How to establish your brand entity for SEO: A 5-step guide

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by Anna Munhin Jun 1, 2023 News
How to establish your brand entity for SEO: A 5-step guide

The release of Bard and the announcement of Search Generative Experience are changing the landscape of the internet. The evolutions have a lot of ramifications. The renewed focus on brand entityseo is one of the most important

Marketing to humans was the main focus of the past. With the rise of large language models, such as OpenAI's GPT-4 and Google's PaLM 2, MUM and BERT, the marketing to machines has become more important than ever.

Regardless of the interface, the timeliness imperative of the search is for people to find and choose our brand.

Brand awareness and brand preference are important for inclusion in the target audience.

Building a well known, top rated and trusted brand entity is the cornerstone of organic visibility.

Brands, entities and the Google Knowledge Graph

The knowledge graph is a database that knows relationships between facts.

A thing or concept that is singular, unique, well-defined and distinguishable is what an entity is defined as by the search engine. An entity can be a person, place, product, idea or brand.

Entities can be connected to other entities through knowledge graphs.

When I type "best Italian restaurant in Berlin" into Bard, it doesn't match based on the words "keyword" or "entity"

Bard “Best Italian restaurant in Berlin”

It's connected.

  • Location entities: Neighborhoods of the city of Berlin (Prenzlauer Berg, Mitte, etc.)
  • Cuisine entity: Italian
  • Dish entities: Pasta, pizza
  • Restaurant brand entities: Sapori di CasaIl Punto, Ristorante A MANO
  • Directory brand entities: TripAdvisor, Top10 Berlin

In terms of reviews, it knows about the restaurant entities.

Local packs or related searches are created by a similar process in the SERPs.

Local pack

There are a lot of Knowledge Graph entities you could improve on.

  • Location: City and neighborhood
  • Cuisine: Italian
  • Dishes: Pizza, pasta, etc
  • Ambiance: Fine dining, family-friendly, etc
  • Awards: Michelin stars, Gault et Millau, etc
  • People: Owner, Chef, etc

The brand entity is worth the most. It must be at the center of everything.

Most industries see a lot of entity-only rich results in the search engine results pages.

entity-only rich results in the SERPs.

As Bard gets more popular, it will affect every industry.

What's the reason? It doesn't know what brands it doesn't know

If you don't have a brand in the Knowledge Graph, your brand's relevance to the user query and relationship to other entities won't be as high.

In this case, the only visibility signals that will be applied are entity-level visibility signals, formerly known as site-level ranking factors, but rank is somewhat outdated and a brand entity is more than just a website.

The brand is less likely to be included in the set. The end user is also considered by the end user.

If you have a detailed dossier for your brand entity and its relationships to other entities in the Knowledge Graph, you can be confident that it will match you. Grants you more visibility in the search engine results pages.

Follow these steps to build your brand.

Building a brand entity is more than one person's job.

The scope of what is commonly defined to encompass is not what it is. This is your marketing area. It will be difficult to make meaningful changes if you don't have them with you.

In order to convince your CMO to be the executive sponsor of a brand entity establishment, you need to get in front of them.

The ability to free up resources in other departments, such as development or content resources, that will be needed, is secured by this.

To get a chief marketing officer onboard, show the opportunity or threat.

  • Your branded SERP: Do you dominate it with a fully-fleshed out knowledge panel, social media profiles and digital PR articles or at there irrelevant or unwanted links.
  • Industry-relevant entity-only SERP features: What rich results exist for key user intents and is your brand included (being on mobile and incognito is essential).
  • Industry-relevant Bard results (and SGE if you have access): What results are returned for key user intents and is your brand included.
  • Current brand entity presence: What does Google understand about your brand entity its associated assets and its connections to other entities.
  • Competitor brand entity presence: What does Google understand about your competitors’ entities.

Don't think that this has anything to do with the number of branded search queries or the number of pages on a website.

To understand if a brand is an entity, and if so, in what context, the ideal is to query the brand name in the search engine daily and keep a record of the results.

For a quick check, it's easier to use the Kali cube.

If you want to become an entity in the Knowledge Graph, you need to be clear about who your brand entity is.

Define your name.

This seems easy, but I have a challenge for you. Ask someone from each department in your office to write down the brand name on a piece of paper.

There will be some who will write.

  • The brand you expect: “Brand Name”
  • The brand with different spacing: “BrandName”
  • The brand with different capitalization: “Brandname” or “brandname”
  • The partial URL: “brandname.com”
  • The legal entity: “Brand Name Inc.” 

All of these can be seen as different entities due to the sensitivity of the natural language processing.

Define a brand entity bio once you have settled on a brand name. The aim is to tell your brand's story in a way that can be understood by the search engine's computers.

A semantic triple is what the entity bio should start with.

It's for example:

  • “Jes Scholz is a marketing consultant.”

The entity subject is "is" and the object is "marketing consultant"

A pure semantic triple can be too boring for the humans that will read it. It's up to you if you want to make it more interesting with an object or a word.

It's for example:

  • “Jes Scholz is an organic marketing consultant and SEO futurist.” 

There are two objects, one of which is the word "organic" and the other is the word "seo futurist".

