Smaller personal and corporate brands can carve out a place by working smarter. Focus on these three key areas:
Entity understanding
Ensure Google and other big tech platforms understand your brand.
Your primary KPI today is achieving a Google Knowledge Panel. Without this foundational understanding, you’re not even in the game.
Brand credibility
Build credibility using N-E-E-A-T-T principles and establishing topical authority.
Your KPI here is appearing in “best of” entity lists.
Branded niche content
Develop niche content tailored to your funnel.
Your KPI is citations in Google’s AI Overviews.
If algorithms don’t understand your brand, they cannot evaluate your credibility.
Without being perceived as a more credible solution than competitors, your visibility in search results will gradually decline.
Entity understanding is the cornerstone of future success. So the most important brand KPI today is building an information-rich Knowledge Panel.
However, be cautious about building your entity understanding primarily through Google and its properties.
While these platforms are excellent for feeding data directly to Google– and you should leverage them – they only indirectly influence other engines like ChatGPT, Bing, Meta, Alexa, Siri and Perplexity.
Over-relying on Google’s extended walled garden risks leaving your brand behind in broader search and assistive engine ecosystems.
9. Transform how you signal entity information
“Google accumulates information through aggregation because single points of truth have proven to be unreliable”
– Jarno van Driel, schema markup advocate
Schema markup is not a magic bullet for entity optimization, getting into the Knowledge Graph or securing a Knowledge Panel.
Consider the fate of the keywords meta tag: search engines stopped accepting publishers as the single source of truth for keywords long before it was officially abandoned in 2009.
Today, Google’s knowledge algorithms are designed to corroborate information rather than rely solely on the publisher’s input.
From an entity understanding perspective, schema markup serves as an explicit confirmation of what knowledge algorithms infer from implicit semantics. It’s just one small part of the puzzle.
To validate facts before presenting them in search results or for fact-checking in AI models, Google evaluates three implicit signals:
Its understanding of webpage content using LLMs and SLMs.
Relationships to other known entities and insights derived from cohort analysis.
Corroboration from multiple trusted sources across the web.
Even a flawless schema markup won’t guarantee inclusion in the Knowledge Graph or a Knowledge Panel if your information isn’t supported by clear, complete, on-page content and corroborated by multiple sources.
Your website plays a crucial role as the entity home. It’s Google’s primary source of information about the entity from the entity itself.
This data is then corroborated in a process called reconciliation. (John Mueller has confirmed that the entity home + reconciliation approach is correct.)
To implement this effectively, adopt a hub-spoke-wheel model:
Hub: Build a solid entity home with clear, well-structured information.
Spokes: Use links (or sameAs in schema) to point to corroborative sources.
Wheel: Ensure all corroborative information is clear, consistent and aligned.
10. Master the art of entity optimization
By 2025, a knowledge panel on Google will be the baseline requirement for competing in search.
However, entity optimization for search goes far beyond this foundation.
It involves a wide array of strategies designed to increase visibility in search, educate knowledge algorithms and feed LLMs.
Here are some examples of entity optimization you might not yet be considering:
Product/service entities: Use schema and your Google Merchant feed to leverage product entities now. In the long term, aim to control your product entities within the Knowledge Graph.
WebPage entities: Hyperlinks between webpages create explicit entity relationships – keep doing that. But to stay competitive, start building implicit relationship-based links for topics, people, products and corporations (e.g., isReferencePage and isRelated attributes).
Entity mentions: Pay attention to mentions of known entities. These function as linkless links and are critical for relationship building.
Topic entities: Establish connections between topic entities (e.g., SEO, economics, engineering) and your person, organization or WebPage entities.
Mutual entity support: Strengthen relationships between related entities. For example, credibility for a Person entity boosts the associated Corporation entity, and vice versa. The same applies to relationships between books and their authors.
Cohort entities: According to a Google leak in May 2024, Google uses algorithmically defined cohort entities to group entities like Person, Corporation, Topic, CreativeWork and Event. Entity optimization requires ensuring your entity belongs to the correct cohort.
Entity optimization is a massive opportunity for building a network of relationships that dominate the SERPs. The solution lies in the hub-spoke-wheel model outlined in the previous point.
11. Rethink how you build credibility
Links are valuable but outdated. Link building is now just a small part of the puzzle for businesses or individuals with long-term ambitions (see Point 2).
Google’s ability to identify content creator and publisher entities on a massive scale and reliably connect them to pages and topics has made links secondary.
If you still have doubts, these articles might convince you:
Here’s what you can do:
Amplify existing N-E-E-A-T-T signals
Focus on maximizing the notability, experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness, and transparency you already have.
Audit your career or corporate history to identify achievements that demonstrate these qualities.
Then, create content on your Entity Home website to present this information clearly and credibly.
