Traditional SEO has long been focused on keywords – those magical phrases that (hopefully) bring customers to your website. Modern SEO, however, is all about entities. This shift represents a fundamental change in how search engines understand and organize information. Instead of just matching strings of text, search engines are now working to grasp the meaning and relationships behind the words.
With 50% of B2B marketers planning to increase their SEO budgets in 2024,1 now's the perfect time to understand how entity SEO should work into your marketing strategy. By understanding and leveraging entities, you can create more relevant, authoritative content that resonates both with search engines and your target audience.
In this blog, we'll unpack the concept of entities in search engine optimization, explore their importance for B2B marketers, and provide actionable strategies to optimize your content for entity-based SEO.
What Is an Entity?
In the world of SEO, an entity is any uniquely identifiable concept, object, or thing. It could be a person, place, product, idea, or even an abstract concept. Think of entities as the building blocks of knowledge a search engine uses to understand and categorize information.
For B2B tech companies, entities might include:
- Your company name
- Products or services you offer
- Key people in your organization
- Industry-specific concepts or technologies
- Relevant locations or markets
The key thing to understand is that entities aren't just keywords. They're distinct "things" that exist in the real world and have specific attributes and relationships to other entities.
Say you're marketing a managed security service. In traditional keyword-focused SEO, you might target phrases like "best managed security provider" or "enterprise cyber security solutions." With entity SEO, you're thinking bigger:
- Your managed security service is an entity
- "Cyber security" is an entity
- "Threat detection" is an entity
- "Incident response" is an entity
- Your target industries (e.g., "financial services" or "healthcare") are entities
By understanding and optimizing for these entities and their relationships, you can create content that more closely aligns with how search engines interpret information – and, ultimately, how your potential customers think about and search for solutions.
Common Entities in SEO
How does a search engine actually present entities? Let's explore some common ways entities show up in your search results:
Intent Clusters
Intent clusters are groups of related topics or questions that search engines present to users, often at the top of search results. For B2B tech companies, understanding these clusters can help you develop content that addresses all aspects of important topics in your industry.
For example, a search for "managed security services" might show clusters related to "threat detection," "compliance management," and "incident response." By addressing these related topics in your content, you create a comprehensive resource that aligns with how search engines (and users) think about your services.
Wikipedia Entries
Wikipedia is more than an online encyclopedia – it's a pivotal source of structured entity information for search engines. Each Wikipedia page represents an entity, complete with attributes, relationships, and citations.
While you can't directly edit Wikipedia for promotional purposes, studying how your industry's concepts are structured there can inform your content strategy. Pay attention to how Wikipedia organizes information about technologies, companies, and concepts in your field. This can guide you in creating similarly well-structured, information-rich content on your own site.
Google Business Profile
For local B2B technology providers, your Google Business Profile is a prime example of an entity in action. It's a distinct "thing" with attributes like name, address, phone number, and services offered. Optimizing this profile helps Google understand and present information about your business entity. Your profile should include accurate NAP (Name, Address, Phone) information, as well as details about your services, photos of your office or team, and regular updates about your business.
Image Optimization
Visual content is often underutilized in B2B marketing, but it's a powerful tool for entity optimization. When you optimize images with descriptive file names, alt text, and captions, you're helping search engines understand the entities represented in your visual content.
This is especially important for product images, infographics explaining complex tech concepts, or team photos. Proper image optimization can help your visual content appear in image search results, enhancing your overall visibility for relevant entity searches.
Knowledge Panels
These information boxes that appear on the right side of search results for certain queries are largely driven by entity relationships. They provide quick, at-a-glance information about a person, place, or thing.
You can't directly create a knowledge panel, but you can influence what appears in them for your brand or key people in your organization. This involves providing consistent, accurate information across your web properties and authoritative third-party sites. For B2B tech companies, appearing in a knowledge panel can boost your visibility and domain authority in search results.
Search Engines and Entities: A Timeline
The relationship with entities and search engines didn't happen overnight; it's been nearly 20 years in the making. Here's a brief history of how entity SEO has evolved:
2007: Metaweb Launches Freebase
The seeds of entity-based search were planted when Metaweb launched Freebase, an open, collaborative knowledge base. Unlike traditional databases, Freebase aimed to create a flexible, collaborative system for structuring knowledge about entities and their relationships. This laid the groundwork for more intelligent, context-aware search engines. For marketers, this marked the beginning of a shift towards thinking about information in terms of interconnected concepts rather than isolated keywords.
