Deutsch
On-page keywords & semantics

Entity

In SEO, an entity is a uniquely identifiable thing, such as a person, organization, place, product or concept, that search engines can recognize regardless of how it is spelled. This entry covers the SEO meaning, not the term as used in databases or philosophy.

What does it mean for SEO?

Google introduced its Knowledge Graph on May 16, 2012 with the phrase “things, not strings”. At launch, the post said it contained more than 500 million objects and more than 3.5 billion facts about and relationships between them. The idea is that a search engine works with the thing behind a word. “Jaguar” can mean an animal or a car maker, and entities make such cases distinguishable (assessment).

For a website, entity work mostly means making clear which entity a page is about. Schema.org offers the sameAs property for this. It takes the URL of a reference page that unambiguously indicates the item’s identity, for example its Wikipedia page, Wikidata entry or official website.

Entities and relationships in a knowledge graphFictional example with four entities: the organization Example Inc., the person Jane Doe, the place Sampletown and the product Example App. Edges connect them with schema.org properties: founder leads from the organization to the person, location to the place, manufacturer from the product to the organization. Through sameAs the organization points to its Wikidata entry and its Wikipedia article. On the right is a knowledge panel that Google generates automatically from data like this.foundermanufacturerlocationsameAsWikidata entryWikipedia articlePersonJane DoeProductExample AppOrganizationExample Inc.PlaceSampletowngenerated automaticallyKnowledge panelExample Inc.CompanyHeadquarters: SampletownFounder: Jane DoeProduct: Example AppEach edge is a statement of subject, predicate and object (an RDF triple),e.g. Example Inc. · location · Sampletown. All names are fictional.
A knowledge graph describes entities such as people, places, organizations and things and connects them through named relationships. sameAs points to pages that unambiguously identify an entity. Google generates knowledge panels automatically. Fictional example; how Google stores entities internally is not public. Sources: Google for Developers: Knowledge Graph Search API; schema.org: sameAs; Google Help: About knowledge panels; W3C: RDF 1.1 Concepts and Abstract Syntax (triples).

Example

JSON
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "name": "Example Inc.",
  "url": "https://www.example.com",
  "sameAs": ["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q000000"]
}

The Wikidata ID Q000000 and the domain are placeholders.

FAQ

What is entity SEO? Aligning content with entities and their relationships rather than with single keywords. How strongly Google weighs such signals has not been stated by Google (assessment).

Sources

  1. Introducing the Knowledge Graph: things, not strings – Google, May 16, 2012blog.google
  2. sameAs – Schema.orgschema.org
  3. Entity SEO – Inlinks (supplementary)inlinks.com

Last updated: