were like it's like that Mariah Carey meme. They were like, I don't know her. Like basically, so I, but I did it today.

[00:07:36] And they were like, Crystal Carter is this person. She's currently working at Wix. She does SEO. She's da. And I was like, cool. This is good. This is promising. And basically it's referencing a number of of reputable sources. 

[00:07:48] So it knows that I have my website, which has, schema markup which designates the entities that I'm related to.

[00:07:54] It says that I am, that I have a website here, it says that I work at Wix. It says that I have this specialism. 

[00:08:03] It says that I do this podcast. It says that I do this in that. And then I've worked with these other named entities. It says that I've spoken at Moz. It says that I've spoken at Brighton SEO. Which are also again, they're entities, LLMs can recognize. 

[00:08:16] Similarly on my and on my Wix, Wix page.

[00:08:19] I also have it have a bio page that also says that I've done this. I've done that. I've done this. I've done that. 

[00:08:24] Now for businesses, particularly for local businesses. This might seem oh, my God, what am I going to do? How am I going to do that? 

[00:08:34] But actually, it can be less daunting than you think.

Consistency in Digital Presence

[00:08:38] Crystal Carter 2: So it's really important to be super consistent with how you describe yourself. And how you understand the entities that you have. I looked at Dairy Queen, for instance. Dairy Queen is very consistent with their entity and how they describe themselves. They are a national food, fast food chain and they, they sell ice cream and la.

[00:08:54] And they are very consistent with that. 

[00:08:55] But like you need to be, you need to be consistent with how you describe yourself on your website. You need to be consistent with how you describe yourself on your Google business profile. 

[00:09:04] Because your Google business profile is also feeding into the knowledge graph and your Google business profile has lots of areas where you can add an attribute.

[00:09:12] So you can say it's female led. You can say that it's LGBT friendly. You can say that you have delivery. You can say that, if you're a hotel, you can say you have a swimming pool, you can like add in all of these different things, all of those attributes are all going to be contributing to what Google understands for you as part of the knowledge graph.

[00:09:27] And that's super, super useful. So don't overlook that. 

Using Schema Markup for Businesses

[00:09:30] Crystal Carter 2: Additionally you can on your website declare your organization schema. I've worked with loads of small businesses on their digital presence. And your organization schema, which is a lot easier to do now. We have now we have LLM tools.

[00:09:43] For instance. 

[00:09:44] What you essentially do, you can say. You can make a list. So if you go to schema. org and you type in organization schema, they will give you like all of the different parts of an organization, right? And you're nodding along. I realize I haven't let you speak. 

[00:09:56] Crystal Waddell: It's okay.

[00:09:57] I'm like, Hey, she's got to get this off her chest. So go ahead. 

[00:10:00] Crystal Carter 2: Okay. So you go to organization schema and it will give you a list of all of the different things. Now. Historically speaking, you would have to go through and you would have to, you would have to add all the code and sort out all the code and this, and that.

[00:10:10] Now, what you can do is you can make a CSV and you can make a list. One column is the information that you that it says you should have. Your address, your phone number, your website, your social media handles your customer service phone number, which services you provide, that sort of thing.

[00:10:26] And then the other column, you just fill it in, right? And you can literally copy and paste those two things, those two columns, into ChatGPT and say, can you make this into organization schema? Like JSON LD organization schema. And then they will spit out the organization schema. What you have to be careful of is that they don't make up additional things.

[00:10:41] So double check that they haven't added anything in. For instance, if you don't add in your your image, like your logo, you need to have your logo in order to show in order to show in order to be valid for Google rich results for that sort of thing and be, or, have valid information there.

[00:10:55] If you don't add in your logo image, sometimes I've had it previously. I haven't checked this recently, but previously I've seen it where sometimes they'll just make up a URL that doesn't actually exist. So be careful of that. But you can take the information, take the list, and then pop it in and say, make this into JSON LD schema markup, and they will do that for you.

[00:11:11] And that's super useful. And then you can pop that into your HTML and that, that will help you. If you're on Wix, then we have tools to help you to add your organization schema as well, but you could also edit it. And if you want to do more custom things, then you can edit it using some of those techniques and that will help you to make sure that you're pointing Google to the right entities and your point pointing the LMS, et cetera, to, to the right entities as well.

