1. SEO in the age of the semantic web
AN INTRODUCTION TO ENTITIES
David Amerland

2. AS SEO PROFESSIONALS WE THOUGHT WE KNEW
HOW THE WEB WORKS …
We look beneath the fabric of the web and see the
code that runs it … the connections that form it.

3. SEO IN THE PAST HAS ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT
PROBABILITIES
• Search returned statistically probable answers to keyword-laden search queries.
• To succeed in search, we needed to ‘load’ the dice. And we had a variety of techniques in our
arsenal on how to do that exactly:
• Keywords, links, anchor text, on-page techniques, inbound links …
• If something did not work we needed to increase quantity, volume, intensity. It was always a
case of having to dial things up.

4. BUT IN A SEMANTIC WEB STATISTICS FADE AWAY
The traditional “ten links in search”
Are changing, becoming:
Personalized
Populated by people with
familiar faces
More accurate

5. SEARCH ITSELF IS CHANGING:
• Mobile
• Voice
• Local
• Personal
• Conversational
• Predictive (Google Now)
• Functional (Google Maps)
• Infontational (YouTube)
Information is growing at an exponential rate and search is changing with it
Volume ● Velocity ● Variety ●Veracity all Big Data components play a key role

6. AND ENTITIES ARE THE NEW DRIVER:
Entities are generated relational mapping that uncovers the association between different data points.
This is RADICAL. Entities become trusted points around which other data revolves.

7. ENTITIES ARE PRODUCED IN A VARIETY OF WAYS:
• Imported from trusted sources (Wikipedia, Freebase, Metaweb)
• Extracted from web pages
• Data mining in the social web
• Sentiment mining

8. LET’S GET TECHNICAL:

9. ENTITIES ARE A CHALLENGE TO SEO BECAUSE:
• They provide answers at the search box rather than suggestions

10. OPTIMIZATION APPEARS TO BE REDUCED TO
ANSWERING A SEARCH QUERY
• But let’s look at it again:

11. THE ‘ENTITY’ THAT IS THE ANSWER TO THE
SEARCH QUERY “WHO IS THE PRESIDENT OF
THE UNITED STATES” PRODUCED:
• An answer
• A biography with associated links
• Recent posts with links
• Associated entities, complete with links
A ‘one’ answer result generated a much wider, related field of data than it might have been
possible before.

12. ENTITIES: THE CHALLENGE & THE OPPORTUNITY
• For SEOs the challengers are as steep as the question is simple:
• Changing search interface (screenless computers and keyless devices)
• Less reliance on keywords
• Deprecation of existing, on-page SEO techniques
• Loss of real estate space in SERPs
• Reduced reliance on statistical association in results
• How do you take advantage of Entities to make up for it all?

13. REVERSE ENGINEER ENTITY AS A DRIVER:
• Authority
• Trust
• Reputation
• Influence
• If that’s the end result how can it be reduced further into manageable steps?
• What actions can be taken at the content-creation interface that will produce these
outcomes, and how can this be ensured?

14. THINK:
• Volume
• Velocity
• Variety
• Veracity
ADD:
• Connection
• Social discovery
• Social Buzz
Authorship & ‘Author Rank’