If you’ve been doing SEO for any length of time you’ll know the landscape’s gone through a total overhaul. Keywords still have a place, but they’re no longer the full story. Search engines have got way smarter. They don’t just look for the words on your page matching the words someone types into a search bar. They’re trying to get to the bottom of what it all means, where it fits in the context.
This is entity SEO, and it’s one of the biggest shifts in search optimisation we’ve seen in years.
From Keywords to Big Picture Ideas
For most of the last couple of decades, SEO has been about finding the right keywords, placing them all over your website, building a few backlinks, and waiting for your rankings to go up. Sometimes it worked rather too well, which is why we ended up with keyword stuffing, low-quality content farms and search results that just left you waving your fist in frustration at all the irrelevant noise at the top of the page.
Google and the other search engines have moved on from all that. With BERT, MUM and other technology they can now let their algorithms do the actual thinking and understand all the different words and phrases you use. It’s not just looking at your page and saying “this page mentions the words ‘plumber Newcastle’ seven times.” It’s saying “this page is about a plumbing business that services the Newcastle area, specialises in commercial fit-outs, and has a bit of a reputation for doing emergency work at short notice.”
That makes a world of difference.
What Exactly Is an Entity Anyway?
An entity is a thing, a person, a business, a place, or an idea. Basically anything that can be defined and understood. But the key thing is it’s got an identity and some context to go with it. It’s not just a bunch of keywords thrown together.
Think of it like this. “Apple” as a keyword could mean a whole bunch of different things. It could be the fruit, the computer company, or the record label. But “Apple” as an entity, and one that Google’s got stored in its Knowledge Graph, well that’s different. That’s the one with a founder, a headquarters, a product range, a stock price and hundreds of related entities all connected up.
Your business is an entity too. The question is whether search engines can figure out what your business is, what it does, who it’s for and all the other important stuff.
Why This Matters for AI-Powered Search
If you’ve been keeping up with our coverage of GEO and the evolution of AI-powered search you’ll know that tools like Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot don’t just match up words. They build up all the different ideas and connections by looking at entities and how they all relate to each other.
When someone asks an AI assistant what the best SEO agency in Newcastle is, it’s not going to scan through pages looking for the exact words. It’s going to work out what entities are relevant. Which businesses are in that area, what they do, what authoritative sources say about them, and how their information all looks across the web.
Entity SEO is the foundation that makes AEO and GEO strategies actually work. Without clearly defined entities, AI systems have nothing reliable to reference when they generate answers. As we explored in our practical guide to making your content citable by AI, AI engines need to verify the credibility of your content before they’ll reference it, and clear entity signals are a big part of that verification process.
The Strategic Shift: From Targeting Terms to Being Recognised as a Trustworthy Authority
Here’s where this gets really interesting for businesses.
Traditional SEO is all about getting to the top for a specific search term. Entity SEO is all about establishing your business as a trusted and respected player in your industry so that search engines naturally think of you when relevant searches come up.
It’s the difference between trying to rank for a specific term, and building a presence that search engines genuinely get.
For businesses that means your website needs to communicate what your core entities are in a very clear and straightforward way. Your brand, your services, your team, your location and your audience. None of this vague stuff or spreading it all over the place either. It’s all about being clear, consistent and well-structured.
Building Entity Authority on Your Website
Identify Your Core Entities
Start by figuring out the distinct entities that define your business. For most small businesses this will mean your brand itself, your main services or products, the people behind the business, and the part of the world you serve. Keep it focused. Trying to do too many things at once just dilutes your entity signals. Google likes to see clarity, specificity and especially consistency.
Build Topic Clusters Around Each Entity
This is where the old hub-and-spoke model comes in. Each core entity should have a main page that acts as the hub, with supporting content that looks at related ideas in depth, all linking back to that central page.
For instance, if one of your core entities is “website development,” then your hub page would be your main service page. Look for supporting content that gets into the nitty-gritty of topics like platform selection, how to design a site that works on all devices, getting ecommerce functionality right, and ways to improve your site’s performance. Each piece will help to put more depth around that entity and make it clear to search engines how all your different bits of content fit together.
