Everything You Didn’t Know About
Entity SEO
sara.taher.com
Entity SEO: What, Why, How
Hello!
By the end of this webinar, you’ll:
Understand what is entity SEO and why it’s
important
How to incorporate Entity SEO concepts into
your SEO workflows
sara-taher.com
learn the right mindset to approach content
today and in the future!
What is an Entity
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“An entity is a thing or concept that is singular,
unique, well-defined and distinguishable.
● person,
● place,
● item,
● idea,
● abstract concept,
● concrete element
Generally, entities include things or concepts
represented linguistically by nouns.” ~ Google
An Entity Not an Entity
Beauty Beautiful
Running Shoes Best running
shoes
Book Books
Why We Need to Think of Entities?
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Once upon a time…
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Around 10 years
ago, the SERPs
were filled with
low quality results!
So…
Panda was designed to reduce
the rankings for low-quality sites
(“sites which are low-value add
for users, copy content from
other websites or sites that are
just not very useful”) and reward
better rankings to high-quality
sites (“sites with original content
and information such as
research, in-depth reports,
thoughtful analysis, etc…”)
Panda
2011
A.k.a web spam algorithm
update, was created by Google to
help reduce the number of sites
appearing in SERPs that were
using black hat SEO techniques
to manipulate results with link
schemes. probably the biggest
algo. update ever. very big
impact… there were tons of
penguin updates till 2016
Penguin
2012
Google announces knowledge
graph and moving towards
“things not strings”.
The Knowledge Graph
2012
Hummingbird signaled Google’s
commitment to an increasingly
sophisticated understanding of
the intent of searchers’ queries
with the goal of matching them
to more relevant results and
arguably marked the beginning of
the semantic search era.
Hummingbird
2013
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From an Information Engine
to a Knowledge Engine
Language can be ambiguous. Are we looking for monument,
or Taj Mahal the musician?
Find the right things
if you search for “when was diana born”, Google will
understand that you are talking about “princess diana” and is
able to provide the answer to your question directly in SERPs.
Get the best summary
Finally, the part that’s the most fun of all—the Knowledge
Graph can help you make some unexpected discoveries.
Go deeper and broader
01
02
03
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Things, Not Strings
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A knowledge graph, also known
as a semantic network,
represents a network of
real-world entities—i.e. objects,
events, situations, or
concepts—and illustrates the
relationship between them. This
information is usually stored in a
graph database and visualized as
a graph structure, prompting the
term knowledge “graph.” ~IBM
Things not Strings
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“Some of the actors for the
Avengers movie include, Robert
Downey Jr. who played Iron
Man in the movie along Mark
Ruffalo who played the popular
Hulk.
Robert Downey Jr. is also
known for portraying Charlie
Chaplin, the famous comic, in a
previous movie.”
Text/information Graph
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About this result
Google used to show other
terms/entities that would
naturally be present along side
the main target keyword. Can you
write a recipe without talking
about “ingredients”?
Keyword Research Vs. Entities
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Topic: Road Trip to Florida
Keywords
● Road trip to florida,
● florida road trip,
● road trip fl
Entities
● Map
● Travel
● Itinerary
● Planner
Topic: 7 day Dubai Itinerary
Keywords
● dubai itinerary
● dubai trip itinerary
● 7 day dubai itinerary
● dubai itinerary 7 days
Entities
● tour
● airbnb
● Tourist attraction
● United Arab Emirates
● Burj Khalifa
● Dubai Mall
Unlike keywords, entities don’t have
to include the same words as the
main topic”
What does using entities mean for SEOs?
01 02
It doesn’t matter whether you
use “color” or “colour”, etc…
Spelling
Density; The repetition of
exact match keywords “buy
shoes online” all over the
content is less important.
Keyword difficulty and
search volume also matter
less.
Keyword Metrics
Google understands that a
puppy is a dog, so using
either or both in content is
totally fine. Same as with
things like “robert downey
jr” & “rdj”
Variations
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04
03
Topical Authority
Topical Authority can be
achieved by focusing on
entities rather than
keywords, as One cannot
exist without the other.
How to Do Entity Research?