[00:11:34] What's really useful and I've got a blog on this that I did for dealing with sorting out your biographical entity. Is 

[00:11:41] just a 2nd, 

[00:11:42] Crystal Carter 2: is like thinking about things that are unique to you. So one of the things is one of the things that's useful is I was looking at like Steve McQueen. So here's an example. If I had this biography that said Steve McQueen is someone who is active in films, or was like has, is involved with films.

[00:12:01] That's totally true for two people. There's Steve McQueen the back in the day action star sort of person. Yeah, generic entities Steve McQueen is a man famous for his films. That applies to 2 people. That applies to the director, Steve McQueen.

[00:12:13] Who's currently active now, and that applies to Steve McQueen the previous the, a guy from the 60s, 70s like classic movies. Whereas, if you had Steve McQueen famous for his, instead of Steve McQueen, a man famous for his films, you said Steve McQueen, Academy Award winner, film director, and Turner Prize winning artist, that's specific, that's just him.

[00:12:33] That's just that one guy. The other thing that it has within it is it also has additional named entities. That's why my biography on my Wix website or my Wix website and also on my Wix page. I have Crystal Carter has spoken at Moz. She's been on Google. She's done, she's done this for Semrush.

[00:12:49] She's done that sort of thing. So that's my named entity attached to other named entities. For instance, you would say this, if you had a business, a smaller business, you would say this business was founded by was founded by, I don't know, Jane Smith. 

[00:13:01] Who attended Vassar college and previously worked for previously worked for, I don't know, this ex law attorney or something like that.

[00:13:11] And that ties you to those entities. If you, even if you are a smaller, and if you are smaller, or have a smaller digital presence, you can attach yourself to, to other folks who have larger digital presence presences. And you want to prioritize folks who have a knowledge panel. 

[00:13:25] Who have who, when you Google them, they, they've got a Wikipedia page, they've got good content on there.

[00:13:30] And so there's lots of things that you can do that, but basically it's just like name dropping. It's really what it comes down to. So like name drop strategically is something that's useful, but it's something that's worth thinking about and making sure that, I think it goes back to a few classic principles.

[00:13:45] When I was working with a lot of small businesses, what I would find is they would very often say we, I, us, we. No like I know who you are, you know who you are, but put your name on your page. And I have people who are like, my website isn't on, on Google. And I'm like, what's your domain? And I do the site search and I can find their website.

[00:14:02] I'm like, your website is on Google. I can see it. And then they say, no, but I, when I searched my name, I can't find my website. I'm like, that's because you don't have your website. You don't have your name on your website. You have it in a picture, but you don't have it in the text on your website. So think there's a little bit of common sense that comes with it.

[00:14:17] And I say that in the kindest possible way, but basically, it's not that it's. It's not that it's that everybody needs to know all of this stuff, but also, the bots are both very clever and very basic. They're very literal. So you need to say exactly what you do and you need to be consistent about it.

Importance of LinkedIn and Digital Reputation

[00:14:33] Crystal Carter 2: The other 1 that's really useful is your LinkedIn profile. Google will very often use LinkedIn to to shore up the knowledge panel. If there isn't a Wikipedia page on something, very often they will show a LinkedIn content. I've also very often seen people's names show, show on LinkedIn.

[00:14:50] If somebody, if you type into Google who is and and maybe they don't have a Wikipedia page. They don't have a huge presence, but they do have a LinkedIn profile. Very often the featured snippet will be from LinkedIn and it might not even be something they said about themselves. It might be something that might be a recommendation.

[00:15:05] Previously. I've seen it for my own name where it showed up as a recommendation. Somebody else said for me. So it's a question of managing your digital reputation consistently. And that should help you that should help you to perform on LLMs. In that sort of in a sort of reverse engineered sort of way.

[00:15:22] So think about which entities you want to be associated with you. For instance, if you were to think about oh, I don't know, Baskin Robbins, right? Baskin Robbins wants to be associated with ice cream, right? They sell ice cream. That's a fundamental thing. They also sell ice cream cake.

[00:15:35] I think sometimes they might even sell coffee sometimes, but their core entity, you're like, yes, they do sell a coffee. I love coffee. 

[00:15:41] Crystal Waddell: They merged with Dunkin. 

