What entity SEO is and why it decides AI answers

Entity SEO is the work of making a machine understand your business as a specific, unambiguous entity — a defined thing with a name, category, attributes and relationships — rather than a fuzzy string of keywords. It has quietly become the foundation of AI visibility: an assistant can only recommend what it can resolve, and resolving you means having a clear, corroborated model of who you are, what you do, and who you serve.

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FAQ

How is entity SEO different from keyword SEO?Keyword SEO optimizes pages to rank for phrases. Entity SEO makes a machine confident about what you are — your category, location, offerings and how you relate to other known entities. AI assistants don't rank ten blue links; they name a few entities they can resolve and trust, which is why entity clarity now matters more than keyword density.

What builds a strong entity?Consistent name-address-category data everywhere you appear, Organization/LocalBusiness schema, a clear and specific description of what you do, and corroboration from independent sources that describe you the same way. The goal is that every source a model reads agrees on who you are — ambiguity is what gets you skipped.

What weakens an entity?Inconsistency and vagueness — different names or categories across listings, a generic description that could fit a hundred companies, and no third-party sources to corroborate your own claims. A model that can't pin down what you are will name a competitor it can.

How do I see how well AI resolves my entity?Run a free Cited scan — it checks the AI-search readiness signals on your website (crawler access, llms.txt, structured data and answer-ready content) and lists the fixes to make first.

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Most businesses score under 40/100 and have no idea. Find your score in 15 seconds, then fix it.

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