Make search engines and AI know exactly who you are.
Entity SEO clarifies the name, description, people, services and places that make up your business, then makes them consistent on your site and across the wider web. The goal is simple: search engines and AI assistants should recognise you as one distinct organisation they can confidently recommend.
How does a search engine decide your brand is a real entity?
Search systems recognise an entity from three signals that must agree: structured data that names and describes it, mentions on independent trusted sources, and a consistent identity with the same name, description and sameAs links everywhere. When these match, the system can tell your business apart from similar names and retrieve it for relevant questions. When they conflict, the entity stays ambiguous, and assistants tend to name someone else.
Definitions follow the schema.org Organization vocabulary, which is the shared language for describing a business to search engines.
Three signals that have to agree.
An entity is a distinct thing a system can identify and connect to others: a company, a person, a product, a place or a technology. Recognition rests on evidence from three directions, and weakness in one can undo strength in the other two.
What each signal contributes
- Structured data. Organization, Person and Service markup states plainly who you are and what you offer, in a form machines read without guessing.
- Outside corroboration. Directories, professional profiles, press and industry sites that mention you confirm that the entity exists beyond your own pages.
- Consistent identity. The same name, short description, address and logo appear everywhere, tied together with sameAs references to each official profile.
- Relationships. Links between the company, its founders, services and locations let a system understand how the parts relate.
Markup itself is covered in depth under schema engineering.
Brands that search cannot quite place.
The usual cause is inconsistency, not absence. Each source looks fine alone, but together they describe what seems like several loosely related organisations.
Missing from AI recommendations
Assistants asked to suggest providers in your category name your competitors and leave you out, even though your site has good copy.
A shared or common name
Your name collides with a bigger company, a product or an everyday phrase, so results resolve to something else.
Scattered identity
Profiles, listings and citations built over many years have drifted apart, with different names, addresses and descriptions.
No panel or rich result
A long-established business shows no Knowledge Panel and no recognised profile, despite plenty of real-world presence, because the evidence online is thin or contradictory.
Founder-led brands
The person and the company are both searched, but nothing links them, so neither gains from the other's reputation.
Multi-location firms
Each branch appears with slightly different details, which splits signals instead of building one strong entity.
How an entity project is carried out.
We start by finding disagreements, because fixing those usually matters more than adding anything new.
- 01
Entity inventory
We list every place your brand, people and services appear: your site, social profiles, directories, press mentions, data aggregators and any older domains that still carry your name.
- 02
Define the master record
One approved name, description, logo, address and set of official links becomes the reference everything else must match.
- 03
Fix the site first
About, contact, team and service pages are rewritten for clarity and marked up with matching structured data.
- 04
Align outside profiles
Profiles and listings you control are corrected one by one, and a plan is made for the ones you only influence, such as press articles and partner pages.
- 05
Connect with sameAs
Official profiles are tied together in markup so systems can merge them into a single entity.
- 06
Monitor and adjust
We check how search and AI tools describe you over time and fix any remaining mismatches.
Which things on your site count as entities?
Before writing any markup, we list the entities your business is made of, because each needs its own clear page.
How we decide what to define
- One page per entity. A service, a person or a location gets a dedicated page with a stable address, so that markup and outside profiles can point to one definite place.
- Plain definitions. Each page opens with a short, factual statement of what the thing is, written so it can be quoted accurately.
- Named relationships. We state who delivers a service, where it is available and what it relates to, using ordinary sentences as well as markup.
- Consistent wording. The same service name and spelling is used across menus, headings, schema and external profiles.
Wording for quotable answers is a focus of answer engine optimization.
Scattered identity versus a single entity.
This is how the same business looks to a search system before and after the work.
| Criteria | After alignment | Before alignment |
|---|---|---|
| Business name | One exact form everywhere | Three or four spellings in use |
| Description | One short approved version | Different on every profile |
| Structured data | Organization and Person linked by ID | Missing or duplicated across pages |
| Profile links | sameAs lists every official profile | No link between profiles |
| AI summaries | Accurate and consistent | Vague, outdated or wrong |
Founders, teams and locations.
Trust in a business often rests on trust in the people behind it, so people and places are entities worth defining carefully. Many small firms skip this, and their founders stay invisible to search.
What we set up
- Author and founder pages. Real biographies with roles, expertise and links to professional profiles, marked up as Person entities.
- Links to the company. People are tied to the organisation with worksFor and founder properties, so the relationship is explicit.
- Location records. Each branch gets its own page and details that exactly match its public listing.
- Honest evidence. We only mark up facts that are visible on the page and can be verified, never invented credentials.
For map listings and city pages, see local SEO.
How you can tell it is working.
Entity recognition cannot be forced, and no one can promise a Knowledge Panel. What we can do is track clear signs of progress.
Signs we monitor
- Branded search results. Whether your own name returns your official pages and profiles together, rather than a mix of unrelated results.
- Assistant answers. We ask major AI assistants the questions your buyers ask and record whether your business is named and described correctly. The same questions are repeated each month so changes are comparable.
- Markup validity. Structured data is tested after each release, so a template change never quietly removes it.
- Mention quality. New outside mentions are reviewed for accuracy and for whether they use your approved name.
Visibility in AI answers is a wider topic, covered under generative engine optimization.
What you receive at the end.
Entity work produces documents and fixes you can keep using, not a one-off report that sits unread.
Entity audit
A clear list of every mismatch found across your site and outside profiles, ranked by how much confusion each one causes.
Master record
The approved name, description, logo, address and links, written as a single reference your team can use for every new profile.
Markup package
Valid Organization, Person, Service and Place data added to your templates, with IDs that link the pieces together.
Monthly check routine
A short checklist and a record of assistant answers, so you can see whether recognition is improving.
Entity SEO, answered.
Straight answers to what clients ask before they start.
What is entity SEO in simple words?
It is the practice of making your business a clearly identified thing, not just a website with keywords. Search engines and AI assistants then know who you are, what you offer and how you relate to other things.
Can you guarantee a Google Knowledge Panel?
No one can. Google decides whether to show one. We make your entity as clear and well supported as possible, which gives the best chance, and we track whether a panel appears.
What is sameAs in schema markup?
It is a property that lists the official profiles of an entity, such as its LinkedIn page or business listing. It helps systems understand that all these pages describe the same organisation.
How is this different from ordinary SEO?
Ordinary SEO focuses on pages ranking for queries. Entity SEO focuses on the identity behind the pages, so that a system can resolve who you are and trust the facts it holds about you.
Does entity work help with AI assistants?
It can. Assistants reason over entities and their attributes, so a business with a clear, corroborated identity is easier to retrieve and describe. Results vary by assistant and cannot be guaranteed.
What affects the price of an entity project?
The number of profiles and listings to align, how many people and locations need pages, how much existing markup must be repaired and whether outside publishers must be contacted all change the effort.
How long until results appear?
Site fixes can be indexed quickly, but external sources update on their own schedules. Expect progress to be gradual and to appear first in branded search before wider changes.
Does my business need this if I am small?
If your name is unique and you appear in few places, a light version is enough. It matters most when your name is shared, your history is long or assistants do not mention you.
Become one clear entity in every system.
Send your website address and your main profiles. You will get a written list of mismatches and a plan to fix them in order of impact, before any work is agreed.