Google uses entities and the Google Knowledge Graph to represent its understanding of important things or concepts as well as the relationships between them. By a) understanding how entities relate to the primary topic of a webpage and b) appropriately covering them in your content, you can maximize the relevance of your content to the search query. This approach can positively impact your search rankings.
The full article is below the graph.
| Attribute | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| Node size | Entity's semantic importance |
| Direct connection | Semantically closest entities |
| Color coding | Semantically grouped entities |
| Intent | UI Input Needed |
|---|---|
| Select entity/get entity information | Click once on entity node |
| Toggle nearest neighbor focus | Click again on entity node |
| Zoom in/out | Move mouse pointer to fix zoom focus area, then use mouse scroll |
| Move entire graph | Hold down mouse button, then move mouse as needed |
| Move an entity temporarily | Select node, hold down mouse button, then move mouse as needed |
"An entity is a thing or concept that is singular, unique, well-defined and distinguishable. For example, an entity may be a person, place, item, idea, abstract concept, concrete element, other suitable thing, or any combination thereof".
This definition of an entity comes directly from a Google patent and is therefore the only one that matters in the context of search engine optimization. If you see another definition, ignore it :)
Google's Natural Language Processing API can identify 12 different types of entities. The table below shows these different types of entities.
| Google NLP Entity Type | Example |
|---|---|
| Person | Lionel Messi |
| Location | Suez Canal |
| Organization | United Nations |
| Event | Olympics |
| Work of art | Mona Lisa |
| Consumer good | coffee grinder |
| Phone number | 555-1234 |
| Address | 10 Downing Street, London SW1A 2AA, UK |
| Date | July 4th, 1776 |
| Number | 3.14159 |
| Price | $199.99 |
| Other* | vegetable garden |
* - The 'Other' category indicates that Google NLP believes that this term is an entity but cannot tell which type of entity it is
Now that you know what an entity is in the SEO context, let's understand how Google uses entities and how we can use them to take our content SEO to the next level.
Google's Knowledge Graph is a continually updated database that represents entities (nodes) and the relationships (edges) between these entities. This graph is Google's way of representing its collective knowledge about entities in a structured format.
When you enter a search query that is related to an entity, Google leverages the Knowledge Graph in multiple different ways. Here are a few:
Our focus here is on content SEO, so let's dive into that last point, and look at how to use our understanding of entities and Google's knowledge graph to optimize our content.
Related entities are entities that are semantically related to the search query. By including related entities in your content and discussing them in the context of the topic you are covering, you accomplish the following goals:
With our 'Entity Analysis' feature, you can easily analyze all the entities that are relevant to your content. All entities are extracted from top-ranking content by using Google's NLP for entity analysis. We show you entities both in a table and in an interactive Entity Graph. For each Google recognized entity, you can:
Using the Entity Analysis feature is straightforward and intuitive, so we have three simple recommendations for you:
| Use the entity graph to grasp the relative importance of the entities and their relationships. |
| Cover entities in your content at a higher priority than you would other ideas and concepts. |
| Remember that your audience is most interested in knowing how the entities tie in with the topic you are writing about, not how well you can clone Wikipedia. |
That's all, it really is that simple!