Entity

What is an entity?

Entities in the traditional sense are either entities or things that can be captured as opposed to essence. In the field of search engine optimization, entities are not only used to describe the meaning of a word or phrase, but they also serve as a general term for an entire semantic space. SEO today has evolved into a marketing discipline based on content semantics. In this sense, entities play an important role in SEO today.

What are examples of entities?

An entity is a concept, a term, a person or a thing. A collection of such entities forms a domain. The totality of these terms form the unique definition of an entity. Entities are also used for searching on Google. Search intentions are categorized by Google into individual entities so that the semantics of the query can be understood.
Here are a few examples for you:

• Persons: If one captures “Larry Page”, one of the inventors & founders of Google, as an entity, words like “inventor of Google”, “Google”, or “CEO Google” would be used to uniquely identify this entity as well
• Companies & Brands: The Apple corporation is probably a household name to everyone. A description of this entity, which includes the words “Steve Jobs”, “Ipod”, “iMac” and “Macintosh”, is very obvious in this case.
• Cities: For cities, the entity includes semantically matching terms. Let’s take “Würzburg” as an example city. Here, terms such as “Residenz”, “Würzburg Cathedral” or “Wein am Stein” are certainly included as entities.

What role do entities play in search engine optimization?

For SEO purposes, it is important for you to internalize that Google can recognize entities and use them for categorizing websites or content in general. Therefore, in order to optimize the content of your website for search engines, it is important that the content of your website covers a whole semantic space and does not only contain keywords. This allows Google to assign the website to categories relevant to the search term. With this approach, your pages can later rank for terms for which they were not primarily optimized. An example would be that your page dealing with winter tires will also rank well for summer tires, because Google recognizes the content on the topic of tires and can assign it accordingly to the entity.

Where does Google get the information about entities?

The original database for the Google Knowledge Graph was Freebase, which Google acquired through the acquisition of Metaweb in 2010. This in turn was replaced by Wikidata in December 2014. The Freebase data flows into Wikidata, which is one of the most important databases for the Google Knowledge Graph. The Google Knowledge Graph contains information about people, places, organizations, events and things. It is an example of how machine learning algorithms can draw conclusions based on large amounts of structured and unstructured data. In addition to Wikidata, the Google Knowledge Graph is fed by a variety of different data sources, including Wikipedia and the CIA World Facts Book. Any website that has a certain structured format, in addition to authority and credibility, is suitable as a potential data source. Examples include Google My Business and event platforms. The Knowledge Graph is additionally enriched with information from Google’s own data sources, such as Google Maps and Google Places. Structured data tagged with JSON-LD can also be used as an additional source.

Is entity SEO the future?

Search engine optimization is also evolving. Especially in online marketing and SEO you should keep an eye on these changes. Entities are now an important ranking factor, also with regard to the advancing development of voice search. So far, however, it is still relatively opaque when, how and, above all, which entities are played out in which order. Especially in the area of voice search, Google only outputs one entity. Accordingly, you should dedicate yourself to your entities early on. Entity SEO could soon become another “discipline” in search engine optimization. Entity will play an important role not only in transactional or navigational areas. Especially if you want to continue ranking for other entities when providing editorial content in the informative area (a wiki for example 😉), entity SEO will be a decisive factor for you.

Don’t focus exclusively on your keywords, keep an eye on your entities as well!