Search engines have evolved a lot over time. Google releases updates to its algorithm periodically, seeking to find new and better ways to rank content, fight spam and adapt the way users consume content.
Entities are specific terms that allow to represent a concept and provide more information about what the user is looking for.
It is for this reason that, for some time now, search engines have been lending more attention to SEO entitieswhich explain how the evolution of keywords for new search methods (voice search, image search or by prompts).
Difference between SEO entities and keywords.
Basically, SEO entities with specific terms that represent an idea, an object or a concept and that, through relationships and attributes, define the context and meaning of the concept. Unlike keywords, which can be ambiguous, entities are specific and provide more information about what the user is looking for.
If we search Google for Elon Musk we will find all kinds of news and information about his life, his family, his studies or his companies. This is possible because the search engine identifies Musk as an entity, so it also shows information about other related entities such as Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos or topics related to politics, offering much more complete and relevant results, thanks to the entities.
Function of SEO entities
What SEO entities do is help search engines to. understand the content of a web page, determining its context and the relevance it will have for users’ searches. On the other hand, when a web page is optimized with entities, search engines more easily identify its subject matter and its relationship to other topics.
To understand the content, Google uses algorithms that perform a semantic analysis by which it is possible to understand the content as well as the intention behind the words to find patterns. For example, it is able to understand when one article cites another or when a text is cited in several places, establishing the relationships between the sources.
Types of SEO entities
There are several types of SEO entities such as: people, places, events, artwork, organizations or consumer products. Even an address or a phone number can be an SEO entity, if they are correctly related to the company or organization to which they belong.
A simple way to identify what Google means by entities is to perform an image search. When we search for images in Google, just above the results we can see a row containing several ideas related to the search. These are the entities.
If we need to do an entity search, Google Images or the Google Knowledge Panel, the cards with information that appear in some searches, can help us to find related entities with a keyword, to implement them in our content.
