Entity SEO
Optimising for identified things and their relationships, rather than for keyword strings.
Entity SEO is optimising around the things a page is about — a company, a person, a product — rather than around keyword strings. Search engines resolve text to entities in a knowledge graph, so consistent naming, structured data with sameAs links, and presence in reference sources like Wikidata help them connect your pages to the right thing.
Definition
Entity SEO optimises for things rather than strings. Instead of asking which keyword a page targets, it asks which entity the page is about, which entities it relates to, and whether a search engine can tell those apart from similarly-named ones.
The work is concrete: declare entities in schema, disambiguate them with identifiers, and cover a topic densely enough that the relationships between its entities are visible rather than implied.
Why It Matters
Search stopped being string matching some time ago. A page that comprehensively covers an entity and its neighbours can rank for phrasings it never contains — and conversely, a page stuffed with a keyword but disconnected from the entity it names competes badly.
For AI answers the effect is sharper still: retrieval systems resolve a question to entities first, then look for sources that are clearly about those entities.
Example
"Apple" is three entities: the company, the fruit, and the record label. A page about the company earns that reading by carrying Organization schema, a sameAs link to its Wikidata item, and content that sits alongside related entities — iPhone, Cupertino, Tim Cook — rather than alongside orchards.
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