2010: Google Acquires Metaweb
Recognizing the potential of structured data, Google acquired Metaweb and its Freebase project. This move signaled the search giant's commitment to understanding the semantics of information, not just matching text strings. For marketers, this meant creating content rich in industry-specific entities would become increasingly important for SEO success.
2011: Search Engines Develop Schema.org
Google, Bing, and Yahoo joined forces to create Schema.org, a collaborative effort to establish common standards for structured data markup on web pages. This made it easier for website owners to tell search engines about their products, services, people, and other related entities. It opened up new possibilities for appearing in rich snippets and other enhanced search results, providing a competitive edge for those who adopted it early.
2012: Google Launches the Knowledge Graph
Google built on the foundation of Freebase to develop the Knowledge Graph – an extensive database of entities and their relationships. This allowed Google to understand not just individual entities, but the complex web of relationships between them. For marketers, this meant creating content that accurately reflected these entity relationships became critical. It wasn't just about mentioning keywords but about demonstrating a deep understanding of how different concepts in your industry connect.
2016: Google Syncs With Wikidata
As Freebase was deprecated, Google worked to migrate much of its entity data to Wikidata, a free and open knowledge repository that anyone can edit. This further expanded Google's understanding of how entities interconnect and reinforced the importance of community-driven knowledge.
Present: Gen AI Joins the Club
The latest development in search engine optimization involves generative AI models that understand and generate human-like text. These models rely on modern entity relationships to provide more accurate and contextual search results.
68% of marketers believe AI-enabled search engines will drive more traffic to their sites.2 For B2B companies, this will involve creating comprehensive, accurate, and well-structured content about relevant entities. As AI and machine learning models grow, we can expect them to shape how users discover and interact with information about complex technology topics.
What Is Google's Knowledge Graph?
The Knowledge Graph is a massive, interconnected web of information about entities and their relationships. It's like Google's very own encyclopedia – but one that's constantly evolving and expanding.
Unlike a standard knowledge graph (which is simply a representation of related entities), the Google Knowledge Graph is a proprietary system that powers many of the search engine's most impressive features. It's what allows Google to understand that when you search for "cloud computing," you might also be interested in related search suggestions like "SaaS" or "data centers."
The Knowledge Graph differs from other knowledge bases like Wikidata in a few ways:
- Scale: Google's Knowledge Graph is enormous, containing billions of entities and trillions of facts.
- Integration: It's deeply integrated with Google's search engine algorithms, which directly influence search results.
- Dynamic Updates: The Knowledge Graph is constantly updated based on new information from the web and user interactions.
Understanding the Knowledge Graph is important because it influences how your content is interpreted and presented in Google searches. The more aligned your content is with the Knowledge Graph's understanding of entities in your industry, the better chance you have of appearing in relevant search results. And while Google isn't the only search engine out there, it should be a big focus for your entity-based SEO efforts since over 90% of searches worldwide occur on Google.3
Google has some strict policies in place for its Knowledge Graph to ensure the information it presents is accurate and valuable, including:
- No advertising or promotional content
- No dangerous or deceptive practices
- No explicit or offensive material
- A focus on factual, verifiable information
These policies emphasize the importance of creating high-quality, factual content that genuinely informs and educates your audience. By doing so, you increase the chances of your content being recognized as authoritative and incorporated into the Google Knowledge Graph.
How Does Entity SEO Work?
We've covered the what and why of entity SEO, but how exactly does a search engine use entities to rank web pages? Here's what this process involves:
Contextual Understanding
Entity-based SEO helps search engines understand the context and relationships between different pieces of information. Instead of just matching target keywords, the search engine can now grasp the meaning behind the words.
For example, if your business offers cloud security solutions, search engines can understand the relationship between "cloud computing," "cyber security," and your specific products or services. This allows for more accurate content matching to user intent in search queries.
Disambiguation
Entities help search engines disambiguate between different meanings of the same word. For instance, "Oracle" could refer to the technology company, a prophetic priest in ancient times, or a database management system. By understanding entities and their relationships, search engines can better determine which meaning is relevant in a given context.
Authority and Relevance
Search engines use entities to assess the authority and relevance of your content. The more accurately you cover entities related to your industry, the more likely search engines are to view your content as authoritative.
For B2B telecom, IT, and cloud companies, this means creating content that thoroughly explores the entities (products, concepts, technologies) relevant to your niche.
