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What is a Brand Entity?
Entities are a way for search engines to understand concepts—like people, organisations, locations, and objects—and the relationships between them. A Brand Entity, specifically, is how Google defines your brand as a distinct concept with nodes connecting it to other related entities. This network of information forms what is known as a knowledge graph.
For example, Alphabet Inc. is a brand entity. Google’s crawlers create relationships between it and its founders, CEO, and the other brands under its umbrella. This understanding is so sophisticated that if you use “GOOG” (Alphabet Inc.’s Nasdaq code) in a text, Google recognises you’re referring to the brand without you ever having to mention its name.
The concept of a brand entity isn’t new. It gained prominence with Google’s BERT Update in November 2019, which introduced advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) into its algorithms. From that point on, entities became a crucial part of how Google comprehends text.
How Google Understands Entities
As mentioned, Google uses entities and their relationships to gain a deeper understanding of a text and its subject matter. It also analyzes the context surrounding a brand entity to determine the sentiment associated with it. This allows Google not only to process the meaning of individual words but also to understand how they are connected, interpreting content in a way that is remarkably similar to human comprehension.
Source: Google NLP Demo
Importance for SEO & GEO
For both SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and GEO (Geo-Targeting), focusing on your Brand Entity is essential for anyone seeking strong visibility on Google and other AI-driven platforms. These platforms rely heavily on brand entity information, making it a critical component of any long-term visibility strategy. Here’s why it’s so important:
- Improves Search Engine Understanding: It helps search engines and LLMs develop a more nuanced understanding of your brand.
- Increases the Value of Brand Mentions: Unlinked brand mentions become more valuable, serving as a new form of “link building” for LLM platforms.
- Strengthens Associations: Mentions of closely related concepts (like a CEO or key products) help reinforce the brand’s digital footprint.
- Boosts E-E-A-T: It enhances your brand’s Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) signals.
- Expands Knowledge Panel Presence: A strong entity can lead to more comprehensive Knowledge Graph panels, increasing brand awareness.
- Elevates Your Website: Your website is seen less as a standalone URL and more as a core asset of the brand entity.
- Improves LLM Citations: It provides LLM platforms with clearer context, making it easier for them to cite your brand as a source.
Relations with the Knowledge Graph
As established, a brand entity helps build the connections between individual concepts. These connections, or nodes, are visually represented in Google’s Knowledge Graph and displayed in Knowledge Graph panels.
The more connections you create by feeding information to Google and LLM platforms, the wider your Knowledge Graph becomes.
This is, in turn, reflected in richer, more detailed Knowledge Graph results for your brand.
How to Build and Strengthen Your Brand Entity
Building a robust brand entity requires a multi-faceted approach that goes beyond traditional SEO. The goal is to create a consistent, authoritative, and well-connected digital presence. Here are several high-impact actions you can take:
| Action | What need to be done | Effort | Impact |
| Enhance Your schema.org Markup | One of the most practical ways to build your brand entity is by providing explicit information to search engines through schema.org markup. While most Content Management Systems (CMS) generate a generic Organization schema, you can significantly enhance it by adding more detailed properties. Go beyond the basics and include specifics like: founders, founding year, founding location, revenue, profits, number of employees, certifications, awards, and legal or stock market details.
Furthermore, make extensive use of the sameAs property. Use it to link not only to your official business profiles but also to authoritative press releases and articles written about your brand. This creates a powerful web of verified connections that solidifies your entity. https://www.veeam.com is good example of a starting point to increase the organization schema.org |
Easy. It can be done with an llm platform by providing all details and specifications needed | High |
| Develop a Comprehensive “About Us” Page | Your “About Us” page is a crucial asset. Treat it as an autobiography of your company, not just another piece of marketing content. A well-structured bio that provides all the essential information about the company provides a strong foundation for your brand entity. | Easy | Medium |
| Create a Presence on Wikidata | Wikidata is a collaborative, open-knowledge database from the Wikimedia Foundation. Having a well-structured Wikidata page with all of your company’s key information will significantly help build your brand entity. It is essential to adhere to Wikidata’s guidelines and remain as objective as possible, focusing on providing information rather than advertising your company. | Medium | High |
| Secure a Wikipedia Page | Everyone knows Wikipedia, and it is one of the most important resources of trust for both Google and LLMs. Having a page on Wikipedia is a high-effort, high-impact goal. It’s not an easy task, as Wikipedia has a very strict editorial team of volunteers. To succeed, you must ensure all statements are backed up with references from reputable, independent publishers. | High | High |
| Leverage Brand Communication | Consistent brand communication helps your brand entity by growing citations. It strategically places your brand in a positive context and provides more references and data points for search engines and AI platforms to understand who you are and what you do. | High | Low |
As established, a brand entity helps build the connections between individual concepts. These connections, or nodes, are visually represented in Google’s Knowledge Graph and displayed in Knowledge Graph panels. The more connections you create by feeding information to Google and LLM platforms, the wider your Knowledge Graph becomes. This, in turn, is reflected in richer, more detailed Knowledge Graph results for your brand.
How to Measure Brand Entity
It’s hard to measure a brand entity directly since it’s more of a concept, but there are a few methods to gauge its strength. One trick is to measure the Knowledge Graph score. You can use Google’s Knowledge Graph API to get a confidence score and track how it evolves as you take new actions. For a simpler check, tools like the Kalicube test can also provide insights, though the API offers more flexibility for complex research.
Another method is to use a platform like ChatGPT and simply ask what it knows about your entity and its relationships with other concepts. For example, you could start a conversation to probe its understanding of a well-known entity like [suspicious link removed] to see the depth of its knowledge.
This is a conversations that I’ve made for Tesla > https://chatgpt.com/share/68ef588b-d8d4-8006-8683-6a65937de31a
Conclusion
The Brand Entity has become a central part of any effective SEO and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) campaign. Being visible in search engines or on LLM platforms is no longer just about keywords, links, or site architecture. While those elements still matter, the focus has shifted heavily towards the brand itself. You can see many huge brands getting away with SEO practices that would be detrimental to smaller sites, simply because they have a massive brand entity, which Google and LLMs now value more than ever.
