Stop complicating things. Entity SEO is simply SEO

“Entity SEO.”

Sounds scary, right? The word “entity” not only sounds foreign, but it seems like another thing to add to your never-ending SEO to-do list. You’re barely scraping by when it comes to SEO, but oh my god, here comes another modern thing to spend your meager resources on.

But I have good news for you: you don’t have to deal with SEO.

Why? Because probably Already I’m doing it.

Let’s start from the beginning.

In 2012, Google announced Knowledge Graph. Knowledge Graph is a knowledge base about entities and the relationships between them.

An entity is any object or concept that can be clearly identified. This includes material things such as people, places, and organizations, and theoretical things such as colors, concepts, and feelings.

For example, footballer Federico Chiesa is an individual:

Similarly, at the renowned British-Indian restaurant Dishoom:

Objects are connected by edges that describe the relationships between them.

The introduction of the Knowledge Graph helped improve Google search results because:

• Google can better understand search intent — People are looking for the same thing but describing it in different ways. Google can now understand that and give the same results.
• This reduced the dependency on keyword matching — Matching the number of keywords on a page does not guarantee relevance; it also prevents keyword stuffing by crafty SEO specialists.
• This reduced Google’s computational load — The Internet is practically infinite, and Google simply cannot understand the meaning of every word, paragraph, web page, and site. Entities provide a structure in which Google can improve understanding while minimizing the burden.

For example, even though we didn’t provide the actor’s name, Google understands that we’re looking for Harrison Ford and therefore shows his filmography:

This is because Hans Solo and Harrison Ford are closely related entities in the Knowledge Graph. Google shows Knowledge Graph data in SERP features like Knowledge Panels and Knowledge Cards.

With this knowledge, we can define entity SEO as the optimization of a website or web pages for such entities.

If Google has moved to unit-centric search, then unit SEO is simply SEO. As my colleague says Patrick Stox says: “The identification of the entity lies more with Google than with us.”

If you take a close look at the entity SEO tactics used in blog posts, you will discover that most of them are just SEO tactics:

• Get a Wikipedia page
• Create a Google Business Profile
• Add internal links
• Create all the digital assets that Google presents on the page (e.g. videos, images, Twitter)
• Develop topic authority
• Place words with similar semantic meaning on the page
• Add schema markup

Let’s be straightforward, if you’re stern about SEO and investing in it, you’re probably already doing most of the above.

Regardless of the entities, wouldn’t you like to have a Wikipedia page? After all, it offers benefits that go beyond “entity SEO.” Brand recognition, backlinks from one of the most authoritative sites in the world (albeit nofollow)—every business would want that.

If you run a local business, you’ve probably created a Google business profile. Adding internal links is simply SEO 101.

And the billions of scalding shells that create all the digital assets Google wants to see, like images and videos, are practically marketing 101. If you run a Korean recipe site and want to be associated with it, kimchi jjigae unitisn’t it? Already You know you have to record a video and take photos of the cooking process?

When I started my breakdancing website years ago, I knew nothing about SEO and content marketing, but I still he knew I had to make YouTube videos. Because you know what? It’s difficult to learn breakdancing from words. I don’t think I need an SEO to tell me that.

Topical authority is an SEO concept where a website aims to become an authority on one or more topics. Call me crazy, but it’s like blogging 101. Read most how-to guides on starting a blog and I’m sure you’ll find a subheading titled “niche down.” And once you find a niche, you’ll inevitably create content around that one topic.

If I start a site about breakdancing, what are the chances I’ll write about contemporary dance or pop art? Pretty low.

In fact, the topic authority is similar to Wiki Strategywhich Nat Eliason wrote about in 2017. There was not a single mention of entities. It was simply the right way to create content for the internet.

I think the biggest issue isn’t the subject vs. keyword issue, or that topic authority is a completely modern strategy. It’s just that many SEOs are shortsighted or driven by the wrong incentives.

You can focus on a bunch of unrelated keywords that have high search volume, gain incredible search engine traffic, and brag about your successes as an SEO specialist.

Some of the pages that send HubSpot the most search traffic have almost nothing to do with their core product. A page on how to write the shrug emoji? The most renowned quotes?

The point isn’t to single out HubSpot—I’m sure they have their reasons, as Ryan explored here —but to show that many companies are doing the exact same thing. And when Google stops rewarding that behavior, companies suddenly realize they need to write about their core competencies. They need to “build topic authority.”

I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, because I see value in the last two “entity SEO tactics.” But again, if you’re doing something similar to a Wiki strategy for your site, you’d probably naturally include entities or semantically relevant words without thinking about it too much. It’s difficult to create content about kimchi jjigae without mentioning kimchi, pork, or gochujang.

However, in order to prevent the curse of knowledge or simply to avoid dead spots, it is useful to check critical subtopics that you may have missed. At Ahrefs, we perform a page-level content gap analysis and look for subtopics:

For example, if we conduct a content gap analysis on “inbound marketing” for the three highest-ranking pages, we will notice that we may need to include the following subtopics:

• What is inbound marketing
• Inbound Marketing Strategy
• Inbound Marketing Examples
• Inbound Marketing Tools

Finally, adding schema markup makes the most sense, because that’s how Google recognizes entities and better understands the content of web pages. But if this is just one modern tactic — which I assume is already part of “standard” SEO and you can already employ — there’s no need to create a category defining the “modern era” (voice SEO, where are you?).

Final Thoughts

Two years ago, someone on reddit asked to develop an SEO workflow using super advanced SEO methodologies:

Best answer: None of the above.

When our Marketing Director Tim Soulo I tweeted about this thread on Redditreceived similar responses:

Even though I don’t know him, he is a man close to my heart:

You don’t have to worry about entity SEO. If you’re passionate about a topic and create high-quality content that meets what people are looking for, you’re probably already doing “entity SEO.”

Just follow this meme: Make things that people like.