Examples:
Instead of simply stating “I was CEO of WTPL Music for 9 years,” enhance your N-E-E-A-T-T by adding, “As CEO of WTPL Music, I signed deals with EMI and Warner.”
Similarly, for UpToTen: “As CEO, I collaborated with Sir Tony Robinson, signed deals with Lagardere, and secured a production deal with ITV International that aired on Playhouse Disney.”
Prioritize understandability and credibility
These pages are not about ranking but about ensuring the information is easily understood and highly credible.
Include outlinks
Link to authoritative third-party webpages that corroborate your claims. Hoarding link equity is counterproductive; outlinks enhance credibility and are the key to a healthy entity digital footprint.
Focus on amplification before expansion
Fully optimize and amplify your existing N-E-E-A-T-T signals before building out new ones.
For most individuals and corporations, this process will take months.
Forget outdated metrics
Metrics like domain authority, brand authority and other link-based measures are relics of the past.
While they may serve as “eye candy” for those clinging to outdated link-based approaches, they hold little weight in a world dominated by AI.
To achieve sustainable, cross-platform results, optimize webpages to reinforce understanding, build credibility and enhance deliverability.
12. Design content for conversational discovery
ChatGPT has made a significant impact but hasn’t become the “SERP killer” many feared.
Instead, it has normalized conversational interactions between users and machines, centering on the acquisition funnel. Focus on that.
To succeed, optimize for the off-site, conversational, no-click SERP.
This means moving beyond keywords to focus on:
Jumping off queries.
Research paths.
Integrating into the machine-driven acquisition funnel conversation.
Whether on Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Alexa or other AI-powered tools, these systems aim to guide users efficiently to solutions.
By offering content that clarifies the funnel with detailed, accurate information and follow-up answers, you increase your visibility across the funnel, enhancing your personal or corporate brand.
Here is an illustrative example on Bing Copilot:
Note: Fabrice Canel suggested 18 months ago that SEOs should consider optimizing for Bing Copilot’s conversational funnel.
Taking this advice, I applied the strategies shared here to create impactful results in under a year.
13. Expand your visibility across platforms
“Search is now multi-modal and multi-channel. Users can now search using text, voice, images and even video and its becoming more and more conversational. Continued investment in optimising the entities for your brand and your key subject matter experts will pay dividends wherever search engines, chatbots or other apps are utilising LLMs.”
– Laurence O’Toole, CEO, Authoritas
Being a one-trick “Google Pony” is no longer an option. Relying solely on traditional search rankings is a failing strategy.
While Google remains dominant in search, search itself is losing its grip as the primary interface.
You must strategize for search, answer and assistive (SAA) engines:
Search engines: AI-powered SERP features like Google’s AI Overview and Bing’s Generative Search.
Answer engines: Platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google Learn About.
Assistive engines: Integrated tools like CoPilot on PCs, platforms like Zapier, and software such as Canva, Gmail, Excel, Alexa, and Siri.
To succeed, embrace and educate all the bots.
A strategic framework for modern SEO
Here’s a framework to ensure every action tactic and strategy you implement has a meaningful impact.
Do not read it line by line or one option per column. This is a multidimensional grid designed to guide strategic thinking.
To highlight the limitations of traditional SEO, note its simplistic focus on content deliverability in search.
Kalicube’s three by three is-it-useful action grid
Start on the left and ask yourself:
Which entities does my action support?
For those entities, what does my action improve?
Which technologies does this action serve?
Any single action (site speed improvements, content creation, transcripts, visuals, etc.) can support one or more elements in each category.
By systematically working from left to right, every action contributes positively to control, influence, and visibility in modern SEO.
Traditional SEO focused on a single combination: content → deliverability → search.
However, modern SEO requires a broader approach.
Actions should:
Support one or all of content, content creator or content publisher.
Optimize for one or more of understandability, credibility or deliverability.
Improve performance in one or more of search, chatbots or Knowledge Graphs.
While some exceptional actions may serve all nine areas, most will benefit four to six.
No action should serve fewer than one in each column.
Conclusion
SEOs must embrace a paradigm shift, moving beyond traditional search-centric strategies to a holistic approach that integrates multimodal AI.
Success now requires simultaneous optimization for search engines, large language models and knowledge graphs, with a focus on improving understandability, credibility and deliverability for content, content creators and content publishers.
The future of information retrieval and problem-solving is shifting away from user-driven, search-based interactions to seamless integrations across platforms and interfaces.
With the right mindset and strategies, SEOs can adapt their skill sets to achieve results far beyond Google search, tapping into the potential of conversational AI and integrated AI technologies.
To thrive in this new era, SEOs must move beyond content-level, search-based tactics.
Every tool and platform– whether Google Search, ChatGPT, Alexa or Siri – relies on three core technologies: search engines, LLMs and knowledge graphs.
Every action you take must align with these technologies by enhancing at least one of understandability, credibility or deliverability for content, creators or publishers.
This is the path forward for modern SEO.
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