Entity SEO

Entity SEO means aligning search engine optimisation with entities rather than individual search terms. In Google's understanding, an entity is a clearly identifiable thing or concept: a company, a person, a product, a brand, a place, an event or an abstract term. What matters is that an entity exists independently of what it is called – “Apple” can mean the company or the fruit, and Google distinguishes between the two not by the word but by the context and known properties. Search engines and AI systems today work with such entities and their relationships to each other. Entity SEO ensures that your own brand, products and people are recognised as clearly defined entities, correctly assigned and linked to the right topics.

From keyword to entity

Until around 2012, Google evaluated pages largely on the basis of words: which terms appear, how often, in what position? With the Knowledge Graph, Google began to understand things rather than strings. The Hummingbird update in 2013, and later RankBrain, BERT and MUM, deepened this development. Today, Google recognises which entities a search query refers to, how they relate to each other and what intent lies behind it. A search for “running shoes for overpronation” is not processed as a sequence of words, but as a connection between the entity running shoe, the concept of overpronation and purchase intent.

For search engine optimisation, this means: a keyword is just one of many possible names for an entity. If you only optimise for the keyword, you cover a small slice. If you map the entity with all its properties, synonyms and relationships, you become relevant for the entire topic.

The Knowledge Graph

Google's Knowledge Graph is a database of entities and their relationships. It feeds the knowledge panels on the right of the search results, the answer boxes and a considerable part of the AI answers in AI Overviews. Google can clearly identify an entity stored in the Knowledge Graph: it knows its name, alternative names, type, connections to other entities and sources. For companies, an entry in the Knowledge Graph is therefore an important goal of entity SEO – it is proof that Google has understood the brand as an entity in its own right.

Optimising SEO entities: the measures

Define your own entities

First, determine which entities are central to the company – the brand itself, product lines, founders or expert authors, locations, and possibly your own technologies or processes. Each entity should have a page that describes it fully.

Create consistency

Name, spelling, description, address and contact details must be identical on your own website, in company profiles, industry directories, social networks and in your Google Business Profile. Contradictory information makes identification harder.

Use structured data

Schema.org markup such as Organization, Person, Product or LocalBusiness describes entities in a machine-readable way. The sameAs property links your own entity to external references such as Wikipedia, Wikidata, LinkedIn or company registers and helps Google identify it unambiguously.

Build external anchoring

Google confirms entities via independent sources. Entries in Wikidata, mentions in specialist media, press articles, directories and review platforms provide this confirmation. The more often an entity appears on the web in a consistent context, the more stable its identification.

Cover topics completely

Content should cover not only the main keyword but the related entities: related terms, properties, typical questions, objects of comparison. Google assesses whether a page comprehensively covers the topic of an entity.

Internal linking by entity

Pages dealing with the same entity are linked to each other, with anchor texts that name the entity. This creates a clear thematic structure within the website.

Entity SEO in e-commerce

For online shops, brands, products and product categories are the most important entities. Google needs to understand that a shop carries certain brands, which products belong to which category and what properties they have. Complete product data with GTIN, brand and attributes, clean category structures, brand pages with their own content and Product schema on every product page form the basis for this. A well-maintained Merchant Center feed supplements these signals, because Google matches the product entities there directly with the Shopping Graph.

Importance for AI search

Language models think in entities and relationships. Whether ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI Mode recommend a brand depends on how clearly that brand is anchored as an entity on the web – with a clear description, consistent information and links to the relevant topics. Entity SEO is thus a foundation of generative engine optimisation and closely linked to the trust signals Google summarises under E-E-A-T.