We talk a lot about the importance of strategy before design in website projects, and the same principle applies here. Your entity structure needs to be planned deliberately, not left to chance.
Get Your Internal Linking Sorted
Internal links are how you give search engines a map of how your content relates to each other. When you link to other pages within entity clusters in a way that makes sense, and use the same consistent and descriptive text at the end of the link, you’re helping search engines piece together your site’s topical structure.
Now this isn’t about throwing links all over the place. It’s about creating a logical path that mirrors the way your business entities actually fit together. Think of it like a table of contents for your site.
Be Consistent Across the Board
Entity recognition is all about being consistent in what you tell people about yourself. Your business name and description need to match across your website, your Google Business Profile, your social media profiles, your directory listings, and anywhere else your business appears online.
If your information is all over the place, search engines have no idea who you are or what you do, and that makes it harder for them to feature your site in search results. It’s a bit like trying to describe yourself to a friend, but giving them three different answers every time they ask. For local businesses in particular, this consistency across directories and listings is a critical part of local SEO and structured data strategy.
Make the Most of Structured Data
Adding schema markup is like giving search engines a detailed label that says what’s inside a particular page of your site. Organisation schema, local business schema, service schema. These all help to give search engines a clearer picture of what you’re about and increase your chances of showing up in rich results like Knowledge Panels.
But don’t get too excited about schema markup on its own. It helps, but it’s not a magic bullet. If the content on the page is thin or generic, don’t expect search engines to give you a free pass. Think of structured data as the label on the jar. It tells search engines what’s inside. But the jar still needs to have something worth opening.
The Trust Signals and Entity Clarity Connection
Search engines don’t just want to know who you are. They also want to know if you’re reliable and worth listening to. That’s where trust signals come in.
Reviews, citations, media mentions, accurate business information, author credentials and consistent brand representation all contribute to search engines seeing you as trustworthy. In local SEO in particular, these signals can be the difference between appearing in the map pack and being nowhere to be seen.
As we discussed in our piece on navigating Google’s Perspective Update, entity-based authority is increasingly central to how Google decides what content is any good. Building genuine trust and credibility isn’t a shortcut. It takes real effort and consistency over time.
Common Pitfalls to Watch Out For
We see a lot of businesses trying to tackle entity SEO and then making rookie mistakes.
The biggest one is probably relying too heavily on schema markup without actually writing good content to back it up. The markup is important, but it’s a signal enhancer, not a substitute for substance.
Another common mistake is creating pages that are so thin they might as well be a cigarette ad in a tabloid paper. A service page with two lines of text and a contact form isn’t going to cut it. You need depth, context and genuine value.
Targeting entities that have nothing to do with your core business isn’t going to earn you any brownie points either. Stick to what you know and what you actually deliver.
And neglecting your internal linking or sending mixed signals across different platforms will undo a lot of the good work you’ve done elsewhere.
Where This Is All Heading
AI systems learn and understand the world by creating maps of entities and their relationships. The clearer and more consistent your signals are, the easier it is for them to know what you’re about and whether you’re worth recommending.
Entity-based SEO isn’t just a fad. It’s the direction search engines have been heading for years, and with AI on the rise, it’s only getting more important.
For businesses, this is both an opportunity and a challenge. The challenge is that it takes some hard work and planning to get your entity signals in order. The opportunity is that businesses who do get it right will be well ahead of the pack as search technology continues to evolve.
The Kind of Work That Lasts
This is the kind of foundation work that sets businesses up for long-term visibility. Not just a quick fix to rank for a particular keyword, but a strategic approach that compounds over time as search engines and AI systems get smarter.
Time to Get Your Entity Authority in Order?
At HyperWeb, we help Australian businesses build digital strategies that really work. Strategies that are aligned with how search engines and AI actually operate. Entity SEO is a key part of how we approach search optimisation, because we believe in building foundations that last rather than chasing the next quick win.
If you’re not sure whether search engines see your business as a clear entity, or if your digital presence is sending out mixed signals, get in touch. We’ll help you figure out where you’re at and what it takes to build genuine authority in your space.
