Most SEO still starts with this question:

“What keywords should we target?”

In 2025, that’s only half the game.

Google and AI assistants care less about exact keywords and more about entities—the things in the world you talk about: topics, brands, people, places, products, and how they all connect. If you want the bigger picture of how this plays with AI Overviews and chat-based tools, read our guide on optimizing your website for AI search engines.

If search engines and AI systems don’t clearly understand:

  • Who you are
  • What you’re about
  • Which topics, brands, and people you’re truly an expert on

…you end up as just another decent article in a sea of decent articles.

This guide walks through Entity-First SEO—how to use topics, brands, and people as the backbone of your strategy so you can strengthen both Google rankings and AI visibility.

Short answer: what “entity-first SEO” actually means

Entity-first SEO is about optimizing around things, not strings.

Instead of starting with:

  • “We want to rank for ‘best email tools’ and ‘email marketing software’”

You start with:

  • “We want to be recognized as an authority on email marketing as a topic, and these specific tools, use cases, and audiences connected to it.”

In practice, that means:

  1. Define your core entities – topics, brands, people, and products you want to be known for.
  2. Organize content around entities – build topic clusters and hub pages that clearly cover those entities in depth.
  3. Make entity signals explicit – on-page wording, schema, internal links, and external profiles that reinforce who/what/where.
  4. Keep entity content accurate and updated – especially product, pricing, and people pages.

AI systems and Google are both trying to answer:

“Who’s the most relevant, trustworthy entity to talk about this other entity?”

Your job is to make that answer obvious.

Entities 101: topics, brands, and people in plain English

Let’s keep this non-nerdy.

An entity is just a specific “thing” that can be uniquely identified:

  • A topic: email marketing, VoIP, content refreshes
  • A brand or product: Nextiva, Shopify, WordPress
  • A person: your founder, your authors, industry experts you quote
  • A place: Tallahassee, Florida, EU, North America

Entity-first SEO says:

“Instead of chasing every related keyword variation, let’s make sure search engines and AI know exactly which entities we cover and how they relate.”

Why this matters now:

Entities are how you communicate meaning, not just phrases.

Why entities matter for both Google and AI

If Google and AI assistants understand your entities, they can:

  • Recognize your brand as a trusted source on a topic.
  • Associate your people with specific expertise.
  • Understand which topics and products you cover deeply vs. casually.
  • Resolve ambiguity (“Apple” the company vs. apples you eat).

Practically, this leads to:

  • Better chances of ranking across many related queries around a topic.
  • Higher odds of being cited in AI summaries and Overviews from tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI features.
  • Stronger resilience to algorithm changes because you look like a real expert, not a content mill.

If your content strategy is entity-poor (lots of surface-level posts, unclear brand, random topics), you’re harder to trust and harder to quote.

Step 1: Define your core entity set

Before touching content, decide which entities you actually want to own. This is the same strategic work you’d do in a solid SEO plan, just framed around “things” instead of just phrases.

Think in four buckets:

1. Core topics

What big topics should you be visibly expert in?

Examples:

  • “Email marketing for small businesses”
  • “VoIP and business phone systems”
  • “Content optimization for AI search”
  • “Website builders and hosting”

These are not just keywords; they’re topic areas.

2. Brand and product entities

List:

  • Your company
  • Your products or services
  • Tools you constantly review, compare, or integrate with

Example:

  • Your brand: Acme Analytics
  • Your products: Acme Analytics Pro, Acme Dashboards
  • Related tools: Google Analytics, Looker Studio, HubSpot, etc.

3. People entities

Who are the humans that matter to your brand?

  • Founders
  • Subject-matter experts
  • Main authors and spokespeople

Each should have:

  • A consistent name and photo
  • A short bio that links them to your core topics

4. Places and segments

Any recurring geographic or audience entities:

  • Regions: US, EU, Tallahassee, SaaS, agencies, freelancers
  • Industries: legal, healthcare, ecommerce

You’re drawing the map of what your site is about. Everything else is noise.

Step 2: Build topic clusters around entities, not keywords

Once you know your entities, you can build your information architecture around them. If this sounds a lot like building topic clusters, that’s on purpose—see our walkthrough on planning your SEO strategy and content hubs.

Create entity-based hubs (pillar pages)

For each core topic entity:

  • Create a pillar page that’s the definitive guide.
  • Make sure the pillar is clearly about that entity in title, URL, intro, and headings.

