What Are Entities & Why They Matter for SEO
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/entity-seo/277231/
Entities matter for SEO because, at their core, they are the world.
We ourselves understand everything around us in the context of entities and their relationships. We just tend not to think of it that way.
A big part of the reason we’re just starting to talk about this now is that it takes
machine learning to make use of the concept from a search level.
Without machine learning, Google couldn’t understand language well enough to interpret pages and entity relationships.
Without machine learning, and RankBrain specifically, Google couldn’t learn how to prioritize signals accurately and on-the-fly and adjust for unknowns and learn from them.
So now we’re starting to see this all come about and with it a massive change in how pages are ranked.
With entities come:
- The ability to calculate the probability of meeting the user’s likely intent with far greater accuracy.
- The ability to understand from language and tone, whether a result will be positive or negative.
- A dramatically reduced reliance on links.
Links will remain as a signal I’m sure, but they will become simply one mechanism among many for establishing entity values.
To optimize in this new world, we need to change the way we think about our sites and how we market externally.
If we want to rank for “blue widgets” we need to consider that Google can now or will soon understand all the various entities related to them and in which order the searcher intent will most likely be met.
And you need to now consider which entities you need on your site and how they need to be connected to maximize the probability of Google understanding that you are more likely to meet the variety of possible intents than your competitor.