Entity optimization is an important part of any SEO strategy. In this piece, I’ll discuss entity SEO, how Google uses relevant entities and provide you with strategies for performing entity research and using them to your advantage.
If you’re unfamiliar with the concept yet, that’s okay – you’re in the right place.
Google’s adoption of semantic search tools via updates like BERT and MUM has drastically reshaped the world of SEO. Rather than ranking sites on keywords alone, these natural language models, which were introduced in 2018 and 2021 respectively, seek to understand the context behind the words.
As a natural outgrowth of this approach, Google uses what are known as “entities” to determine which pages best match queries. It looks at contextual information to determine the purpose of content, thus ensuring relevant results.
Google uses entities as the building blocks of its Knowledge Graph.
Entities that are frequently referenced together indicate a close relationship between them. Others that are more obtuse, are less likely to be related.
Google’s Knowledge Graph identifies and tracks these relationships in its ever-expanding representation of the connections between various people, places, things and ideas.
Using this information, Google uses context clues and semantic signals to determine search intent, understanding entities is a vital part of any SEO plan.
What you will learn
- What are entities in search engine optimization?
- Why do search engines use them?
- How is an entity different from a keyword?
- Six strategies for using entities in your SEO strategy
What is an entity in SEO?
In SEO, an entity is a concept or thing that search engines can recognize and understand. It’s anything that can be distinctly identified and is unique from other things. It could be a person, place, event, organization or concept.
A 2017 research paper from New York University, identified around 150 named entity types ranging from book titles to currencies, time periods to physical measurements.
Recent estimates have Google identifying 8 billion different entities, a number that continues to grow.
For example, “Lionel Messi,” “Kyoto,” “2025 Grammys,” “Kodak” and “string theory” are all recognizable entities by Google.
As search engines use increasingly complex algorithms to drill down to the intent behind the search, understanding entities and the interplay between them will become increasingly important.
Entities vs keywords
The main difference between entities and keywords is that entities provide context and relationship to other entities. In other words, keywords are the words and phrases used to find information, while entities are the things the information is about.
Keywords are the specific words used in the query. Entities are the concepts and things the query is searching for more information about.
For example, a user may search for “Kodak.”
This could refer to a variety of entities, including the photography company, rapper Kodak Black, Kodak Peak, a mountain in Washington, an unincorporated township in Tennessee, or Patti Smith’s book of poetry with the same name.
The same keyword can be used for a number of unrelated entities. Google’s shift to semantic search is a step toward understanding user intent and then providing the best results.
This is why someone searching for information about electronics manufacturer Apple, will see search results related to the iPhone, MacBook or AirPods, rather than pages promoting Granny Smiths, cider or apple-picking locations.
How search engines use entities to understand content
Search engines like Google use entities to understand content and identify the specific concepts it’s referring to. It analyzes the page's context to understand the more significant meaning and intent behind content, instead of blindly matching keywords.
This uses a complex algorithm to map out relationships and cross-reference in Google’s Knowledge Graph to provide results that are accurate to search intent.
It looks at the following:
Relatedness
Entities are connected through relationships, including how often they are mentioned together on the internet.
Search engines look at the relationship between these entities to determine the relationship between them. If they are frequently mentioned together on authoritative websites, it reinforces the connect between them, providing context to Google.
For example, “Eiffel Tower,” “Paris” and “tourism” are all entities.
These terms frequently appear together on travel and culture sites, which tells Google there is a strong level of relatedness between them.
This allows Google to understand that the Eiffel Tower is a notable tourist site in Paris.
Notability
Another important part of understanding entities is their notability.
While a good rule of thumb in SEO is that fresher content is better, this isn’t always the case. This is because E-E-A-T gives some sites higher levels of notability.
For example, Shopify is a well-known e-commerce platform that Google considers notable and of high authority within its niche of online retail solutions.
For searches related to e-commerce, Shopify’s content will feature prominently because of its widespread adoption and recognition.