[00:15:43] Crystal Carter 2: Okay. Okay. Okay. 

[00:15:44] So think about your core entities, right? You might do these other things or whatever, but at the end of the day, like your core entity is, Think about what that is. 

[00:15:52] And make sure that's always at the front and always at the fore of when you're talking about yourself.

[00:15:57] People on TikTok do this as well.

[00:15:58] If you have a TikTok video or something that everybody who starts their TikTok video goes, hi, I'm so and so and I'm an expert nail technician. I've been working in nail technicians for 10 years or something. They always start that. Like people who are successful on TikTok will do that every single video.

[00:16:12] And I've heard people say about this. They're like, I'm so tired of saying it myself, but it is what's required. You have to do this. And it's similar with with those sorts of things. 

Connecting Profiles and URLs

[00:16:19] Crystal Carter 2: Similarly, it's worth connecting your different profiles. Like a Lincoln bio is really useful where you can say this is my LinkedIn.

[00:16:25] This is my Insta. This is my Tik TOK. This is my Facebook. This is my whatever. And you have all of them connected. That helps Google to join the dots. And also please. Please. Make sure that you use the right URLs for that. 

[00:16:38] Okay. If your website is an HTTPS website, use the HTTPS link in your link in bio, please. 

[00:16:46] If you have the Facebook thing link directly to the Facebook, don't link to some other other, you can add a UTM at the end. But make sure that you're linking to the actual page. Don't link to something that's redirecting because that's going to lose you data and that's going to make it complicated.

[00:16:59] It's just, there's no reason for it. So absolutely do that. And link across your post as well. So the other thing is things like Twitter. 

[00:17:04] Twitter is particularly useful because because Google has a little bit of a connection with Twitter that can help you to shore up your entity as well.

[00:17:11] But yeah, I think. A lot of the, a lot of the core concepts of being consistent with your digital presence being consistent with how you describe yourself. And that you understand the USP and are consistent with your USP about your business. That's, that's not going to change going forward.

[00:17:28] But, people who are like, Oh, I'm doing this week. No, but this week I'm doing this. No, but I also, did you know, I also act like chill with that, pick one. 

Summarizing Your Digital Presence

[00:17:35] Crystal Carter 2: Do you know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? 

[00:17:38] Crystal Waddell: Yeah, I've been very guilty of that in the past, okay. Pinterest, SEO, Shopify, blah, blah, 

[00:17:44] Crystal Carter 2: Summarize it just be like, I do digital. Just so yeah summarize it. I'm an entertainer. If you're like, if you act and you dance and if you're a triple threat. 

[00:17:52] I'm an entertainer call it a day. Just it's all good.

[00:17:54] And so yeah, summarize it pick something you can use it. 

Optimizing LinkedIn with AI Tools

[00:17:57] Crystal Carter 2: You can use an LLM to help you if you need to please to help me help me optimize my LinkedIn profile, et cetera, whatever. These are things that are useful. But yeah, think about your, about the entities that you want connected with you.

[00:18:08] And have a look at that. 

Using TextRazor for Content Analysis

[00:18:09] Crystal Carter 2: Text Razor is a great, it's a great way to do this. So Text Razor gives you a score. So I've had it before where I've dropped in a piece of text and it was like, this is about, we think this is about video games. And I'm like, this is not about video games.

[00:18:21] This is this is, this piece of text is not about video games. And then, and I look back through it and there's a list, there's a list that somebody's giving us an example, just as an offhand example. That's Oh yeah, for instance, if you were like looking at PlayStation or like this or that, and I'm like those are named entities. 

[00:18:36] And they're messing up the information that like, they're messing up how the machines are understanding my content.

[00:18:41] So I need to take that out. 

Reverse Engineering with SEMrush

[00:18:42] Crystal Carter 2: So you can put your bio or whatever into TextRazor or into SEMrush has a great tool. That they have a great tool as well that I've used and for reverse engineering as well. So where you drop that in and they'll pull out the keywords that you're like, and then they're like, Oh, what keywords do you want to optimize for?

[00:18:55] And I go, no, tell me which keywords so I'm like, tell me, what do you see? Which entities are you seeing? 

[00:19:01] And then they tell me these things. And I was like, those are not the entities I wanted. We need to change that around 

[00:19:05] Crystal Waddell: Go back and revise? 