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1. Image Search
A mix of
entities
and related
search
terms
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2. Pull Google Trends related queries and related topics
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3. Collect data from autocomplete and search suggestions
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4. Wikipedia
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5. Use Google Knowledge Graph to pull relevant entities
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6. Google Knowledge Graph Search API
https://cloud.google.com/natural-language#natural-language-api-demo
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7. Use non-web resources
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How to Incorporate Entities in Your
SEO Workflow?
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Topical Maps
A topical map is a
map of subtopics
that are related to
the main topic.
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Entity SEO
Zion national
park
Hiking
Cable
Mountain
weather
hotels
map
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Entity SEO
Zion national
park
Hiking
Cable
Mountain
weather
hotels
map
Topic: Zion National Park
Keywords:
● Main keyword(s): Zion national park
Long tail keywords (attributes):
● zion national park weather
● zion national park hotels
● zion national park lodge
● zion national park map
● zion national park airport
● zion national park trails
Entities:
● hiking,
● cable mountain,
● the watchman mountain,
● horse ranch mountain,
● great white throne mountain,
● Camping,
● Lodging
Note:
Bottom of funnel pages & pillar
pages usually are matched
with 1 main entity. Also
glossary, what is, who is pages.
sara-taher.com
Schema & Entities
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "WebPage",
"@id": "ENTER PAGE URL HERE",
"mainEntity": {
"@type": "Park",
"name": "Zion national park",
"openingHours": "Mo,Tu,We,Th,Fr,Sa,Su
11:00-20:00",
"telephone": "+155501003344",
"sameAs":
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_park"
}
}
</script>
● Use mainEntity if the
webPage is about a specific
entity.
● You may also want to add
schema referring to other
entities on the page as
follows if there’s no
schema.org type for your
entity:
{“@type”: “Thing”, “name”:
“Tour”, “sameAs”:
“https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Walking_tour”},
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Internal Linking
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Nothing new and no surprises, internal linking is important more
than ever!
Case Study
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Using Entities to Disambiguate the Location of a Local Business
● Used google maps to find and note
local any key entities, such as state
parks, lakes, or other features in the
area.
● Created and edited content by
referencing landmarks as well as
adding driving directions from to the
client location from famous landmarks.
Example:
"XYZ Contractor is located in Old Town Fort
Collins, just east of Horsetooth and minutes from
Colorado State University..."
● The website received 32% lift by simply adding
geographically relevant terms to the page and
linking to driving directions.
Source: Brian Kato @
https://www.link-assistant.com/news/entity-case-study.html
How related the entity is to the search
term.
Relatedness
Ranking Entities on Search
Notability is an entity's relative
importance. Entities are more notable in
low-competition categories. They’re also
more valuable when they have more links,
reviews, mentions, and relevance.
Searching for Apple, the company or the
fruit?
Notability
Contribution refers to an entity’s
contribution to a topic and focuses only on
a particular niche. In other words, this
measures how much weight an entity has
in its industry.
Contribution
It measures relevant prizes an entity
received, such as the Nobel Prize or
Academy Award. The more prestigious the
prize, the higher the value attached to the
entity.
Prizes
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sara-taher.com
Tools
“Sara Taher is a Canadian
based SEO consultant with
over 8 years experience in the
field. She is most known for
her SEO tips and riddles that
she shares on her Linkedin
account.”
Link: https://www.textrazor.com/demo
Resources
● https://www.seobythesea.com/
● https://www.holisticseo.digital/
https://www.link-assistant.com/news/entity-case-study.html
● https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160371385
● https://starling.social/blog/post/143/entity-first-seo-strategy
● https://support.google.com/programmable-search/answer/9
350760
● https://inlinks.net/p/insight/why-is-no-one-talking-about-entit
y-seo/
● https://minuttia.com/entities/
● https://kalicube.com/learning-spaces/faq/brand-serps/entity
-home-in-seo-explainer/
● https://wordlift.io/blog/en/seo-case-studies/
● https://www.infront.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-entity-se
o-an-introduction-to-entity-based-seo/
● https://beanstalkim.com/learn/articles/patent-ranking-searc
h-results-based-on-entity-metrics/
● https://searchengineland.com/see-entities-web-page-tools-h
elp-194710
● https://wordlift.io/blog/en/content-hub-seo/
● https://searchengineland.com/semantic-search-entity-based-
search-388221
sara-taher.com
Thank You!
sara-taher.com

Everything You Didn't Know About Entity SEO

  • 1.
