Latest / Online Reputation Management Podcast / How Important Is Entity SEO for Google's Algorithm? | James Dooley Interviews Dixon Jones (James Dooley Interviews Dixon Jones)
Transcript
- James Dooley: Entity SEO. Is Google an entity-based algorithm? Today I'm joined with Dixon Jones. So, for anyone that doesn't know, Dixon, what is entity SEO? Dixon Jones: My definition of entity SEO, and I wrote a book called Entity SEO, is the idea of associating your brand with the right kind of topics and ideas that match your brand to, to, to your market. Um, so, uh, there is another version of entity SEO, which is, let me make my brand an entity so that the LLMs understand me, uh, and what I stand for. They kind of go to the same place, but, uh, for me, uh, trying fit your brand into a world that the, the, the... Is already understood, uh, is a, is a better jigsaw puzzle than trying to make your previously unknown brand a brand. That will come naturally if you, if you do everything else right. Um, but, but they are, they are two different approaches. They're both important. You know, if you, you know, if you want to go for, you know, the other version, then the objective is get yourself a Wikipedia page, is, you know, get yourself a, uh, um, you know, a standout sort of thing for your brand. But, if you want to go for the, uh, the, the Dixon version, then it's make sure that you consistently talk about, um, the things that your, your product does, your... Stands for. Consistent in that messaging so that when a machine reads a page about, um, a blog post that you wrote over here, it is consistently reinforcing what your brand says over here, uh, or stands for over here. With regards to entities, um, obviously, a lot of people then need to try and start building up everything in the connections around it with... Could be predicates, verbs, attributes. How, how is it for people to understand that, obviously people call it nodes and edges? How... How important is it to understand the edges and building relationships from your entity to the services that you offer or the other entities? How important is it for people not just to understand the entities itself, but the relationships between those entities? I, I, I, I think it definitely helps, but it's not mandatory. I think that, um, the way you see your business is your version of the truth, and you should know whether your barber operates in London or whether it operates in Istanbul. You know, so, so the, these, these kind of edges happen naturally to us anyway. You know, if you, if your barber is in London, then it's in London, you know, and so you know the edge. It's... And the relationship between barber and, uh, and London. Uh, so naturally we have this. We just need to formalise it a little bit. And where we need to be careful though is that we don't, um, go beyond the concept of an entity too far. So what I mean by that is let's say you're, you're an outdoor clothing company and you're, um, talking about hill walking and you're talking about, um, uh, hiking. Now, to me those are exactly the same thing. Hill walking and hiking are the same thing. Um, maybe they aren't, but, but I... But, but let's say for, for sake of, uh, sake of this that they're, they're, they're synonyms. Um, so you don't necessarily need to create a page about hill walking and another one about hiking. You need to... You may want to bring those kind of phrases into the same, same page, but you will just be cannibalising your content around this synonym if you create a page on both of those subjects. Uh, so, um, for me, uh, it's, it's about defining those topics, you know, once and, and not having synonyms and then writing around that subject. So, you could use hill walking or, uh, hiking or rock climbing. No, perhaps, uh, rock climbing is probably a different definition. But you can use these different ideas, but you need to stay consistent to your message because you're talking about, about this thing. Um, so, I think that it... You don't have to understand the edges and the verbs perfectly, but you do need to do, sort of, kind of define them for yourself. Uh, so, define your business in terms of, you know, my, my, my barber is in Camden or located in Camden. Uh, my barber focuses on Turkish-style, uh, haircuts or, you know, etc. So, you can, you can sit there and, and put these things down. That effectively gives you, uh, what I call entity pairs. So, you've got... If you want to talk about barber, then you maybe want to talk about shaving, you want to talk about haircuts, you want to talk about, uh, you know, um, frequency. I don't know, whatever, whatever the important things are. So that you cover all the bases for being an authority on that subject. Uh, and some, some topics relate to barbers much more closely than others. So, you want the ones that are slightly close and, and connected. Uh, but you also want to throw out the ones that are not related to your business. So, you know, if you're a barber or a hairdresser, you don't want to sort of talk about, you know, women's hairdressing. That's too far from your semantic truth. Um, so, you need something about those edges. You can define it properly and probably a, a really good SEO would. Uh, and so, we use kind of structured databases like Wikipedia or Wikidata to, to give that structure. Um, but, uh, you don't have to follow that structure. What you need to do is be confident in your relationships between topics. So, next question is, is Google an entity-based algorithm? James Dooley: Is Google an entity-based algorithm? Dixon Jones: Mhm. Well, Google's a big beast, isn't it, James? Uh, so, um, in part, it's an entity-based algorithm. In other parts, it's, uh, still, you know, all based on PageRank. Uh, so, I think there's a... There's, there's so many different moving parts to Google. But, we can see many areas where Google is clearly entity-focused. I mean, they, they call it in their documentation topic... Topic-focused most of the time when I... And that's a, that's a, a slight challenge for us all because sometimes they're talking about topics generically and sometimes they're talking about topics as a synonym for the word entity. Um, and an entity is something that fits in a database as a concept. So, uh, but there are a, a dozen ways where we know that it's been, it's been, um, structured. Of course, the Knowledge Panel, uh, KG IDs. Uh, look down at the links, you'll see another thing where James is talking about that. Uh, you know, uh, shows that they have databases for concepts. Also, in the Google leak, uh, a few years back, um, and still you can still look up things in the Google leak on DixonJones.com, because, uh, but I think it was released by, uh, Rand Fishkin and, uh, and Mike King and stuff where they, where, where this information came out into