User Intent Mapping
Entity-based SEO allows search engines to better understand search queries and map them to user intent. By understanding the relationships between entities, the search engine can provide more accurate results even for complex, multi-faceted queries – something particularly important in the B2B tech space where searches are often highly specific.
6 Tips for Your Entity-Based SEO Strategy
Now that we understand how entity-based SEO works, let's explore how B2B technology providers can optimize their content to take advantage of this approach:
1. Identify Relevant Entities
Start by conducting an entity audit of your business and industry. This process involves more than just listing keywords; it's about understanding the fundamental concepts, technologies, and players in your field.
Start by mapping out the relevant entities for your business and industry. This might include:
- Your products or services
- Established and emerging technologies or concepts in your field
- Important people or organizations in your industry
- Geographic locations relevant to your business
You can use Google's Natural Language API or third-party entity extraction tools to analyze your existing content and identify entities you're already targeting. Then, expand your list by researching industry publications, competitor websites, and client feedback to ensure you're covering all relevant entities in your niche.
2. Create Entity-Rich Content
Once you've identified your key entities, you can focus on creating comprehensive, authoritative content that thoroughly covers these topics. For B2B tech providers, this might include:
- White papers that dive deep into emerging business technologies
- Comparison guides that objectively assess different solutions in your portfolio
- Industry trend reports that showcase your expertise and thought leadership
- Client success stories that demonstrate real-world applications and outcomes
Focus on quality over quantity when developing content. Each piece should provide genuine value to your readers by addressing pain points and answering questions. Use your identified entities naturally throughout the content to ensure you're covering all relevant aspects of the topic.
3. Build Entity Relationships
Create content that explores the relationships between different entities in your industry. For example, if you're a telecom agent, you might create content that explores the relationship between "unified communications," "remote work productivity," and "network security." This could include discussing how UCaaS solutions enable remote work, the importance of secure network access for distributed teams, and how these factors impact overall business communication and efficiency.
By connecting these related entities in your content, you help search engines understand the broader context of your services and expertise in the telecom industry.
4. Use Internal Linking Strategically
Internal linking isn't just about site structure – it's a way to reinforce entity relationships. Link between related topics on your site to help search engines understand how different entities in your content connect.
This could include linking from a page about UCaaS to related pages about video conferencing and team collaboration tools or connecting case studies to your relevant product pages. This approach not only helps the search engine understand how your content is structured but also improves the user experience by guiding your visitors to related, relevant information.
5. Implement Structured Data
Use schema markup to explicitly tell search engines about the entities on your pages. Consider implementing:
- Organization schema to provide details about your company, including social profiles and contact information
- Product schema for your services or solutions, including features, pricing, and availability
- Person schema for key team members, highlighting their expertise and industry contributions
- Event schema for webinars, conferences, or other industry events you're hosting or attending
Be as detailed as possible with your structured data. The more information you provide, the better a search engine can understand and include your content in relevant search results.
5. Target Local Entities
If your company serves specific geographic areas, make sure to optimize for location-based entities. Claim and optimize your Google Business Profile and create content relevant to your target markets, such as location-specific landing pages or a blog that addresses regional telecom challenges.
By focusing on entities in your local SEO efforts, you can improve your visibility in location-specific search engine results and demonstrate your understanding of regional market dynamics.
6. Monitor and Refine
Keep an eye on how your content is performing in search results. Are you appearing in relevant featured snippets or knowledge panels? Are you ranking for the right search queries? Use these insights to continuously refine your entity SEO strategy. This might involve updating existing content, creating new content to address gaps, or adjusting your entity targeting based on shifts in the industry landscape.
Step Up Your Entity SEO Game With Mojenta
Modern SEO is all about understanding and optimizing for entities. For B2B tech companies, this presents both challenges and opportunities. While the concept of entity SEO might seem daunting at first, it's ultimately about creating more comprehensive, valuable content that truly serves your audience's needs.
If you don't have enough time in the day to focus on your business AND develop an entity SEO strategy, Mojenta can help. As a full-service marketing agency with over 14 years of experience exclusively serving B2B telecom, IT, and cloud brands, we bring deep industry knowledge and SEO expertise to the table. Our data-driven approach to search engine optimization attracts high-intent traffic and improves your online visibility so you can drive more conversions.
Ready to boost your organic traffic? Book a consult with the Mojenta team today to learn more about how we can help you build a better SEO strategy.
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