Create your own knowledge graphs to improve your online presence and optimize your output
Olesia says: “Prepare small knowledge graphs and use them for your SEO efforts – and also to optimize your content for LLMs and AI output.”
What do you mean by small knowledge graphs, and how do AI search engines use knowledge graphs?
“We know that Google uses knowledge graphs for their AI overviews and for some answers in AI Mode because knowledge graphs are facts. They are entities that provide factual information, so Google does use them intensively.
Also, search within knowledge graphs is much faster than any other search, and the information you get is much easier to use for generating anything that you want.
We used to talk about databases previously, and a knowledge graph is a fancy name for a relational database. That's about it. When you build them, it helps you to get much fewer inaccuracies, get more original information, and ensure that the information is factually correct.
By small knowledge graphs, I mean that you focus only on what you are doing for your own business or for yourself. You can optimize your own name, your company's name, or the products or services that you want people to find in search.”
Are other AI search engines like ChatGPT using knowledge graphs?
“We don't really know, but we know that they use Google search, and information from Google search, which is often based on Google's knowledge graph. Therefore, you could say that they use them indirectly, without having them within their infrastructure.
You may also have seen that ChatGPT, OpenAI, and Perplexity have started to build something like a shopping graph, and they add information from other sources, so they might be building something like that. It doesn't matter if they build them or not. It's easier for us to operate if we have something structured like that: our own information that we can use to build content for them.
Google had previously published lots of studies on how consumers behave, and we know that there's this rule of 7-11-4: consumers need 7 hours of engagement across 11 touchpoints in 4 separate locations. When an AI output gives all the information a person needs, you have fewer interactions with them.
They don't go to your video, they don't go to your article, and they may not have any interaction with you at all, because AI overviews sometimes don't even mention the brand they've taken information from.
When you build these small knowledge graphs, you have an opportunity to build more factually-focussed content so that AI outputs will reference you more when they use that content, and when they provide a link to the statistics or to something else. In this way, you can get those interactions that you need in order to sell to the final consumer.”
How has the way that knowledge graphs are created changed recently, and how can you effectively influence a knowledge graph in 2026?
“It's somewhat changed, because previously it was a very long process – and a very boring one. You needed to be very accurate, you needed to do everything manually, and you needed to double-check. Now, we have AI that can do lots of hard work for us, and we just have to check that it has been done correctly.
We can also gather information much quicker and organise it much more swiftly and in a much simpler way. Right now, I use LangChain to build LLMs, but with the growth of AI agents, I have tried the beta version of Google’s Agentspace for that as well. It has helped me create a small knowledge graph in a day, and I can use it right away. It has become much simpler and much easier to do.”
How do you measure the value of creating a knowledge graph?
“You do everything faster, you can produce the content you need, and you can place it where your potential customers are going.
You measure it by having more money from that.
You produce content that converts visitors into customers, and you observe the growth of your sales and people buying from you. That's how I measure.”
Why do you recommend starting by defining who your brand is and what they're selling online, and positioning it for Google?
“You start with what you do, your position on the market, who you do it for, what people will buy from you, what problems these people have, and what you can offer as a solution.
Don't offer too many solutions. You don’t want to make them choose between too many options. You offer one solution to one of their problems that they can easily solve, and you create content around that.
You say, ‘My product or service has X or Y features. Here are some examples of other customers we've solved this problem for, and here is how we did it.’ That helps you to create original, unique content about your product or your service, that has all the features that you need to be available for people to understand what you do and how you can help them.
Also, you might want to solve problems with something that people have not purchased before. For that, you just create descriptive content describing how you can solve that problem, and answering questions about that problem.
It’s much easier to do when you have a knowledge graph, because you can even generate content with that.”
If you have lots of different products and services, how do you decide on the data to start with for a knowledge graph?
“You just set your priorities. For example, if you sell X amount of this product, that may be your main focus because you get the highest sales margin on that. Then, it will help to grow your business and expand, so you’ll have more money to sell and expand your business, hire more people, or do whatever else you want to do.
Start with where you can get as much money as possible in the shortest period of time, so that you can grow from there.”
How do you go about building authority for your knowledge graph?
“If you have very well-structured information on your website (or whatever you are feeding with an API to agents, LLMs, or anywhere else), it's often credible enough simply to have proof that you are there.
You don't necessarily need that many backlinks, especially if you are in a product niche. You have a certification that you can show to Google. You have a registration as a company. You are a registered business. You have certificates about the products or services that you are delivering, and that is enough to be an authority for them.
Also, you have proof that people have already bought it: they left some reviews, and you show them to Google as well – or Google have them on their own properties, and that is enough.
Of course, you need to have these touchpoints about you all across the web, so it's good to have some articles and videos about you, and everything else. It’s much easier now, and you don't need to go into those shady backlinking tactics that we used to use before.
If you do build your brand like that, it's enough to be surfaced in Google Shopping, for example. However, if you are not in a product or shopping niche – and you sell software as a service, for example – you will need more articles elsewhere because that kind of graph is not as developed as a product graph.
Then, you use your small knowledge graph to build content for other platforms where your potential consumers might be, and Google has access to them as well.”
How does having knowledge graphs help you create original content?
“When you get more information, you feed that into the knowledge graph – not only about your existing products and services, but also about how they have been used by your existing customers.
Each time you have an interaction with a client or a customer, you put that into your knowledge graph. You input what their problem was and how you solved it. That becomes the training data for your own miniature LLMs, and it’s data that you can feed into LLMs as well. It helps you to understand what other aspects you can cover in your content to get more similar clients (if you like that client, of course).
Sometimes, people use your product or service to solve their problems in a way that you didn't anticipate, and you want all those angles covered when an LLM or any other AI generates output about the problems that people have.
You want to be surfaced there, and therefore you want this information to be covered in your content, and you want it to be in your knowledge graph. Anyone can do this. Previously, content was centred around the person who controlled it. Now, if you have this information organised, anyone can produce any kind of marketing piece, content, or whatever else to get this going.
You don't need to remember everything in your head; you can retain it by organising this knowledge and keeping it updated all the time. Also, when you do it this way, it will be factually correct. You don't need to think it all through and figure it all out. You just set the tone of voice, set the audience you are going to target with that – what they like and what they need – and just bring it to the LLMs.
Let them scan that content and use it, and hopefully that'll give you increased visibility in the LLMs.”
How do you measure the impact of that increased visibility?
“It's very difficult because, from what I have observed, all of the tools use synthetic data that you cannot actually rely upon. There are some tools that provide you with clickstream data, but that is also a bit questionable in terms of how they are getting it. It's also not very complete.
The impact is very hard to measure, but there are some tricks that can help you do that indirectly. For example, when you see that people have started Googling your brand name more often, even if you have not been doing anything that would encourage them to do that.
Right now, it's not impossible, but we cannot rely on the measurements that we get from the tools at the moment. We can only indirectly say that an improvement may be a result of our efforts – but you will see those improvements right away. You either have sales and have money, or you don't. If you don't have sales and you don't have money, it's not working for you.”
Olesia, what's the key takeaway from the tip you shared today?
“Organise the information about you online, structure it properly, and create this fancy thing called a knowledge graph.
Really place data into it, update it regularly, and produce content based on it so that people can have all those interactions with you – so that they will buy from you, not your competitors.”
Olesia Korobka is an SEO Entrepreneur at Fajela. Find out more over at OlesiaKorobka.com.