However, it is unlikely to show up in a broader search for software as a service (SaaS) platforms in general, as its notability is more specialized.
The ability to draw this distinction helps search engines determine Shopify’s relevance to specific queries.
Contribution
The quality of contributions and prominence of an entity also play a role in how much authority Google attributes to it.
For example, CNET is considered one of the top online voices for tech reviews. Due to a history of providing detailed information about new software and devices, it has established credibility and expertise.
This means its endorsement or criticism of a particular smartphone substantially contributes to that device’s reputation and perceived value.
Google and other search engines factor this in, as they recognize the role CNET’s reviews can have on public perception.
Prizes
Awards received by an entity are weighted based on their importance and prestige.
An entity that is associated with the “Nobel Prize,” for example, will contribute greater “juice” to an entity than “Meadowlark 3rd Grade Science Fair 1st Prize.”
Time
Similarly, for certain time-sensitive queries, this will be factored in as well.
An example of this would be a search for “best holiday gifts.” In this scenario, it’s safe to assume the searcher has a specific holiday in mind, so time is an important entity to consider when determining which results to show.
How do entities impact SEO?
The use of entities has impacted the way in which SEO works, as it allows search engines to understand the context and tone of your content. As such, integrating entities into your content strategy and on-page SEO is a must.
Just as backlinks play an important role in establishing your site’s E-E-A-T, the connections between entities help demonstrate the relevance of content within the intent of a user’s search.
Entities are used to establish a relationship, which may be a better marker of accurate results.
When a user searches for an entity in Google, the relevance of other entities is determined to provide the results.
For example, a search for “Harrison Ford” will have important associated entities like “Star Wars,” “Indiana Jones” and “Karen Allen.”
Google has methods it employs to infer context and determine the query is about the actor, not about a dentist in Bloomington, Indiana with an identical name.
By understanding the nature of entity relationships, especially the entities related to your topic area, you can ensure that your site appears in relevant search queries while also verifying that you are covering the full spectrum of the topic.
The importance of entities for SEO
Understanding entities and how they’re used to determine search results is an important part of any search engine optimization plan.
There are a few reasons for this, namely:
Improved search results
Entities help Google take a more nuanced approach to indexing and ranking than would be possible using strictly keywords. This, in turn allows it to show your pages to relevant searchers, rather than people with a different intent who are using the same keywords.
Take the following example: If you have a page on the “Mustang” that includes references to entities like “Ford,” “automobile,” and “racing,” this helps Google confirm that the content is about the sports car.
It then uses this understanding to help decide where your content is ranked, ensuring it’s only shown to people interested in the vehicle, rather than those looking for information about feral horses.
Enhanced discoverability
By creating content around relevant entities within your niche, you can establish your site’s authority on that topic.
This, in turn, helps you rank higher in relevant search results and leads to an increase in organic traffic.
How to use entities for SEO
By this point, the role entities play in search results should be clear. But that leads to the bigger question: how do you use entities for SEO?
Here are six ways you can use entities to enhance your ranking in search engine results pages:
1. Include semantically related keywords in your content
To leverage the power of entities in search engine optimization and improve your content's visibility, you need to clearly communicate the subject matter of your pages to search engines.
An effective way to achieve this is by incorporating semantically related keywords in your content.
For instance, if you're trying to rank for the primary keyword "fitness training," you should consider including related words and phrases such as "healthy diet," "strength training," "endurance," "cardio," and "workout routines." These words share the concept of improving fitness, even though they are not synonyms for the target keyword.
There are a lot of ways you can find these keywords, including using popular keyword research tools and parsing the “People also ask” and “People also search for” sections in Google search.
These can help you find relevant long-tail keywords and related topics to add depth to your content.
Surfer's Content Editor is the simplest way to identify and use entities in your content. Included terms are highlighted in green and you'll also be able to see the optimal keyword density.