[00:19:06] Crystal Carter 2: Right? Move those around. Yeah, think of some of those tools as well.

Focusing on Relevant Entities

[00:19:10] Crystal Carter 2: And yeah, I would say, focus on, understand which entities you want related to you. 

[00:19:14] And then proceed accordingly and don't waver. And make sure that it's apparent in all of the things you do. 

[00:19:20] So in your schema markup. In your bios. 

[00:19:22] In your links, in the core work that you're doing. Obviously, if you are basking Robbins and you are also selling coffee.

[00:19:29] Then like it's fine if you have a couple of blogs about coffee, right? Like it's not going to, it's not going to ruin everything for you, but like your Wikipedia page, your Wikidata page should say we sell ice cream. Like we are ice cream sellers, et cetera, et cetera. That should be the core of it.

[00:19:43] If that's what you want to do. And if you want to change your entity that's going to take a little while. So that's and that's worth bearing in mind as well. 

[00:19:49] Crystal Waddell: Yeah, okay. Wow. So my 1st question for you was going to ask about the tools. So you've already named some tools that we can use to check on this, which is great.

[00:19:59] I wanted to make a comment that Gemini. Is not good at this in my experience, just the small little tests that I've been doing, right? Gemini, I. Tell me something to do and because I'm like, okay, if I want to do something with my schema and something's wrong, let me put it in the LLM.

[00:20:16] Let me put it in Gemini and figure out how to fix it. 

[00:20:19] I put it in Gemini and then the directions that come out, I go try to put it in, Shopify and it's that doesn't even exist. 

[00:20:26] So I go back to Gemini and I say, Hey, That didn't work. And it's Oh yeah, that's right. Sorry about that. You're right.

[00:20:32] This has been updated. 

[00:20:33] Crystal Carter 2: Okay. 

Understanding Schema Validation

[00:20:34] Crystal Carter 2: So I have a blog all on the Wix SEO learning hub, all about validating schema. And there's lots of tools that you can use that will help you figure out that. 

[00:20:42] There's, I should probably do something on prompts or whatever, but in terms of sometimes it's syntax. 

[00:20:46] But in terms of in terms of the scheme of properties sometimes they will make up and then 1 of the things I said, I say in the article is sometimes they'll just tell you what you want to hear.

[00:20:54] You're like, I wanted to have this property and I wanted to do this and the other. like, Sure. Okay. And you're like, no, little bot. That's not yeah, it doesn't exist. It's not a thing. 

[00:21:01] So it's useful, if you're starting from a position of strength. 

[00:21:04] But if you're still learning then, or if it's a new schema type for you then that can sometimes be tricky.

[00:21:09] So what I generally recommend is that if you take the, if you look at the list on schema. org for whatever it is that you're trying to do. 

[00:21:16] If you look at that list. And say, and let's say you have like a starting bit of schema that, is right. And let's say you want to add something to it.

[00:21:24] Then I would look at the list and make sure that the list has the thing you want to add is on there and then I would say, can you help me add this to this? If you're having a tricky time with validating, like the validators. 

[00:21:34] In my article on structured data validation, I share a lot of tools that you can use to help you validate structured data.

[00:21:40] A lot of them are not AI powered but they will give you, they will give you, but they're machine powered, so they will say on this line, you've got, there's something wrong, and then you can look and you can go, oh, I have two commas there.

[00:21:50] Or, oh, I didn't do that. I used I, I didn't, put the quotation marks or whatever it may be. So it will tell you and will guide you through that. And it's very often useful to, to combine the 2. Because that will give you some guidance in terms of schema.

[00:22:02] Crystal Waddell: I went to just go look in my Google search console, because I remember you talking about Google search console, being able to help with this as well, to some extent. So I was hoping you could maybe talk about that for a second. 

[00:22:13] But it was interesting in my CMS a lot of the schema has already set up all the structured data is.

[00:22:18] Set up. But then I received these emails from Google that said, these pieces are missing and so I was like, what's this about? 

Handling Google Merchant Center Warnings

[00:22:26] Crystal Carter 2: In the article, I talk about this as well, because I've had this from people too. 

[00:22:29] Because it makes people panic and basically there are warnings. And there are like, and there, then there are things that are like bad.

