How to Find Entities for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Introduction
As with other Search Engine Optimization factors, entities play an important role because they assist search engines in better understanding the content on a specific website. Optimizing the entities on a page positively affects rankings, traffic, and click-through rates. The following is a guide on how to identify entities for optimization and implement the process of SEO.
What are Entities?
The following are the types of entities: Real-world entities are objects, places, organizations, people, or events.
Some examples of entities include:
– Brand names (Coca-Cola)
– Locations (New York City)
– Organizations (United Nations)
– People (Barack Obama)
– Events (Olympic Games)
– Products (iPhone X)
There are also knowledge graph panels for entities in SERP (search engine results page). By optimizing entities, search engines can link your content to actual concepts, increasing click-through rates and rankings.
How to Identify and Develop Entities
Follow these key steps:
Identify Primary Entities
The first step is determining the core entities related to the client’s content and the target audience. These are the main themes and ideas that define the primary channel focus of each content piece.
As an example, if you wrote a blog post on the best pizza places in Chicago, the primary entities would be:
– Chicago
– Pizza
– Some of the pizzerias in Chicago
The purpose is to determine 3 to 5 key entities that reflect the topic of each content piece.
Conduct Entity Research
Once you determine the primary entities, conduct more research on every one of the entities mentioned.
The key things to research for each entity include:
– Alternative names: For instance, Chicago is also called the Windy City.
– Related entities: Chicago style, popular fast food joints offering deep dish style pizza
– Facts, data, history: When was Chicago founded? What is the population of Chicago? Etc.
This research enables you to add on to the entities by providing the associated names, ideas, and facts.
Optimize Entity Appearance
When developing content, create it in a manner that would make it most convenient for your target entities.
Best practices include:
– Incorporate the primary entities in titles, headers, sub-headers, and in the first two sentences of the article
– Utilize the other names of the entities where appropriate
– Include related entities into other body text paragraphs.
– Use facts and figures that relate to the entities
This makes it easier for the search engines to understand which particular entities are interested in your content.
Check Google Knowledge Graph
Go to Google, type the primary entities, and see whether a knowledge graph panel is displayed on the right side. If not, it implies that there is further room for optimization by extending those entities.
Add Structured Data Markup
Structured data markup informs search engines about the related entities, the relationships between them, and the data on a page.
There are various schema types to highlight entities:
– Organization
– Person
– Place
– Product
– Event
Applying proper schema markup results in better knowledge graph panels. This increases click-through rates from the search results.
Monitor Performance
Track impressions, clicks, and ranking for entity-focused keywords associated with the content in Google Search Console and Google Analytics. This provides information on entity optimization potential.
Refresh Older Content
Revisit previous content and edit to consider entities not considered in the first place. The exact process is repeated – define the entities, research, improve the content, and add markup.
Updating old articles with new entities informs the search engine that the web page is still active and being updated better than before.
Key Takeaways
Analyzing entities means searching for the main topics and ideas related to the content you have to publish or the audience you are targeting. So, by improving the content and markup in relation to such entities, you can significantly improve the SEO through an increased ranking, click-through rate, and traffic.
It is a continuous process as you are coming up with new articles mainly about core entities and revisiting old articles with newer entity optimization. However, the benefits reaped in the long-term make entities one of the most worthwhile gains in SEO.
Bill Yeager, Co-Owner of High Point SEO & Marketing in CT