Semantically related keywords offer the dual benefit of offering the positives of a comprehensive keyword strategy, as well as helping Google determine the context of your pages via relevant entities.
2. Use Google’s Knowledge Graph API
Google’s Knowledge Graph API is a useful tool for finding entities within the Google Knowledge Graph. It offers a vast repository of entities, providing structured data about their context and relationships which can be used to boost search relevance.
To use it, you first need to obtain an API key.
Access the Google Cloud console and create a project. Then, enable the Knowledge Graph Search API. This will allow you to generate an API key for authentication.
Once you have done this, you can make entity-related API requests:
- Send a query – Use the search term or a descriptive phrase as the query.
- Specify entity types – This is optional, but you can use parameters to filter or specify the number of results.
- Parse the response – The API data will be in JSON-LD format and contain data like entity names, descriptions and images. You can extract and use this information as needed.
For more detailed information, refer to the API reference documentation.
3. Cover your entity topical map
To help search engines understand your content and improve your chances of ranking, it’s essential that your content covers a wide variety of topics related to your main focus.
Ensuring your content is interlinked logically not only enhances user experience but also aids search engines in understanding the relationships between entities and determining which searches your site is relevant to.
A topical map is a representation of which topics you've covered, and where you have gaps.
To ensure you’re thoroughly covering a topic, you should have a comprehensive topical map that will visually represent what your site will cover and how various subtopics are connected.
You can use Surfer's Topical Map to visualize your topical coverage.
Here's a snippet from 80 parent topics and their supporting articles for Surfer's blog.
Even from these 5 topics in the left panel, you can tell that Surfer's entity coverage revolves around SEO and content marketing topics.
Here's how it looks visually.
Each heaxagon represents a parent topic – 80 in all.
Parent topics are made up of smaller hexagons – colored hexagons indicate coverage while white ones show gaps.
Topical relevance is important to search engines, and a topic map will help you organize your content to improve both user experience and search engine understanding, as well as helping establish topical authority.
For example, if you have a culinary website, your topic map should cover topics like “cuisine types” (Chinese, Italian, Mexican), “cooking ingredients” (garlic, cilantro, onion, pork) and “cooking techniques” (barbecue, deep frying, roasting).
Within each category, you would create individual content pieces that delve deeper into each entity, providing detailed information and context.
On their own, each of the items in parenthesis is an entity. When taken together, they provide search engines with clear information about the theme and scope of the content on your site.
4. Earn a Google Knowledge Panel
A Google Knowledge Panel is the box that appears to the right of search results with quick summary information about a person, place or thing.
They can also appear as a wide horizontal panel at the top of search results.
The information in these are based on Google’s Knowledge Graph and automatically generated when someone searches for an entity.
As you can imagine, these are very valuable for search engine marketers and capture a high percentage of clicks. While there is a lot of competition for many of these, you should be able to claim at least one – your brand.
You may already have one.
If so, simply find it and click “Claim” at the bottom of the panel. This may require you to sign into official sites or social media accounts or provide government-issued ID.
Keep in mind that Google pulls from Wikipedia and Wikidata, so if you meet the standards to have a page, you should.
While these sites are not the deciding factor on what is and isn’t an entity, being featured on them will increase your credibility.
It’s also a good idea to claim your Google Business Profile and list your brand on directories that are relevant to your field. For example, an electrician business will probably benefit from being listed on sites like Angi, Yelp and Thumbtack.
Additionally, you should seek to build citations from authoritative websites.
Being featured in authoritative publications like Forbes, Business Insider or Crunchbase goes a long way toward boosting entity recognition.
5. Build your brand with E-E-A-T
If that last point didn’t make it clear, yes, your brand is an entity.
To maximize its impact on SEO, you should build your brand in such a way that search engines recognize it as such.
The work you do here should tie in closely with your efforts to build your experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, or E-E-A-T. Google uses these to determine the quality of a web page.