Example:

  • Topic entity: Email marketing
  • Pillar: /email-marketing-guide/ – “Email Marketing for Small Businesses: The Complete Guide”

This pillar should:

  • Define the entity clearly
  • Explain why it matters
  • Link out to every major subtopic on your site

Create supporting content tied to that entity

Under each pillar, you’ll have supporting pages that cover:

  • Glossary terms: “What is a lead magnet? What is open rate?”
  • How-tos: “How to segment your email list,” “How to write a welcome sequence”
  • Comparisons: “Best email tools for X,” “[Tool A] vs. [Tool B]”
  • Strategies and frameworks: “Lifecycle email flows,” “Win-back campaign playbook”

Each supporting piece should:

  • Make explicit references to the main topic entity
  • Link back to the pillar as the “home base”
  • Link sideways to related subtopics

Now your site looks like a coherent topic graph, not a random archive.

Step 3: Make entity signals obvious in your on-page content

You don’t need to turn your writing into a robot-fest. But you do need to be deliberate. A lot of this overlaps with classic on-page and technical SEO best practices.

1. Be clear and consistent with names

For each entity:

  • Use exactly the same brand/company/product/person names across the site.
  • Avoid unnecessary variations that confuse machines (“Acme Analytics” vs. “Acme” vs. “our analytics solution”) in key spots like intros, headings, and schema.

You can still vary language inside paragraphs. Just keep canonical forms clear.

2. Define important entities in the content

Whenever you introduce a key entity for the first time on a page:

  • Give a short, direct definition
  • Optionally link to a dedicated page about that entity

Example:

“Nextiva is a unified communications platform that combines VoIP phone service, team messaging, and video conferencing into a single app, making it easier for businesses to manage all their customer and internal communication in one place.”

That’s friendly for:

  • Readers
  • Google’s understanding of what “Nextiva” is in your context
  • AI tools scanning for “What is Nextiva?” style answers

3. Use co-occurring entities naturally

If your page is about “VoIP for small businesses”, you’d expect to see:

  • Topics: call routing, extensions, IVR, call recording, softphones
  • Brands: Nextiva, RingCentral, Zoom, Grasshopper
  • Context entities: remote teams, call centers, local numbers, toll-free numbers

Don’t force them; just make sure the right entities actually show up.

Step 4: Reinforce entities with schema markup

Schema is how you make entity relationships explicit in machine-readable form. If you’ve never worked with it before, start with the basics on Schema.org and then dig into Google’s own documentation in the Search Central structured data guide.

You don’t need to implement every schema type, but you should cover these basics:

Organization / LocalBusiness

On your homepage and key brand pages, use:

  • Organization or LocalBusiness schema
  • Include:
    • Name
    • URL
    • Logo
    • SameAs links to social profiles and relevant listings

This helps Google and AI systems clearly tie your brand entity to its online presence.

Person

For key authors and experts:

  • Add Person schema with:
    • Name
    • Job title
    • Employer (your brand)
    • Areas of expertise (in description or knowsAbout)
    • Links to author social profiles and bio page

This connects people entities to your topics and brand.

Article / BlogPosting

For major content pieces:

  • Use Article / BlogPosting schema
  • Include:
    • Headline
    • Description
    • Author (linked to the Person entity)
    • Publisher (your Organization)
    • DatePublished and DateModified

This reinforces “who wrote what, for whom, and when.”

Product / SoftwareApplication

For product reviews and comparisons:

  • Use Product or SoftwareApplication schema
  • Include:
    • Name
    • Description
    • Brand
    • Category
    • AggregateRating and offers if you can support them accurately

This makes product entities clearer and more linkable to knowledge graphs. For a deeper explainer on how all of this ties back to Google’s system, see this overview of how Google’s Knowledge Graph works with schema.

Step 5: Use internal links as your entity wiring

Internal links are how you show relationships between entities on your own site. Done right, they’re the backbone of both entity-first SEO and strong topic clusters.

Link entities to their “home base” pages

For every important entity:

  • Decide which URL is its “home” (the main page that defines or showcases it).
  • Whenever you mention that entity in relevant posts, link the name to its home page with descriptive anchor text.

Examples:

  • “As we cover in our VoIP for small business guide…” – link to the VoIP pillar.
  • “According to Nextiva’s pricing, you’ll pay…” – link to your Nextiva review or Nextiva pricing page.

This tells Google and AI:

“If you need to know more about this entity, this is the page to look at.”

Build hub pages for related entities

For entities with lots of connections (e.g., a category of tools):

  • Create hubs like “Best email marketing tools” or “VoIP provider directory.”
  • List and link to individual review pages.
  • Use consistent anchor text for each entity.

Internal linking is your way of drawing your own knowledge graph. Don’t waste it on generic “click here” anchors.