    Everything You Didn’tKnow About Entity SEO sara.taher.com
  • 2.
    Entity SEO: What,Why, How Hello! By the end of this webinar, you’ll: Understand what is entity SEO and why it’s important How to incorporate Entity SEO concepts into your SEO workflows sara-taher.com learn the right mindset to approach content today and in the future!
  • 3.
    What is anEntity sara-taher.com “An entity is a thing or concept that is singular, unique, well-defined and distinguishable. ● person, ● place, ● item, ● idea, ● abstract concept, ● concrete element Generally, entities include things or concepts represented linguistically by nouns.” ~ Google An Entity Not an Entity Beauty Beautiful Running Shoes Best running shoes Book Books
  • 4.
    Why We Needto Think of Entities? sara-taher.com
  • 5.
    Once upon atime… sara-taher.com Around 10 years ago, the SERPs were filled with low quality results!
  • 6.
    So… Panda was designedto reduce the rankings for low-quality sites (“sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful”) and reward better rankings to high-quality sites (“sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis, etc…”) Panda 2011 A.k.a web spam algorithm update, was created by Google to help reduce the number of sites appearing in SERPs that were using black hat SEO techniques to manipulate results with link schemes. probably the biggest algo. update ever. very big impact… there were tons of penguin updates till 2016 Penguin 2012 Google announces knowledge graph and moving towards “things not strings”. The Knowledge Graph 2012 Hummingbird signaled Google’s commitment to an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the intent of searchers’ queries with the goal of matching them to more relevant results and arguably marked the beginning of the semantic search era. Hummingbird 2013 sara-taher.com
  • 7.
    From an InformationEngine to a Knowledge Engine Language can be ambiguous. Are we looking for monument, or Taj Mahal the musician? Find the right things if you search for “when was diana born”, Google will understand that you are talking about “princess diana” and is able to provide the answer to your question directly in SERPs. Get the best summary Finally, the part that’s the most fun of all—the Knowledge Graph can help you make some unexpected discoveries. Go deeper and broader 01 02 03 sara-taher.com
  • 8.
    Things, Not Strings sara-taher.com Aknowledge graph, also known as a semantic network, represents a network of real-world entities—i.e. objects, events, situations, or concepts—and illustrates the relationship between them. This information is usually stored in a graph database and visualized as a graph structure, prompting the term knowledge “graph.” ~IBM
  • 9.
    Things not Strings sara-taher.com “Someof the actors for the Avengers movie include, Robert Downey Jr. who played Iron Man in the movie along Mark Ruffalo who played the popular Hulk. Robert Downey Jr. is also known for portraying Charlie Chaplin, the famous comic, in a previous movie.” Text/information Graph
  • 10.
    sara-taher.com About this result Googleused to show other terms/entities that would naturally be present along side the main target keyword. Can you write a recipe without talking about “ingredients”?
  • 11.
    Keyword Research Vs.Entities sara-taher.com Topic: Road Trip to Florida Keywords ● Road trip to florida, ● florida road trip, ● road trip fl Entities ● Map ● Travel ● Itinerary ● Planner Topic: 7 day Dubai Itinerary Keywords ● dubai itinerary ● dubai trip itinerary ● 7 day dubai itinerary ● dubai itinerary 7 days Entities ● tour ● airbnb ● Tourist attraction ● United Arab Emirates ● Burj Khalifa ● Dubai Mall Unlike keywords, entities don’t have to include the same words as the main topic”
  • 12.
    What does usingentities mean for SEOs? 01 02 It doesn’t matter whether you use “color” or “colour”, etc… Spelling Density; The repetition of exact match keywords “buy shoes online” all over the content is less important. Keyword difficulty and search volume also matter less. Keyword Metrics Google understands that a puppy is a dog, so using either or both in content is totally fine. Same as with things like “robert downey jr” & “rdj” Variations sara-taher.com 04 03 Topical Authority Topical Authority can be achieved by focusing on entities rather than keywords, as One cannot exist without the other.
  • 13.
    How to DoEntity Research? sara-taher.com
  • 14.
    1. Image Search Amix of entities and related search terms sara-taher.com
  • 15.
    2. Pull GoogleTrends related queries and related topics sara-taher.com
  • 16.
    3. Collect datafrom autocomplete and search suggestions sara-taher.com
  • 17.
