James Dooley: Brand entity SEO in 2026. I want us to dig deeper now for tradesmen could be a local plumber and a local electrician, a local roofer and people are always asking me is branding and is entity SEO important for these. So I want to go into it Jason you've coined the phrase of entity home and you've worked with everyone from Fortune 500 companies to soul openers. Does this apply for a local plumber? And is the knowledge graph optimization and the entity brand SEO important for trades people?

Jason Barnard: Thanks, James. Great question. It's important to everybody number one. And what we do at Cali Cube applies to absolutely everybody. Any entity, any company, any person, small companies, big companies. Entity optimization is fundamental to the future and your future within the digital space. Um the really important thing that you need to bear in mind is if the machines understand who you are, what you do, who you serve and that you're credible, they can offer you to your audience. And if they don't understand, you have no hope of them offering you to the audience. And you talk about the knowledge graph and we tend to think of the knowledge graph as the main knowledge graph that contains the famous people. Google Maps is a knowledge graph. It's just not the same knowledge graph. It's a it's a a different knowledge graph. All that effort you spent on your Google business profile is not lost because Google is going to make those two knowledge graphs work together and play nicely together as AI mode rolls over rolls into play. Sorry. You need to keep focusing on that and your Google business profile as a plumber, electrician, a local business person. That's your entry point to knowledge understanding. So that's the way you can get the machines to understand or Google at least to understand who you are, what you do and who you serve and it gets your foot in the door for an opportunity to make that sale through Google.

James Dooley: But how does a local trades person or tradesman, how did they become an entity in Google's eyes?

Jason Barnard: Specifically in Google's eyes, it's your Google business profile. That's your most valuable digital asset in the Google world. For the other AI, you need to also look at Bing's places. That's completely overlooked. Right now, it isn't very clear how chat GPT perplexity are getting their information about local businesses, but you can bet your bottom dollar that Google um sorry, Google business profiles, Bing places are going to be coming into play because they're simple information for those machines to scrape or do a deal with to get the information.

James Dooley: But moving away then from from Google, um then what about AI? If if I'm searching for best plumber in Manchester, how does the LLMs, whether it's Chat GBT or Gemini AI mode in Google, how does the LLMs and AI choose one local contractor over another?

Jason Barnard: Well, first they have to understand conceptually uh where you are, where the person looking is. So you need to make sure the machine understands. Now they are looking at Google search results. They are looking at Google business profiles. They are looking at Bing places. So make sure those are are nailed down because it does feed over into chat GPT and the other engines. But also they have their own knowledge and there's no reason you can't get into that knowledge. So you need three things and it's always the same three things. the knowledge aspect, which is the knowledge panel, the knowledge graph with Google, with Bing. Get into the LLM training data. And even as a local business, there's no reason you shouldn't be in there. And thirdly, the search results. And it would be lovely to say search doesn't matter anymore, but of course, it still does matter hugely. It's one of the algorithmic trinity. LLM, chatbots, knowledge graphs, and search results. If you can get in the search results, you can still appear within chat GPT because they are using results from the web within their within their uh outputs. So what's really lovely as you said Fortune 500 companies all the way down to soloreneurs and local businesses, you all need to work on the algorithmic trinity.

James Dooley: Yeah. So obviously brand entity SEO is important whether like you said you're a huge Fortune 500 company, you're a soul trader, you're a local plumber, local builder, a joiner, it doesn't matter what it is, it applies to everyone. And I've and I've got a few questions on this. So just one

Jason Barnard: can I just say one thing that that just I just remembered. Um I had years ago a client a local business and they were saying I want to rank for white paint cuz he sells white paint. That's a really silly idea. Number one white paint you're going to rank in Paris but you're actually in the south of France. There's absolutely no point. Number two you're competing against the big boys. And I think it's always important to remember you're not playing in the same park as the big companies. You're playing in a park of your local area and you need to beat the local competition. So even if the local competition belongs to a big group, you don't have to beat the whole group. You just have to beat the one that's in your town.

