I self-published a book called I Self Published This SEO Book and All I Got Was This Lousy Knowledge Panel. It was a cynical ploy to get a knowledge panel as an author. When I recorded this episode in January 2025, I had a featured snippet and still no knowledge panel. So when Ethan Felizzari-Castillo told me how he got one for his partner without hiring a publicist, I took notes.
Ethan is a director and producer who founded CK Productions in New York in 2013, while he was a junior in high school. “The same company I opened when I was a junior in high school is the same company I work for today in my late 20s.” His marketing branch, CK Marketing, works with independent films and recording artists, which means people Google hasn’t heard of yet.
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Social followers alone won’t get you a knowledge panel
Ethan’s partner in life and business is Rosie Dean, an actress and content creator. She had a real following on social media and films on streaming platforms. She didn’t have a knowledge panel.
“We’re like, huh, what is missing here?”
That’s the gap you’ve probably hit too. You’re known to your customers and your followers, and Google still doesn’t treat you as a thing. Followers are a signal Google can’t always read. What it reads is other people writing about you.
Ten articles per release, no publicist
Rosie was releasing music at the time, so they turned every release into a coverage push:
“When we release some music, immediately when a song comes out, let’s get like 10 articles written about it, right? Let’s find people who are willing to write articles without a publicist, you know, doing this just us reaching out to some people, sending out some emails and seeing what we can do.”
No agency, no retainer, just emails. Ethan said it “helped populate at least the conversation and her name associated with her art form.” Every article tied the same name to the same work.
If you run a business, your “release” is a new service, a new location, a study you ran or a talk you gave. Each one is a reason for a small outlet to write about you, and each article is another place your name sits next to what you do.
Clean up IMDb and every profile you control
The second move was the one Ethan didn’t expect to matter:
“We actually went through and organized her credits, put a picture there, did little things that we didn’t think initially were going to help. And they actually helped.”
For Rosie that was IMDb. For you it might be your Google Business Profile, your LinkedIn, your Crunchbase or your author page. Organize the credits, add the photo, fill in the content. The panel started to self-populate after that.
Then he got the bigger surprise: “the second she got the knowledge panel, we started seeing her name pop up on other databases,” including Famous Birthdays. Once Google settled on who she was, the rest of the web followed.
When Google confuses you with someone else
The knowledge panel that showed up wasn’t right at first.
“There’s another Rosie Dean out there who is deceased and she is an actress from many, many, many, many years ago. And it was putting her pages and her links on the knowledge panel.”
Ethan’s fix was more of the same signal, plus help tickets to Google. He’s candid that “some of it works, sometimes it doesn’t.” If you share a name with someone more famous, plan on this. The more consistently your coverage and profiles describe the same person doing the same thing, the faster Google stops mixing you up. Jason Barnard has built his work around this problem, and his Unscripted SEO episode on entity optimization goes deep on it.
Start your small-outlet list before you need it
The habit that makes ten articles possible is a list Ethan keeps on his phone. When he spots a news source or blog on Instagram, he saves it:
“Even if it has 100 followers, if it has 10,000 followers, has a million plus, right? I save it and I include it in the next project I work on.”
Then he goes small first: “I immediately make a plan for us to start reaching out to those small ones right in the beginning, right? Develop that relationship really, really early on.”
The big outlets want the biggest names. The small ones will write about you now, and they’re the people who say yes when you email them on release day. Olesia Korobka calls the result a fortress of mentions, and it’s built one small outlet at a time.
How to get a knowledge panel for your name this quarter
Ethan’s own panel arrived without him trying. “I hadn’t done anything that I thought was knowledge panel worthy. And then all of a sudden I had a knowledge panel after some time of, you know, just being on interviews or getting mentioned in blogs, IMDb getting more populated.”
His advice fits in one sentence: “Keep getting more people talking about it and keep populating more images and content with that same exact thing that you want to be recognized for.”
Here’s what I’d do with that, starting this month:
- Start the list. Every small blog, newsletter and podcast in your niche goes in your notes app.
- Pick your next release and email ten of them about it.
- Clean up the profiles you own. Same name, same photo, same description of what you do.
- Say yes to interviews, including small podcasts. That’s how Ethan’s panel showed up.
- File the correction if Google mixes you up with someone else, and keep publishing while you wait.
I can’t promise this gets you a panel by a certain date. Ethan can’t either, and I’m living proof that a book alone doesn’t do it.
For the full conversation, read Ethan Felizzari-Castillo on indie film marketing on Unscripted SEO. For the agency version, read entity SEO for indie films on SEO Arcade. Ethan is at ckproductionsnewyork.com and is most active on Instagram. CK Marketing has its own Instagram too.