[00:22:36] So a warning it is something that is like nice to have. Oh, so sometimes you'll get like warnings that are like non-critical issues. If it's yellow, then it's a non-critical issue. 

[00:22:45] And that's means that like we recommend that you do this. But I think it's also important to remember that these are nice to have recommendations. 

[00:22:53] That are general guidelines and they may or may not apply to you.

[00:22:57] So they're generally saying that it would be good for you to have reviews on your products. Not every product has a review. That's just how it is. 

[00:23:05] And not everybody has a review. Yeah, sure. It'd be great to have a review on the product, but I ain't got it right now. So calm down. So if that's the case, if that's the case, don't worry about it.

[00:23:13] Right? And that's worth thinking about. 

[00:23:15] So ways you can respond to 2 warnings. 1 day is you can update it to address the warning. If you if it's valid. Or you can set a plan to update it. So you can say maybe it's a case that you're like, I don't have this.

[00:23:25] I don't know how to do this right now, or I don't have time for this right now. Or this isn't applicable because we don't even have a review on this right now. 

[00:23:32] So you can make a plan where you can say in six months time, we're going to relook at this, et cetera, et cetera. And the other thing is you can, again, you can ignore it.

[00:23:38] If you don't have a field that matches that, if it's just not applicable to your piece of content, that's okay. If you see a warning for a product listing. 

Importance of Detailed Product Information

[00:23:45] Crystal Carter 2: Particularly if you're working in e commerce, it's worth double checking if it is a requirement for Google Merchant Center's structured data. 

[00:23:52] Because the Google Merchant Center structured data requirements for it will change depending on what kind of product it is.

[00:23:58] So for instance, if you have something that's clothing, then you will have apparel requirements. And they will ask specifically for like gender or size or the material or something like that. So we want to know, is the shirt red? Is it size 12? Does is it for female or is it unisex or is it kids?

[00:24:16] Is it, et cetera? There are certain requirements that they will specifically ask for certain products. 

[00:24:20] And that may or may not show up depending on which search structure data validator you're using, but double check it on the Google Merchant Center one. 

[00:24:28] But I think that there's going to be some that you should worry about, but if it's yellow,

[00:24:31] that tends not to be like a deal breaker. If it's red, it's broken. If it's red, it is broken. And you need to fix that now. Like straight away. 

[00:24:39] If it's yellow, take a view, right? If it's yellow, have a look at it, see what's going on. And I go into that in the article. And I go into exactly what you need, but if it's red, like it's probably not even showing on Google.

[00:24:50] If it's red, it's broken. 

[00:24:51] Crystal Waddell: Yeah, and that's so great because where these errors or, warnings were coming from was Google Merchant Center. So. 

[00:24:58] Crystal Carter 2: Right. 

[00:24:59] And Google Merchant Center has different requirements because not everybody's using Google Merchant Center.

[00:25:03] But in order for them to serve in order, because a lot of it has to do with the ads ecosystem. And in order for them to show the ads, they need to be able to say oh, this is what We're going to show shirts for like women. 

[00:25:12] So yesterday, literally yesterday my, my son needed shoes.

[00:25:16] So we went to the sports shop and we bought him some shoes. Then afterwards, I was looking at my, I was looking at the thing for the shop and I Googled the shop and I got the ads at the top. And I was like, wow, these ads are really, these are really good. Because I would buy all of these bathing suits and I would buy all of this thing.

[00:25:31] I was like, how did they know? But like your girl likes loud prints and bright colors. Because I'm here. I'm in like, I would like to purchase all of these things. But then I asked my husband to Google the same thing. And all he got was like t shirts, jeans, like basketball shoes. 

[00:25:44] And I was like, ah, this is the wheels in motion.

[00:25:47] So they need to know. They need to know all of those things so that they can, so that they can send the ads to the right people. And so they don't end up like burning through people's ad spend for no reason.

[00:25:56] So it's really important for them to be able to categorize so that people can sort and all of that stuff.

[00:26:01] The more information you can give them on Google Merchant Center, the better your your free listings and your ads will be shown. 

[00:26:06] Crystal Waddell: Okay. That makes sense. Guess my last question, with all of this is in relationship to vector embeddings.