Step 6: Align your off-site presence with your entity strategy

Entity-first SEO doesn’t stop at your domain.

You also want consistent entity signals across:

  • Social profiles (LinkedIn, Twitter/X, YouTube, etc.)
  • Company listings (Google Business Profile, Crunchbase, G2, Capterra, etc.)
  • Author profiles on external sites (guest posts, podcasts, directories)

Keep names and descriptions aligned

Wherever your brand or key people appear:

  • Use the same name
  • Use similar descriptions that emphasize your core topics
  • Link back to the right “home base” URL whenever possible

You’re trying to make it easy for systems to connect the dots:

“This person on LinkedIn and this author on this blog and this guest on this podcast are the same entity and they talk about the same topics.”

That’s how you build reputation, not just rankings.

Step 7: Bake entities into content briefs and refreshes

Entity-first SEO only works if it’s part of your ongoing workflow, not a one-time cleanup. A lot of teams bake this into their process alongside a keyword research workflow so briefs always cover both entities and phrases.

For new content briefs

When you brief a writer or yourself, include:

  • Primary entities to focus on (topic, tools, audience).
  • Secondary entities that should appear naturally (related topics, brands, places).
  • Which pillar page this post supports and should link to.
  • Any specific people entities (quotes, POVs) to feature.

You’re telling the content: “These are the things this page is about.”

For content refreshes

When refreshing old posts:

  • Make sure the main topic entity is clearly stated and defined in the intro.
  • Ensure brand and product names are up-to-date and consistent.
  • Add missing entity references that all top competitors cover (tools, concepts, frameworks).
  • Double-check schema and internal links still reflect your current entity map.

Refreshes are the perfect time to move from keyword-first leftovers to entity-first clarity. We walk through this in detail in our Content Refresh Playbook if you want a step-by-step process.

Entity-first SEO checklist for your next audit

Grab one important topic on your site and run it through this list:

  1. Do you have a clear pillar page for the main topic entity?
  2. Do supporting posts cover distinct sub-entities (subtopics, tools, use cases) without overlapping too much?
  3. Is there a consistent “home” URL for each important brand, product, and person you mention a lot?
  4. Are those entities always named consistently in titles, headings, and intros?
  5. Do key pages have appropriate schema (Organization, Person, Article, Product, etc.)?
  6. Do your internal links connect entities logically (pillar ? subtopics ? tools)?
  7. Are your external profiles and bios aligned with the same topics and entities?
  8. If an AI assistant had to explain “who you are” and “what you cover,” could it do so clearly from your site alone?

If you’re weak on more than a few of those, you don’t have a keyword problem—you have an entity problem.

FAQ: Entity-first SEO in real life

Do I need to stop doing keyword research if I go “entity-first”?

No.

You still need keywords to:

  • Understand demand
  • Prioritize topics
  • Match the language your audience uses

Entity-first SEO just says: don’t stop at keywords. Organize those keywords under the real-world entities they point to—topics, brands, people—and optimize for that larger picture. If you need a refresher on keyword basics, our guide to using Google Keyword Planner for SEO is a good place to start.

How is entity-first SEO different from “topical authority”?

They’re closely related:

  • Topical authority is about having deep, high-quality coverage of a topic.
  • Entity-first SEO is about explicitly structuring and labeling that coverage around entities (topics, brands, people, places) and their relationships.

You build topical authority by executing entity-first SEO well.

Is schema required to do entity-first SEO?

You can practice entity-first SEO without schema, but schema:

  • Makes your signals much clearer to machines
  • Helps tie your on-site entities to off-site profiles and knowledge graphs
  • Reduces ambiguity across your content

Treat schema as a multiplier, not a prerequisite. Get the content and internal linking right first; then layer schema on top. Google’s own intro to structured data is the best place to sanity-check your approach.

How long does it take for entity improvements to matter?

Like most SEO work, entity improvements:

  • Might have small, quick wins (better snippets, cleaner brand panels).
  • Really pay off over months, as search engines and AI systems get more confident about what you’re an authority on.

The upside is that entity work is durable. Once you’ve correctly defined and connected your entities, you’re no longer just “another site targeting [keyword].” You’re a recognized source in a topic area, which is much harder for competitors and generic AI content to copy.

Entity-first SEO is about stepping back from chasing every phrase and instead asking:

“What are the real things we want to be known for in the minds of people and machines—and have we actually built our site around them?”

Answer that well, and you’re not just tuning for another Google update—you’re making it obvious, to both search engines and AI assistants, that your brand, your people, and your content are the ones that should show up when it matters.