Your core offering and target audience should be addressed first. It's for example:

  • “She delivers award-winning audience development strategies focused on entity optimization, smart content distribution and data-driven marketing from Sydney to enterprise businesses worldwide.”

All key details about your brand entity should be addressed in concise paragraphs in order of importance. For example.

  • Core value propositions
  • Awards
  • Key people or partners
  • Relevant history

This should be written so that you can understand what other entities are related to your brand entity.

As the confidence in these areas grows, so does your chance of appearing on the surface of the internet giant.

You can use the free demo to evaluate your brand entity bio, which will show you how the text is identified and categorized.

It is time to repeat a brand entity bio that has been defined and aligned with all stakeholders. Through corroboration, brands claim it.

Search marketers rely on daily newsletters.

The co-occurrence of entities is what determines which entities are comprehended by the internet.

If two entities, like a brand and a topic, are frequently referred to by multiple authoritative sources, it strengthens the connection between them in the knowledge graph.

This is particularly powerful when it comes to generative artificial intelligence.

I was amused by the SGE example. Similar associations of a brand and a topic can be applied to any industry.

SGE example

If you don't have an industry association, your brand won't show up in the list when someone asks for it. It is important to establish entity co-occurrence through repetition.

The most authoritative source on your brand entity should be your website. Your About page is where you can publish your bio.

The About page can be dedicated to the brand entity, which is better than the home page.

The entire website offering and potentially other entities, such as products, clients or key members of the team, must be represented in the homepage.

The brand entity bio should be shown in the home page. A point of corroboration is this one.

Many of your brand assets will duplicate certain aspects of the brand entity bio, for example the semantic triple about what the brand entity is This should be part of the package.

  • All social media profiles, such as LinkedIn, Twitter or TikTok.
  • Relevant business directories, such as CrunchBase, Trustpilot or Yelp.
  • Relevant industry sites, such as Entrepreneur.com, Forbes or Spotify.
  • A Google Business Profile for any brand with a physical address.
  • If possible, Wikipedia and Wikidata.

Don't forget to revisit previously posted articles. Make sure the details are in line with your official brand name and bio by fact-correcting them.

It is important to repeat on relevant platforms. The more corroboration you have, the more likely you are to be right about your entity. It's more likely that you'll see your brand entity for a query.

Don't send us anything. It won't help if a site is not appropriate for your industry. It won't help if the site is low quality. It won't help if the social profile isn't active.

Step 4: Markup all the things

On the About page, the Organization Schema is being used.

Think of it as a way to communicate with the search engine. It's important for you to confirm important attributes of the brand entity in order for them to accept them.

Image 140 800x336

Structured data is only required for the logo of the organization.

  • URL: The homepage URL of the brand website
  • Logo: The logo of the brand

Don't do it without thinking.

Use a more descriptive name. It's the most general organization. There could be more relevant values.

News media organizations can be identified by a newspaper. It is possible for a charity to identify itself as an non profit. There are many categories that local businesses can choose from.

Go beyond the requirements. To establish facts about your entity in the knowledge graph, include as much relevant information as possible.

Make sure to pay special attention.

  • Name: The official brand name you have aligned with stakeholders.
  • AlternateName (if needed): An shorter variation of your official brand name that is commonly used on the wider web for your brand entity. For example, the Better Business Bureau being called the BBB.
  • LegalName: Add the legal entity name to help disambiguate references on the wider web of your brand entity.
  • Description: The semantic triple from your entity bio.
  • Image: An array of ImageObjects which represent the brand.
  • Address, telephone and email: Brands with readily available contact details are inherently more trustworthy.
  • Awards: Being nominated for or winning awards boosts credibility.
  • @id: An identifying URL intended as the explicit, unambiguous reference for your company. As such it should be unique and never change. Jono Alderson, Head of SEO at Yoast, recommends site's home URL appended by #/schema/Organization/1.
  • SameAs: To disambiguate your brand entity presence to aid corroborations, list all relevant brand profiles. Include active social media pages, directory listings, wikipedia and wikidata entries and Google Business Profile and Google knowledge panel URL (aka https://www.google.com/search?kgmid={id}) when available. If your brand has multiple knowledge panel URLs, add them all to help consolidate them into a single strong entity.

Once the about page has a valid structure data markup brand bio, you can manually submit the URL in the search console.

Don't stop your improvement there.

Structured data is needed for every relevant entity on your site.

The connection between brands and recognized entities is strengthened when these entities are understood by search engines.

Entity establishment

The brand can be strengthened further. Your brand is more likely to be found in the context of questions.

The process to establish other business assets can be adjusted by the author.

The knowledge graph can show your key people, products, and events. It's beneficial that those entities can earn visibility in the search engine's community.

Building trust in the other entities can help cement the understanding of the brand entity by the internet giant.

Your owned assets can also be used to build this entity relationship.

Collaborating with established high-authority entities related to your industry or a targeted topic can help solidify your own status.

Building a strong brand entity

A strong brand entity in the knowledge graph is what you need to be visible in generative artificial intelligence.

This will allow you to control the positioning of your brand while increasing the chances that your brand will be shown on the surface of the internet.

Entities are only going to get more important. It's the right time to invest.

The guest author's opinions are not necessarily those of the search engine. There are staff authors here.