Vector Embeddings and Entity Relationships

[00:26:14] Crystal Waddell: Vector embeddings. Yes. This is something I learned about from Mike King and ipullrank and Garrett Sussman. 

[00:26:21] And Mike put out a video last year about vector embeddings. It basically encompasses everything you're talking about. It's almost those things that you can look at and zoom in on and they're like, pictures and you zoom in on the picture and then there's another picture in there and you can just keep zooming in and zooming in the Russian dolls of digital art or whatever. 

[00:26:40] That's what it seems like to me, where it's taken these entities and putting them all together, calling it a vector embedding. And then, just that's like this, not reorganization, but like a 3D organization of this data. 

[00:26:55] And when I saw that, it also made me think of you and of entities. And so I just wondered if you had any thoughts on that, or if you saw a relationship there between them as well.

[00:27:07] Crystal Carter 2: Yeah, so this is, I'm not going to, I'm not going to profess to be as machine learning savvy as Mike King. 

[00:27:14] He is, he like, King by name, King by nature. In terms of this. And I would also, but I would also say that, the ways that people visualize digital relationships, entity relationships can vary.

[00:27:25] So I. As far as I understand it, it's a, it's a way that people are, presenting this data the relationships between them, but the relationships between entities and things like that can be depicted in many ways. I don't think that most people will need to have actual hands on involvement, particularly with vector embedding.

[00:27:47] But Mike King is a great place to start in terms of that. 

[00:27:50] My understanding is that the way I tend to approach it is to approach managing the entities directly. 

[00:27:57] And in terms of, what knowledge is out there and what is. What search tools are pulling out.

[00:28:03] Yeah, and I think that there are a couple of tools that can be quite sophisticated. I think I mentioned inlinks, which talks about a lot of different modeling for relationships between entities and things like that. 

[00:28:12] And I think that's worth looking at. And also another person who's really good to follow is data is Brittany Muller, who talks loads about all of the different systems and how they all relate.

[00:28:23] For instance the way that chat GPT understands knowledge is different from the way that previous machine learning models have understood a knowledge. 

[00:28:31] And there's something called Bert and there's something called MUM and they're, they understand different data points as well.

[00:28:37] MUM is multimodal and that can understand information from images. And also from from other different media points and and all as well as text. And then I think Bert has more of a text relationship, so it can understand the different text as well. 

[00:28:51] But you can go way, way down the rabbit hole in that regard.

[00:28:54] Brittany Muller is a great person for that. She started off at Moz as somebody who was interested in machine learning, and she's now fully fledged, like, all, all up in it. 

[00:29:02] And she has some great examples of that. She recently did a talk on LLMs and how that, how they work. And she, I recently saw her speak at MozCon and she was brilliant.

[00:29:10] She also does writing for Hugging Face, which is a great place to explore some of these sort of more more in depth topics.. 

[00:29:17] Crystal Waddell: Okay, so going back to the search within say, chat GPT or whatever, say, you search yourself or and or your business and it's wrong. Then what? Can do you feed it new information?

[00:29:29] Will that help correct it? Or. How does that work? 

Updating Information in Live LLMs

[00:29:32] Crystal Carter 2: 1 of the things is it depends on whether it's a live LLM. So perplexity. Bing, Gemini, they are working with live data. 

[00:29:41] Yeah, Bing's co pilot is working with live data from Bing. Perplexity is searching the web in real time.

[00:29:48] Gemini is searching the web in real time. But chat GPT, the free version of chat GPT is I asked them today, like I literally asked today, I was like, what can I ask you questions about you? And he said, sure, I'll tell you all about me. I call it chatters. Anyway. So I said, all right, chatters, tell me all about you.

[00:30:04] And and it said that it was now that it had now been updated since its last update. 

[00:30:09] It had data up to 2023. Now, if you're looking on the free version, and let's say it's telling you're wrong on the free version. Then I would not panic. 

[00:30:18] Because if you hadn't updated anything before 2023, then it's probably going to stay wrong until they have their next update.

[00:30:24] If you were looking on bing's copilot, or if you're looking on Gemini, or if you're looking on perplexity, you're searching there and that's incorrect. Then that means that you can take some steps to update that. And again these are things you can do with reputational elements.