  • 18.
    5. Use GoogleKnowledge Graph to pull relevant entities sara-taher.com
  • 19.
    6. Google KnowledgeGraph Search API https://cloud.google.com/natural-language#natural-language-api-demo sara-taher.com
  • 20.
    7. Use non-webresources sara-taher.com
  • 21.
    How to IncorporateEntities in Your SEO Workflow? sara-taher.com
  • 22.
    Topical Maps A topicalmap is a map of subtopics that are related to the main topic. sara-taher.com
  • 23.
  • 24.
    Entity SEO Zion national park Hiking Cable Mountain weather hotels map Topic:Zion National Park Keywords: ● Main keyword(s): Zion national park Long tail keywords (attributes): ● zion national park weather ● zion national park hotels ● zion national park lodge ● zion national park map ● zion national park airport ● zion national park trails Entities: ● hiking, ● cable mountain, ● the watchman mountain, ● horse ranch mountain, ● great white throne mountain, ● Camping, ● Lodging Note: Bottom of funnel pages & pillar pages usually are matched with 1 main entity. Also glossary, what is, who is pages. sara-taher.com
  • 25.
    Schema & Entities <scripttype="application/ld+json"> { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "ENTER PAGE URL HERE", "mainEntity": { "@type": "Park", "name": "Zion national park", "openingHours": "Mo,Tu,We,Th,Fr,Sa,Su 11:00-20:00", "telephone": "+155501003344", "sameAs": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_park" } } </script> ● Use mainEntity if the webPage is about a specific entity. ● You may also want to add schema referring to other entities on the page as follows if there’s no schema.org type for your entity: {“@type”: “Thing”, “name”: “Tour”, “sameAs”: “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Walking_tour”}, sara-taher.com
  • 26.
    Internal Linking sara-taher.com Nothing newand no surprises, internal linking is important more than ever!
  • 27.
  • 28.
    sara-taher.com Using Entities toDisambiguate the Location of a Local Business ● Used google maps to find and note local any key entities, such as state parks, lakes, or other features in the area. ● Created and edited content by referencing landmarks as well as adding driving directions from to the client location from famous landmarks. Example: "XYZ Contractor is located in Old Town Fort Collins, just east of Horsetooth and minutes from Colorado State University..." ● The website received 32% lift by simply adding geographically relevant terms to the page and linking to driving directions. Source: Brian Kato @ https://www.link-assistant.com/news/entity-case-study.html
  • 29.
    How related theentity is to the search term. Relatedness Ranking Entities on Search Notability is an entity's relative importance. Entities are more notable in low-competition categories. They’re also more valuable when they have more links, reviews, mentions, and relevance. Searching for Apple, the company or the fruit? Notability Contribution refers to an entity’s contribution to a topic and focuses only on a particular niche. In other words, this measures how much weight an entity has in its industry. Contribution It measures relevant prizes an entity received, such as the Nobel Prize or Academy Award. The more prestigious the prize, the higher the value attached to the entity. Prizes sara-taher.com
  • 30.
    sara-taher.com Tools “Sara Taher isa Canadian based SEO consultant with over 8 years experience in the field. She is most known for her SEO tips and riddles that she shares on her Linkedin account.” Link: https://www.textrazor.com/demo
  • 31.
    Resources ● https://www.seobythesea.com/ ● https://www.holisticseo.digital/ https://www.link-assistant.com/news/entity-case-study.html ●https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160371385 ● https://starling.social/blog/post/143/entity-first-seo-strategy ● https://support.google.com/programmable-search/answer/9 350760 ● https://inlinks.net/p/insight/why-is-no-one-talking-about-entit y-seo/ ● https://minuttia.com/entities/ ● https://kalicube.com/learning-spaces/faq/brand-serps/entity -home-in-seo-explainer/ ● https://wordlift.io/blog/en/seo-case-studies/ ● https://www.infront.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-entity-se o-an-introduction-to-entity-based-seo/ ● https://beanstalkim.com/learn/articles/patent-ranking-searc h-results-based-on-entity-metrics/ ● https://searchengineland.com/see-entities-web-page-tools-h elp-194710 ● https://wordlift.io/blog/en/content-hub-seo/ ● https://searchengineland.com/semantic-search-entity-based- search-388221 sara-taher.com
  • 32.