the public domain. Um, and you can start to see, you know, entities being mentioned all over the place. So, when they look at a page, they're stripping out and looking at entities and stuff like that. So, there's another, another example. Um, you know, when it comes to, um, shopping carts and things, it's all about entities. Completely different sort of concept, but basically you're lis... Physically uploading entities, um, uh, and an entity being a product in your store. So, uh, so, yes, absolutely, they do use entities all over the place. Uh, but they also use other signals as well. Um, so, not exclusively, but yes, there's a big function of entities. Um, and, and, and the, the, the, the research papers as well, uh, also, uh, have, you know, talk about entities as well. Google's papers as well. James Dooley: So, with regards to an entity-based algorithm or entity SEO, what, what's a few things that you feel that most SEOs don't seem to follow that they should be to try to, A, define the entity better or get them start being connected to the services that they offer in a better way? Dixon Jones: At a page level, I think using Semantifier is really, uh, an interesting thing. So, uh, that's kind of thing that InLinks does, is that it'll take a page, look at all the things you're talking about on that page, map them onto Wikipedia URLs, uh, or, you know, to, to defined ideas, and then create schema that says, "Right, these are the main things that this page is about." In the case you don't know what this is, search engine, here's the, the, the Wikipedia URL that defines what it's about. And it mentions these ideas. So, it turns what might be a quite jumbled amount of text into a sort of like, uh, I, I, I kind of look at it as tumbleweed, uh, of a, of, of a conversation on your, on your content to, uh, you know, to a cactus where it's really obvious the important bits that are on that page. That helps to define a page very, very quickly. Um, and if, and if, and if an algorithm that you, whether you build it yourself or use, use, uh, InLinks is, um, uh, if it doesn't come out with the right topics at the top of that kind of list, then you probably have written your page a bit, um, a bit incorrectly. Uh, so, I think, um, Semantifier is particularly useful. It's also useful at a sort of personal level or an organisational level as well. It helps a machine relate to, uh, to, to something it might not understand on a page to something that it does understand elsewhere on the web. James Dooley: With regard... You mentioned e-commerce. I want, I want to, I want to flip it now for a different type of site. So, let's look at local SEO. And suppose trying to rank for plumbing in Manchester. Do you feel that using the same kind of... The way you're saying there about it maps out and creates the schema? Should that be being used on a plumbing in Manchester page and having that say the Wikipedia page for this is what I'm on about with Greater Manchester and the location, and this is what we're on about when we mention plumbing? Should all that be being mapped out and is Google looking at the schema on that at a local level as well? Dixon Jones: I, I believe so. So, I, I believe that if you tell Google that this page is about... It is about this concept on, on Wikipedia for plumbing and this page on the, on Wikipedia for Manchester, I think that it absolutely has a direct relationship between that Wikipedia article and something in its own Knowledge Graph. So, they've got their own Knowledge Graph of different ideas and different concepts. But where that concept has a match with Wikipedia, it's already mapped. So, you can easily use Wikipedia or Wikidata or probably a bunch of other databases as well to communicate what you mean by that idea, and it will be instantly picked up by, by Google's Knowledge Graph and understand the, the relationship. Um, so, that's what I believe. And I may or may not be... It's not something that, you know, publicly Google have stated. So, but, but certainly we have seen multiple... You know, we, we, we, we see that when you define things well in that way, um, you're getting, you're getting a better quality of visitors to your website. And again, as, as, as, as I mentioned on a previous episode or another episode, it may not be that you get more visitors. You just get better visitors. James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. And then within backlinks, PageRank, people talk about metrics like, um, let's say with Majestic it could be Trust Flow. With Ahrefs it could be DR. With Moz it could be DA. Do you think there's anything related to entity strength and what you should be trying to do? Like where people used to try to, not that it was a direct ranking factor, but increase the DR of a site and the higher the site authority that the, the website had with PageRank. Do you feel there's a... You should be trying to strengthen your entity and that would then improve the whole website rankings? Dixon Jones: Yeah. So, for a while, shortly before the famous, the infamous Matt Cutts left, he talked a couple of times about a concept called Topical PageRank. And, uh, and I think that that probably, uh, is not too dissimilar to the concept of Topical Trust Flow. Uh, which is something that, that's in the Majestic system, which starts with the theory that if a link is about... If a page on the internet is about thing A, thing B and thing C and there's three links on the page, um... Well, is, is about thing A and there's three links on the page and a third of that link goes out to the next link and says it's in the context of thing A. So now it comes to another page that's about other stuff and things and there are links out. So, just like the propagation of the PageRank algorithm, if you start with an idea of what all the initial pages are about and then propagate that, you can then get an idea of the topical context of where links are coming from. So, I think there is value in several ways of, of linking, getting links that are in context, um, and, uh, I think in doing so you strengthen, uh, your authority around a particular topic. And I think similarly getting links that are not contextually relevant actually dilutes your authority around the subject that you wanted to, to, to be known for. James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. Anyone who's listening to this, do you agree? Is Google an entity-based algorithm? How important is entity SEO? I strongly recommend checking out the link in the description where I'll go into detail about entity AI SEO and how important entities are specific for the large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and many, many other large language models. Big thanks. It's been an absolute pleasure. I hope you like the episode on entity SEO. Thanks, cheers.