James Dooley: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. With regards to uh brand entity SEO for for local tradesmen, local businesses, local contractors, obviously there's multiple KGM ids, which stands for knowledge graph machine IDs. You've got the Google business profile like you said, which is for the location.

Jason Barnard: Yeah.

James Dooley: You've got the actual company KGM ID, and then you've got the owner. Do you think it's important for the owner or the founder of a local business for them to try and get an entity home and for them to try and get their own profile which then connects through to their local business? Would you still even though a local small company at present? Because obviously if in my opinion you're planting a seed or you're hoping that all right there might be a local business at present but they're going to grow further down the line into something bigger. So would you get the business owner for them to concentrate on entity and branding SEO as well?

Jason Barnard: Yeah, I think um number one, you've got the KGM ID from your Google business profile that you control, that you create, you manage and that's the actual location because it's part of Google Maps. And then you've got the company which could be in the knowledge graph. It's not hugely important for local businesses, but if you get it, that's brilliant because it's the company and not the location. And then the person behind the company or the person that represents the local business, the location is incredibly important. And even if you're not planning on scaling up because if you're if you personally have a reputation within your industry, if you're personally in authority with your industry and Google understands that that is your company and that is your location, your authority helps their authority. And um you know, let's say I'm I'm a local plumber and my reviews keep mentioning me because I repaired somebody's plumbing when their house has flooded and they they're saying, "Thank you." Well, let's call this person Chris Green. You saved my house and my cats and my dogs and my books. When they mention Chris Green in the review, that adds to your authority. If it's understood who you are, it adds to the company authority both because it's a review for the company, but also because it knows that you own the company, that you're the person responsible for the company. So, I would say as a local business owner, you want to build your Google business profile. You need to think about the company behind that Google business profile. And you definitely need to work on your personal brand just once again within your community. All of this, remember, you don't need to be famous in Paris if you're in the south of France.

James Dooley: Yeah, I think it's pretty crazy because on this episode we're talking about now obviously there's lots of other episodes for high netw worth individuals and doing entity SEO for all them and people think for local tradesmen, yeah, maybe an entity home isn't needed for the person. But one thing I always love what you kind of instilled into me is James, you might go and sell Doulie's plumbers next year. Well, there's one thing that you're never going to sell and that's James D. James Douly is you. So if you are ever selling a local business and you might be setting back up, you've still got your personal knowledge panel now that you can connect to the next business that you might be working on. And that's another reason why I think it's important for the business owner behind the local tradesman company for them to try and improve their branding. But but I want I want

Jason Barnard: but sorry that is that is lovely and that that thing is you you are always you and that's an asset that you have today and you will always have in the future. Bran Fishiskin has done an amazing job of keeping of moving sorry forwards in his career with different things from Moz to Spark Toro. He's doing Alert Mouse now. All of that's built on his personal brand and he built it in his first business. And I in my previous life owned up to 10. That was a children's ed edtech platform. My personal brand came with me. And even though I sold that company years and years ago, that personal branding that I took from that company and the fact that I built myself up as an individual separate from the company allowed me to build Cali Cube much more easily and much smoother um and faster.

James Dooley: Yeah. So, let's just say now anyone who's watching this, they take it on board and they say, "Right, I'm gonna get an entity home for jamesdly.com. I'm gonna try and get the business through list plumbers to have that to get a KGM ID and that to get in the knowledge graph and then I've got my Google business profile. You mentioned before about the Google business profile as being an entity and the business as being an entity and you and you mentioned that in time AI will merge them knowledge graphs together. Does that mean at present in the current times that the strength of the Google business profile doesn't strengthen the entity like itself of the business or or does it not? Because when you if you say no, the only thing I would say is the Google business profile, the more reviews that gets and the better that starts to do. It seems to have a direct correlation that the website does better and the better the website does seems to do better, the better the the Google business profile does. So, so like I'd like to know whether that isn't connected yet, when you think it will be connected, will it ever be connected? And why is that correlation if it's not connected helping each other out?

