Entity based SEO is creating content that helps entities stand out so that search and AI engines like Google and ChatGPT can understand what your page content is about. This helps your content rank better in search results because it shows search engines that your page is relevant to what users are searching for.

Knowing what entity SEO is and integrating it are two different things, right? So, how do we add entity based SEO into our content strategy?

What You Need to Know Highlights

• Google uses entity salience to understand content relevance, improving search rankings.
• Focus on central entities to enhance clarity and search engine understanding.
• Use tools like Google’s Natural Language API to identify key entities and optimize content effectively.
• Clearly identify entities within content and metadata to improve visibility across search engines.

Why Entity Based SEO is Important (Salient) in Content Strategy

Entities become important to search engines and AI crawlers when they are central to your content’s theme, or centerpiece annotation. For instance, if you’re writing about the best restaurants in Paris, “Paris” and “French cuisine” are key entities. 

By integrating entity base SEO with your content strategy, you are optimizing your content in a way that helps search engines easily identify the specific topic of your content. This, in turn, improves your salience score, thus increasing your page’s ranking on the search results pages and AI search results.

This means your page is more likely to show up in search results when users are looking for information related to your topic. It also gives a boost to user experience by providing search results that closely match what they’re searching for.

Finding Important Entities for Your Content

Start by brainstorming the main ideas you want to cover. Think about what your content is about and what entities are central to that topic.

If you don’t use content outlines, or struggle to organize your thoughts, you may want to consider implementing them as part of your content strategy process. 

Additional pro-tips for integrating entity salience and centerpiece annotation into your content strategy:

Simple Ways to Review Your Content for Entity SEO

• Read It Out Loud: See if your content sounds focused and clear.
• Ask for Feedback: Have someone else review your content to check that it’s easy to understand.

Tips for Better Centerpiece Annotation

• Choose a Strong Main Topic: Pick an entity that is central to your content.
• Organize Your Content Around the Main Idea: Use headings and subheadings to structure your content around this entity.
• Check Your Work: Make sure your main point is clear and easy to follow.
• Avoid Diluting Your Topic: Stay on topic and keep the entities used directly related to your main goal. Otherwise you risk confusing the topic, or main point of your content.
  • Example: If your content is on coffee blends, then you would include directly related long-tail keywords for coffee blends like, “Best French Blend Coffee,” or, “Best House Blend Coffee.” You wouldn’t include distantly related terms like, “Most Caffeinated Coffee Blend Available,” or, “Strongest Espresso Blends for Caffeine Kick.”

Common Entity Based SEO Mistakes to Avoid

• Overusing Entities: Don’t overload your content with too many entities. Focus on the most important ones.
• Forgetting About Readability: Keep your language simple and easy to understand.

Keyword Research for Entity SEO

Tools like Google’s Natural Language API and Vertex AI can help you identify related entities in your content. These tools analyze your text to see what entities are most relevant. For example, if you’re writing about “best coffee shops,” your entities might include “coffee,” “shops,” and specific locations like “New York.” 

Using the example above of ‘coffee shops,’ Google’s Vertex AI gives us results as seen in the screenshot below.

Source: Google Cloud Natural Language API, Vertex AI

Using Clear and Simple Language

Keep your language clear and simple. This helps both users and search engines understand your content better. 

Also, be mindful of how the content reads. Does it read conversationally, or is the content impersonal and robotic?

Conversational content not only helps your users connect to the content but it’s also a big part of GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and Voice Search Optimization.

Microsoft Research on Entity Salience

We know Google has been the top tier of search, but, just as Google has been investigating and publishing content on entity salience, Microsoft has been working on systems to identify the most important entities in web pages too. 

Microsoft uses machine learning to score entities based on how central they are to the content, using data from web pages, search logs, and a vast web graph. This research shows how entity salience can improve search results by making them more relevant.

Bing and Entity Based SEO

While Bing doesn’t talk much about how it uses entity salience, optimizing your content with clearly identified entities can still help your visibility on Bing. By making sure entities are in your content and metadata, you can make your pages more discoverable across the various search engines and AI search. 

You’re going to optimize your content anyway (right?!), so why not do it in a way that checks off all the boxes across the board? Work smarter, not harder, and all that. 😉