What exactly is entity SEO?
Dive into the world of “Entity SEO” with our expert guide, designed for U.K marketing and SEO professionals.
An introduction to Entity SEO
With SEO ever-evolving, staying ahead of the curve is not just a goal; it’s a absolute necessity if your business wants to stay on page one of Google or Bing. When it comes to search engine optimisation, your business needs to understand “entity SEO”.
For businesses and SEO practitioners, understanding the nuances of Entity SEO is pivotal in this journey. A mention of brand on another businesses website can help to move your website up Google’s ranks.
A really good seo consultant will understand what entity building means. Gone are the days when keyword stuffing and backlinking were the cornerstones of SEO strategies. And if your marketing agency are still using these approaches, then we would highly recommend ditching them and replacing them with a white hat agency instead. Today, we are witnessing a paradigm shift towards a more sophisticated approach known as Entity SEO.
So what is entity building?
Entity SEO or entity building is not merely about optimising a company website for keywords; it’s about understanding and leveraging the interconnected web of things, concepts, and ideas. You might have heard the concept “things and not strings”, this is nothing new, seo consultants have been talking about this for a great deal of time.
When people talk about “things and not strings”, what they’re actually mean is that search engine optimisation consultants should concentrate on just building backlinks, we should now concentrate on entity building.
This means that the mere mention of your brand, on a good quality website, such as The Independent could be enough to help improve your businesses search engine optimisation.
Google, with its advanced algorithms and AI-driven mechanisms like the Knowledge Graph, is now adept at discerning the context and relationships between entities. One business mentions another this is picked up by the algorithms. This includes places, people, events.
An entity can be made stronger by:
- Gaining good business reviews
- Backlinks
- Mention of the business
- Recruiting good staff with links to their Linkedin pages
- Writing good quality content marketing
- Becoming a thought leader
- Having a lot of customers come to the location of your business
As we delve into this comprehensive guide, our focus will be on unfolding the layers of entity SEO and illustrating how it can be a game-changer for your business. Some SEO consultants don’t understand entity SEO, yet, if they don’t, then you might want to replace them with a better search engine optimisation consultant. We aim to equip you with insights that go beyond traditional SEO techniques, offering you a vantage point that aligns with the future of search technology and AI (artificial intelligence) integration.
So what exactly is entity SEO?
Embracing entity SEO
In the ever-evolving landscape of search engine optimization (SEO), the emergence of entity SEO marks a significant paradigm shift. This advanced approach transcends traditional keyword-centric methodologies, adapting to the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) within the SEO sphere.
What we mean by this is artificial intelligence is becoming cleverer and cleverer. The artificial intelligence used by Google’s algorithms now is able to better decipher which businesses are worthy ranking on the first page.
Entity SEO leverages the complex web of semantic and contextual relationships, providing a robust, future-proof strategy for digital marketers.
How can you improve your company’s entity SEO?
Add schema to your website
For instance, Schema.org, a collaborative effort by major search engines, such as Google, which offers a standardised vocabulary that aids in comprehending content relationships on web pages.
This understanding is pivotal in AI-driven search results, we highly recommend adding schema to your website this is very simple to do, and your web developer should be able to do it in a matter of minutes. Where schema markups define specific entities, enhancing the chances of your brand being featured in AI-generated responses or rich search results.
Consider this scenario:
A user asks Google Bard or ChatGPT, “What are the best brands sell the best ski boots?” If your entity SEO is finely tuned, your brand could be the answer, leveraging your association with specific long-tail search terms. This not only boosts your brand’s authority but also expands your reach beyond traditional keyword targeting.
To optimise for entity SEO, integrate modern SEO elements into your strategy.
This includes understanding the role of different entities through the lens of search engines and how they can benefit your business.
Keyword clustering and semantics
Modern keyword research techniques involve clustering and identifying semantically related terms.
For example, an article on “best practices of how to insulate your home” this could include related terms like “panel insulation” or “fibreglass.” Incorporating these terms and interlinking related content marketing on your website strengthens your entity SEO.
What we would recommend this not writing a piece of content marketing is only concentrates on optimising for just one keyword. Instead just how this article has been written, instead concentrate on writing longer articles, more in depth, but short your expertise.
By doing this you are helping to improve your business’s semantics, for example if you were to write an article about “The best places to eat within Cardiff”. This may start to improve your website’s seo, if you want to optimise it for terms related to fine dining and also the city of Cardiff.
So therefore don’t concentrate on for example getting your website to rank for the say the “best restaurant”. Instead come up with a piece of content marketing which is more helpful to readers, more engaging to read. You might want to write the 10 best restaurants within your city.
Now you might be thinking well I am promoting the competition if I do this, but are you really?
Because what you could be doing is improving your businesses search engine optimisation, by writing a really helpful article that potentially thousands of people could read.
By doing this might improve your businesses seo, you might have a lot people returning to read your blog posts, plus you also your businesses standing out as an entity, as a restaurant business within a capital city.
Internal and external linking
Internal linking across your site using semantically related entities bolsters your organic SEO efforts.
Similarly, external linking, getting links from say the BBC builds topical authority and helps improve your SEO.
Google and E-EAT
The E-EAT framework (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is crucial in entity SEO.
Creating expert-led, accurate content marketing with clear authorship demonstrates expertise and trustworthiness, key factors in Google’s ranking algorithm.
Optimising images
Using descriptive alt text for images that are related to your business’s entities (like products or services) enhances your organic SEO by providing clear, visual representations of the entities you’re targeting.
So instead of using alt text that is just a random numbers or random text, instead simply label the alt text what the picture shows. It shows a picture of our Aston Martin Vanquish, then label it as such. This will help the algorithms to understand what is in the picture, is not just the car is actually a high value prestige vehicle.
Local SEO and capitalising on physical location
For businesses with physical locations, optimising for local entities through a Google Business Profile is beneficial.