Being recognized as a brand will also protect you from algorithm updates, when Google gets it wrong.
If Google considers your website an authority on a certain topic, it will consider your information on entities related to that topic to be of good quality.
To see what Google thinks of your domain, click on the 3 dots accompanying your URL in the search results.
This will reveal an "About the source" panel that summarizes information that Google has about your brand.
6. Provide actual value
This should be obvious, but it always bears repeating.
Google values helpful, reliable, people-first content. Any black hat or other questionable tactics attempting to game search engine algorithms are more likely to result in penalties than high rankings.
Instead of looking for content shortcuts, focus on providing actionable value that visitors can use.
Each piece of content should have a purpose, whether that’s to present a product that can solve a pain point or provide valuable information.
This could come in many different forms, including walkthroughs, tutorials, step-by-step guides or case studies. What will work for you depends on your industry.
Remember that your goal is to consistently provide value to web visitors.
In addition to helping you climb search rankings, this will elevate your brand in their eyes of potential customers, earning their trust, while increasing your perceived value, which in turn, will shorten the sales cycle.
4 entity SEO tools to use
There are a number of SEO tools you can use to help you identify and capitalize on entities, including:
1. Google’s Natural Language Processing API
Google’s Natural Language API can be used to perform an entity analysis. It inspects texts associated with known entities and returns information about them.
To identify entities on a page, make a post request to documents:analyzeEntities using REST-based commands.
If the request is successful, you’ll receive a response in JSON format.
2. Surfer
The Topics feature inside Surfer helps ensure that your content meets optimial depth and coverage for your topic, thus covering important entities.
Surfer analzyes other top ranking pages and benchmarks your article against their coverage.
For example, you can see these 5 subtopics that an article on "entity SEO" is associated with.
Covering these 5 subtopics well will ensure that Google will recognize my page to be an in-depth helpful guide on "entity SEO."
Surfer also has a recommendation panel with NLP keywords and entities, so you dont have to manually identify which entities to include.
3. Google Search Engine Results Pages
You can use Google SERPs to find entities in the same way you use it to perform keyword research.
Start with the autocomplete function.
Start typing a query into the search bar and see what it suggests in the autocomplete section. This will give you an idea what people are searching for, including related entities.
In the example above, you can see several different entities associated with the phrase “Beastie Boys,” including the musical group, some of their most popular songs, each of which is a separate entity and a documentary about the group.
Further down the page, the “People also ask” can help you identify other entities.
As you can see in this example, Eminem is an entity at least tangentially associated with the Beastie Boys.
At the bottom of the page, there’s the “People also search for” section, which is another useful tool for identifying related entities.
4. Schema.org validator
Google’s database has an extensive library of information mapped to known entities. Structured data, as outlined by Schema.org can then be used to note entities, in addition to the other roles it plays in SEO like capturing featured snippets.
Using Schema’s validator tool is one of the easiest ways to discover what entities Google associates with your content.
To use it, navigate to the validator tool on the Schema website and paste in the HTML code containing the entity in question’s schema mark up and run the validation check.
This will highlight any errors or inconsistencies in the structure of the data, which ensure search engines can properly understand the information about the entity on your web page.
Key takeaways
- Entities are distinct people, places, things or concepts that search engines can recognize and use to understand the context and relationships between different pieces of content.
- The use of entities along with natural language processing allows search engines to deliver more relevant results to queries and differentiate between entities that may sound the same but are entirely different.
- Keywords and entities are different things. Keywords describe the entity, whereas the entity is the thing itself.
- Search engines use a variety of factors to identify entities, including how frequently terms are mentioned together, the notability of the mentioning site and any awards or significant contributions associated with it.
- Keep entities in mind when developing and performing SEO work. Adding them to your content will occur naturally in many cases as you use semantically related keywords, create comprehensive topic coverage and build your E-E-A-T.
- Tools exist to help you identify and evaluate entities, though many require at least a high-level understanding of programming language.