Jason Barnard: Right. Well, you mentioned website and because it's a really really good point. The website is a proxy for the location and a proxy for the business. So, it's always going to help both. So they are all linked to always linked together. The website is always a proxy for the thing or the person or the entity that runs it. So in this case the company but it's also a proxy for the location and Google are not going to merge the location with the company because it is technically two different things. So you will end up with a KGM ID for your local business which is the Google Maps one plus one for the entity the company James Duly plumbing limited behind that. Then if you look at the AI because they don't have the same system as Google the location and the company are more or less the same thing and they're not going to distinguish between them. So for AI, not Google and not Microsoft Bing, you're looking at essentially the same thing. And even in Google and Bing, I wouldn't really get obsessed by the distinction between the two. You can consider them in your mind as the same. Simply create an about page for the company and an about page for the location. Make sure they're both clear that this is about the company, this is about the location on your website. And then you more or less forget about the the company because they all become the same thing. the website, the company entity, and the Google business profile. And for AI, they are essentially the same thing. So, you've got no problem.

James Dooley: Yeah. So, I want to like obviously I do quite a lot of local SEO, local lead generation and stuff like that. And you've passed some work onto my team that and one of my team members mentioned there was 62,000 essential domains in in with it. I don't know if it was in Calcube or whatever it was and it was all going on about niche authority.

Jason Barnard: Yeah.

James Dooley: Bit wins. Can you explain that a little bit more cuz I don't know even know what these 62,000 domains are and why that is important for local tradesmen and trades people.

Jason Barnard: Right. Yeah. Well, the 62,000 domains are in Caliq Pro. So we track 1,700,000 domains, 23 million URLs. And of the one 1,700,000 domains, only 62,000 have real value and real power in Google's knowledge graph. And I mean, this this is kind of quite fun because I give a really good example for the for the for the niche or I think it's a good example. It's a fun example for nicheness. If I'm a poodle parlor in Paris, getting a Wikipedia page, you know, isn't actually going to help me because that's going to apply to Australia. It's going to apply to Japan. It's going to apply to the world. But if I get a page on the Poodle Parlor of Paris association website, it's clearly in Paris. It's clearly very authoritative because it's an association that groups together companies that have the same audience and goal. That's the powerful one. And if it's in the 62,000, which it probably is if it's a good website that's been well built and is incredibly niche, that's what we find. Niche websites get into this 62,000 3% of all domains. Much more u sorry that it's more heavily weighted towards niche sites than it is to global um uh generalist sites. I I'll just tell you a really good thing is now if you ask chat GPT or Google Jason Barard and P poodle parlor or Jason Barard Paris it keeps talking about poodle parlor in Paris because I keep using it as an example.

James Dooley: So if there's one key takeaway then they're a local builder they're a local whatever contractor it could be a plumber carpet cleaner whatever it is if there's one key takeaway the business owner goes in on Monday morning what's the one thing on the action plan that you would get a local tradesman now to be doing for entity SEO and branding in 2026

Jason Barnard: right and it's a really simple action plan if you have if you don't have a Google business profile, create one now and start nurturing it. Or if you haven't claimed it, claim it and start nurturing it and really pay attention to the details. Then if you have got one and you've already nurtured it or once you've nurtured it, think about how you can transfer all of that information onto your website and organize it on your website by its role within Google business profile. So the reviews, the services you offer, the posts that you're doing, your address, how to find finders, obviously all all of the information that's in your Google business profile, reproduce it on your website and create dedicated pages for the important information that should be prioritized. That way, all of the algorithms will see who you are, what you do, who you offer, and why you're the most credible solution, and you're going to win the game across the board. It's a way of transferring your work on Google to become valuable work for all of the AI assistant engines.

James Dooley: Well then, superb. So, if anyone likes this, make sure you leave a comment in the comment section. Make sure you leave a like. Jason, it's been a pleasure. We hope you like the video on brand entity SEO for tradesmen, trades people, or for local SEO.

Jason Barnard: Thank you. H up.