[00:30:40] So taking into consideration, like the, all the things I was saying about your entity, making sure you have bio pages, making sure that you have good data about your business in the places where you should have good data, like your Google business profile, like your about page, like your webpage, like your wiki data page.

[00:30:55] If you have one. That sort of thing. So I would take those steps. And you can audit like where they have it. The other thing is if you're looking at one of the live LLMs, co pilot or perplexity or Gemini, you can ask it. 

Correcting Misinformation in AI Outputs

[00:31:07] Crystal Carter 2: Where did you hear that?

[00:31:08] That's good. So Perplexity will give you all of their sources. And you can say where did you hear that? And then you can go and you can fix that page. Or you can say to that person, I never said that. Or you can say, or you can tell the people like, hey, we don't sell, we're not a barista.

[00:31:21] We're an ice cream shop. But fix that. So you can see their sources and it's worth following up and correcting those. 

[00:31:27] I have a project that I work with and they recently asked me to update my bio and I was like, oh yeah, good. 'cause actually this has out of date information and I can update that. And bring some of those things together.

[00:31:36] So that's worth doing as well. But I think that for the chat GPT, if you're looking at the free version anyway, which is what most people have access to. 

[00:31:42] If you're looking to update that, you're going to have to wait until they do the next update. And to be fair, it's only been about, it's only been about 18 months.

[00:31:48] I think since they launched it like widely and they've already done another update. So they're probably going to get quicker with that as they go along as well. 

[00:31:56] Crystal Waddell: So for the paid version of chat, GPT is does it function more like Gemini and perplexity then?

[00:32:02] Crystal Carter 2: It can do. Depending on your settings.

[00:32:04] Crystal Waddell: Okay. Gotcha. Cool. Okay, so this was crazy. I know people are going to be like, what in the world crystal, but crystal and crystal. 

[00:32:12] But I'm so glad because I know that this is the future of SEO and, from a, just a marketing standpoint or like digital marketing standpoint, we've talked for a long time about having, social profiles.

[00:32:25] That mirrored each other and that we're consistent and all of these things, but I love the fact that there's now this SEO component that backs it up to say, okay, not only is that common sense, but this is also why, like, when insert why it's important. 

[00:32:39] Thank you for, just sharing and solidifying it and all that.

[00:32:43] But, if anybody wants to follow you. You're probably speaking soon again, somewhere I'm sure. So I'd love to hear about that and then, where people could connect with you online. 

[00:32:53] Crystal Carter 2: Great. Yeah. 

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

[00:32:54] Crystal Carter 2: I just finished speaking at MozCon.

[00:32:55] The deck is online. And I can't remember if you can buy the videos there, but I was just sharing some stuff about about discussion forums and Reddit and all that stuff. 

[00:33:04] Additionally, I will be speaking at local you summit in New York in September. 

[00:33:10] That's going to be at the Wix playground.

[00:33:11] We're really excited to be hosting that at our venue in New York. 

[00:33:14] And then I'm going to be at San Diego, Brighton, San Diego. I'm going to be at Brighton, UK as well in the autumn. And I'm also speaking at an event for SEMrush in October. 

[00:33:23] Yeah lots to look forward to and always happy to chat with folks and.

[00:33:27] Stop by and say hello. Oh, and online. 

Connecting Online and Final Thoughts

[00:33:30] Crystal Carter 2: So online I'm active on LinkedIn and I'm also on Twitter and X, Twitter, X, Twitter, and then, and also you feel free to join my 200 Fairy Elite followers on TikTok. Thank you. 

[00:33:44] Crystal Waddell: Yes, I've seen those TikTok videos. I love those. Those are so fun. How you show your day in a life of like wherever that city is that you happen to be in at that time.

[00:33:53] I really enjoy those. I will follow you on TikTok. 

[00:33:56] Crystal Carter 2: Thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah.

[00:33:57] Crystal Waddell: I'm going to be 201 or 241, whatever. I don't know. Yeah. Awesome. 

[00:34:02] Crystal Carter 2: We have discerning taste. 

[00:34:03] Crystal Waddell: Thank you very much. It's so good to see your face again.

[00:34:06] And I will see you in november. In 

[00:34:09] Crystal Carter 2: yes, in San Diego. 

[00:34:10] Yeah. That's awesome. Okay. Thanks again.