What is entity SEO?

An entity is a thing with an identity: a company, a person, a product, a place. Entity SEO is the industry name for helping search engines recognise your brand as one such thing and connect the right facts to it.

It is an industry term, not a Google one: none of the Google pages we read use it. The idea builds on how Google framed its Knowledge Graph in 2012: "things, not strings" (Google blog, read 1 November 2026).

Why does entity SEO matter for B2B SaaS?

SaaS brands often have short or common names. If systems are unsure which company a page means, they may mix you up with another company, or not connect a mention to you.

Google says it uses structured data to "understand the content of the page" and to "gather information about the web and the world in general" (Google Search Central, last updated 2025-12-10). Its Organization documentation says the markup can help "disambiguate your organization in search results".

AI answers lean on third-party pages. When Prefer checked 188 answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude in July 2026, 40% of the sources cited for buyer questions were independent lists. Each list that names you with the same description is one more consistent source about your entity.

How do you do entity SEO?

  1. Write one description of your company and use it everywhere: site, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, directories, press kit.
  2. Add Organization schema to your home page with name, logo, founder and founding date.
  3. Link your official profiles with sameAs.
  4. Have an about page that states the facts plainly: what you make, for whom, who founded it, where you are based.
  5. Get mentioned on independent sites in your category, with the same name and category words.
  6. Check what Google and the assistants say about you, and fix the sources of wrong facts.

Example (hypothetical)

A hypothetical company, Acme Help Desk, finds that assistants describe it as a "CRM". Its LinkedIn page and two old directory profiles still use a description from its first year. It updates all three to "help desk software for small teams", matches the home page and Organization markup, and adds the profiles to sameAs. New mentions use the same words.

  • The knowledge graph is where Google stores entities. Entity SEO aims to be in it with the right facts.
  • A knowledge panel is one visible result of being a known entity.
  • Keyword SEO targets the words people search. Entity SEO targets what systems know about you. Most sites need both.
  • Wikidata is a public knowledge base that some entity work includes, where a company meets its rules.

No markup guarantees how a system describes you. Google's guide to AI features says no special schema is needed for AI Overviews or AI Mode. Entity SEO is about clear, consistent facts. The LLM SEO guide covers the wider plan.