Entity SEO: How to Make Google and AI Sure Who You Are
Entity SEO makes search engines and AI tools certain who you are. A worked example from jaspreetnagi.com, plus the steps to fix your own site in one afternoon.
Entity SEO is the work of making search engines and AI tools certain who a person or business is. You keep the name, role and links the same everywhere, and you mark them up with structured data. Once Google and ChatGPT can match you to one entity, they can trust and cite what you publish.
This guide uses my own site as the worked example. When jaspreetnagi.com was connected to wptaskify on 19 October 2026, its structured data described a different entity from the one on the domain. Below is what was wrong, what changed, and how to check your own site in under an hour.
What an entity is
An entity is a thing a machine can identify without guessing: a person, a company, a place, a product. As a string of letters, my name could belong to several people. As an entity it is one person, with one job, one website and a set of profiles that point back to each other.
Search engines and AI assistants both need that certainty before they repeat anything about you. If two pages disagree on your name or role, the safe move for the machine is to say less.
How search moved from strings to things
Google introduced the Knowledge Graph on 16 May 2012, in a post by Amit Singhal titled "Introducing the Knowledge Graph: things, not strings". At launch it held more than 500 million objects and 3.5 billion facts, drawn from public sources such as Freebase, Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook.
AI assistants work the same way when they answer a question about a business. They search, find pages, then decide which entity those pages describe. Clear, consistent signals make that decision easy.
What I found on my own site
The site carried my domain name, but almost every machine-readable signal said something else.
A few template strings still need the same fix, and the sameAs links go in once every profile uses the same name. That order matters: linking out to profiles that disagree with the site only spreads the confusion.
Your entity home: the About page done right
Pick one page that is the official description of you. For a person it is the About page. For a business it is usually the homepage or About page. Then make sure it has:
- One main name, with any other names you use listed as alternate names.
- A one-line role you repeat word for word on every profile.
- A real photo and a plain description of what you do, for whom and where.
- Links to the companies you work for, and links back from their team pages.
- Links to every profile you control.
- A working contact method.
Person or Organization schema?
A personal brand site should describe a Person. A business site should describe an Organization, or a LocalBusiness if customers visit or you serve an area. If you run a company and also have a personal site, describe each one on its own site and connect them with worksFor on the person and founder on the company.
Here is a starting block for a person. Replace every value with your own, and delete any line you can't fill honestly.
<script type="application/ld+json"> { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Person", "@id": "https://yoursite.com/#person", "name": "Your Name", "alternateName": ["Your Full Name", "Nickname"], "url": "https://yoursite.com/about/", "jobTitle": "What you do, in plain words", "worksFor": {"@type": "Organization", "name": "Your Company", "url": "https://yourcompany.com"}, "knowsAbout": ["Local SEO", "Google Business Profile"], "sameAs": [ "https://www.linkedin.com/in/your-handle", "https://www.youtube.com/@your-handle" ] } </script>
Give the block an @id and point every article's author at that same @id. Consistent name and url values across your posts are how Google groups them under one author.
Profiles that confirm you
| Profile | What has to match | Why it counts |
|---|---|---|
| Name, headline, website link | Widely crawled and often cited for people | |
| Company team page | Name, role, link to your site | An independent page that confirms the role |
| YouTube | Channel name, About links | Google often shows video in AI answers |
| GitHub | Name and website field | Useful for anyone who ships software |
| Crunchbase | Founder record | Confirms the link between you and the company |
| Google Business Profile | Business name, category, website | The main local entity record for a business |
How to test it
- Search your name in quotes and check that the first page of results shows your site and your profiles.
- Run your About page through the Rich Results Test or the Schema.org validator and fix any errors.
- If you are technical, query Google's Knowledge Graph Search API with your name. It needs a free API key and shows whether Google holds an entity for you.
- Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity who you are and what you do. Note which sources each one cites.
- Repeat the same checks once a month and keep the answers in a sheet.
Entity SEO for a local business
For a shop, clinic or service business, the main entity record is the Google Business Profile. Everything else should agree with it.
- Use the exact business name from your signboard and registration on the profile, the website, and every directory.
- Keep the address and phone number in the same format everywhere. This is often called NAP consistency.
- Add LocalBusiness schema to the location page, with the same name, address, phone and opening hours.
- Point the profile's website link at the page for that location, not a generic homepage, if you have several branches.
- Claim the same name on Facebook, Instagram and the directories your customers use, such as Justdial or IndiaMART in India and Yelp in the US.
Fix it in one afternoon
- Write down one canonical name and one role line. Decide them once.
- Update the site title, the About page and the homepage to match.
- Add Person or Organization schema to the entity home, with an @id.
- Update LinkedIn, X, YouTube, GitHub and your company team page to the same name and role line.
- Add those profile URLs to the sameAs list, but only the ones that now match.
- Point every article's author markup at the same @id.
- Validate the page in the Rich Results Test and the Schema.org validator.
- Put a monthly reminder in your calendar to search your name and ask the AI tools again.
Where this goes wrong
Different names on different profiles: a nickname here, a surname there. Pick one and use it everywhere.
Organization schema on a personal site, which tells machines the site belongs to a company with your name.
sameAs links to profiles that never mention you or your site. They add nothing and can mislead.
Changing your name or URL without redirects, which splits one entity into two.
Schema that says something the page doesn't. Google's guidelines say markup should describe content that readers can see.
Questions people ask
Do I need a Wikipedia page?
No. Wikipedia has strict notability rules and most small businesses and consultants won't qualify. Consistent profiles, real mentions and a clear entity home do most of the work.
How long until AI tools pick up a change?
Engines that search the web live can reflect it as soon as they recrawl your pages. Answers that come from a model's training data can take months, because that data is refreshed on the model's own schedule.
How is this different from personal branding?
Personal branding is what people think of you. Entity SEO is making sure machines can tell which person you are. Good branding with messy data still leaves search engines guessing.
Is entity SEO only for people?
No. The same steps apply to a company, a clinic or a product. Only the schema type changes.
Will schema alone get me a knowledge panel?
No. Google decides on panels from many sources. Schema helps it read your site, and the other sources have to agree.
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