Thanks Miriam, you've been super helpful. For the time being I'll close this ticket but if I can get some solid data then I'll happily share the data with the Moz community in one format or another. Cheers!

Thanks Miriam, I don't think there's a ton of value to be had for this one particular client (not enough to make me conduct an extensive study on the matter), but even that is shooting from the hip.

Do you know of a heatmap study that shows how people interact with knowledge panels? If I can prove that X% of users interact with the competitor space on those panels then I may have a case to perform further research. Which if I did, I would share here, because I am a sharing kind of person

One of things I noticed when I clicked through some of the profiles was that it was pulling information from Google My Business, which makes me think that the information in there may be tied to it. I have a hard time believing that it truly is as simple as "people also search for (x) website" because I've seen Google posting businesses that are marked as permanently closed in this space, and I can't imagine people are repeatedly searching for a closed business in their area.

Hello fellow Mozzers,

In Google's knowledge panel there is a section at the bottom that says "people also search for" and a list of competitors is displayed. I'm hoping to get some information I can use to get my client listed there on top of the local organic results. The more SERP presence, the better. Attached image should provide clarity to those who are confused. I suspect I know the answer to this question, but since I can't find a source to verify my beliefs, I'm crowdsourcing. Thanks in advance!

NhoihY1

If by orphaned you mean that the pages are inaccessible from other parts of the website and Google is unable to see them, then technically no, it's not impacting your rankings. Or it could be technically yes, depending on how you look at it.

If Google can't see the pages, hasn't indexed the pages, then it doesn't factor those pages into its algorithm. If those pages contain valuable content that users would like to see, then they should be accessible, and making them accessible to users and to Google can improve your rankings.

I would ask why they're orphaned first before making changes though. If they're landing pages meant only to track SEM campaigns, or test pages to try new code, etc. it makes sense to keep those pages orphaned. Context is key. Don't open pandora's box by accident! But keeping them orphaned isn't actually impacting your rankings, because it's as though it doesn't exist to Google. So proceed cautiously, and may the odds be ever in your favor.

I'm going to try to turn you around, because you're going down the wrong road. It's a bit of a read, but stick with me.

Stop thinking about sculpting your internal links, and start thinking about how to create a user friendly navigation. Your SEO and conversions will flow from there. Let's pretend you're in the home services category and you install and replace floors. The services you provide are repair, installation, and replacement of tile, wood, and vinyl floors. You'll want to have a homepage that allows users to navigate to pages that describes the services you provide and the products you offer. So your top navigation could have a menu that looks something like this:

Tile Floors
-Tile Floor Repair
-Tile Floor Installation
-Tile Floor Replacement

Wood Floors
-Wood Floor Repair
-Wood Floor Installation
-Wood Floor Replacement

Vinyl Floors
-Vinyl Floor Repair
-Vinyl Floor Installation
-Vinyl Floor Replacement

Now you've got at least ten pages that you can start to write content for, and each of them is easily accessible. If you have pages that you consider important to your users and your business objectives, best practice is to make them easily accessible from the homepage in your main navigation, and to make them accessible from related pages as well. In keeping with the home services theme, something you may consider a "non important page" could be your legal disclaimers. It's important alright, but not necessarily for the majority of your users. It's acceptable to link to content like that in the footer.

The reason I'm trying to direct you to think about the way users interact with your site is because that's the way Google has designed their algorithm to work. Since users interact with the footer much less than body content, Google has tagged links in the footer, and those links pass less PageRank. If you spend your time trying to game the system, you'll ultimately lose, whereas if you focus on your users, you'll ultimately win. To go back to our main navigation example for our flooring company, if I followed your strategy I might place content in confusing places, moving my "tile floor repair" page to the footer or a sidebar where users can't find it and Google devalues.

So focus on the users and the PageRank will follow. Good Luck!

I've seen it advised that you should not use letters - so 1-800-eat-cows would be less optimal than 1-800-328-2697. I don't know if it's true from an SEO standpoint, but it's certainly true from a usability perspective. Customers do not enjoy having to translate letters into numbers, especially anyone who is even slightly visually impaired. Takes forever.

I like the blog kissmetrics did on this awhile back: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/get-started-using-schema/

From the article:
"Schema markup helps your website rank better for all kinds of content types. There is data markup for…

• Articles
• Local businesses
• Restaurants
• TV episodes and ratings
• Book Reviews
• Movies
• Software Applications
• Events
• Products"

What I really enjoy about schema is that it's virtually untapped. Every time I do a SERP analysis it amazes me how few of my client's competitors have optimized with schema. If you're willing to read through the resources on schema.org you'll see there are tons of ways you can markup your data. We've implemented roughly 9 types of schema for one client, including local business, product, offer, and reviews (not sure where the full list is). The neat thing is that you can also mark up specific elements on the page, such as videos or open hours.

Another plus to taking the time to slog through it - it's a common language across all search engines.

Best of luck!

Google does not use social signals as a ranking signal. It would be far too easy to manipulate rankings, and there's no guarantee of quality.

However, studies have shown a correlation between content that is shared many times and links garnered. You've likely gained quality backlinks thanks to all the repinning on Pinterest, and that has impacted your SEO efforts in a positive manner. And of course, quality referral traffic is always appreciated

Sorry Sean, I misunderstood your question. No, you cannot redirect any website you don't have access to. My recommendation would be to contact the host and work with them to obtain access. It's usually not a complex process.