Entity extraction for SEO (using Google Images)

In this short guide, we’ll run through a simple process for using Google Images to extract entities. Use them to improve your SEO, content writing and to sound fancy on Twitter.

Entity extraction for SEO

Disclaimer: entities can be a complicated subject. This article won’t even skim the surface of them. In fact, it won’t even try.

The point of this short guide is to show you how you can quickly understand the entities related to your keywords/topics and then do something useful with them.

What is an entity (in SEO)?

An entity is a single, well-defined thing or concept that can be linked to the knowledge graph of search engines like Google .

As defined by Google, an entity is:

“A thing or concept that is singular, unique, well-defined and distinguishable.”

Why should marketers care about entities?

Without going too far down the rabbit hold: understanding and using entities should help content rank better because you are giving Google more data points to  understand it’s relevance.

In plain speak: adding entities = a better understanding of your content.

Less talk, more action:

How to extract entities with Google Images + Sheets

Before we get started, to use this process you will need:

*NOTE: please make a copy of the Google Sheets template. If you request access, you will be ignored 😊

The process is simple:

TLDR: Entity extraction for SEO via Google Images 🔥
  1. use Google images to search your topic
  2. view the entities Google associates with your topic
  3. scrape the entities
  4. process the entities in the spreadsheet template
  5. get keyword data from Ahrefs
  6. view your results

Here are the steps in more detail:

Step 1 – use Google images to search your topic

Search you topic in Google images. For this example, let’s use the topic of project management.

Step 2 – view the entities Google associates with your topic

Pay attention to the filters… these are the entities that Google associate with the topic:

Step 3 – scrape the entities

Now you want to right click on the entity and scrape it (using the Chrome extension).

Now Scraper will open up with the plain-text versions of these entities. Hit the Copy to clipboard button:

Step 4 – process the entities in the spreadsheet template

Now go the the sheet template.

First, you need to add in your topic to Cell A3 (the yellow one):

This will auto-populate the output column using CONCATENATE, but don’t worry about that for now.

Now copy in the entities sat in your clipboard. It should look something like this:

Step 5 – get keyword data from Ahrefs

Time to get some keyword data.

Copy the terms from the OUTPUT column and run them through Ahrefs Keyword Explorer:

Step 6 – view your results

Now you want to select Matching terms from the left panel.

This will show you keyword ideas that contain your target keyword or phrase:

That’s it! Now you have a list of keywords based on the entities that Google understands to be related to your topic.

What’s next?

Obviously this is just a super basic method of topic modelling and pulling entities.

But it is a nice way of understanding the keywords to target in a topic and/or subtopics.

If you want to learn more about entities and SEO, check out Entities: The Element That’s Missing From Your SEO Strategy by Georgios Chasiotis which acts as a great primer and overview of entities.

And if you haven’t already, check out this presentation by Bernard from Clearscope.io:

How SEO works in 2020: An in-depth inquiry into Google’s algorithm

It is essential reading (or is it viewing?) if you want to understand how Google understands content.

Specifically it covers how technical SEO considerations, backlinks, subject matter authority, search query deserves X (associations), and user engagement signals affect Google’s algorithm.

Psssst: Want the up to date 2021 version?

Here’s the How SEO Works in 2021 presentation (now with the evolution topical relevance) + recording on YouTube to get your content fix.

Still want more? Well this was supposed to be just a short article but fine! Here you go:

4 actionable tips for working with entities

Here’s a couple of different ways to play around with this data (and do something useful):

1. Filter in Ahrefs to find low comp/high traffic terms

What is a high search volume and a low difficulty score will depend on your niche a bit here. But an easy way to start finding useful keywords is to use Ahrefs built-in filters.

For the example above, I set it to only show keywords with a minimum search volume of 100 and a max difficulty of 30.

Have a play around, see what terms you can find.

2. Cluster your keywords

If you want work with all the keyword data here, but are feeling pretty overwhelmed, you can throw them into Keyword Insights for clustering.

Keyword Insights is a new tool for grouping keywords and I kind of love it ❤️

Export all the terms from Ahrefs, upload the csv into Keyword Insights and the tool will work it’s magic (or natural linguistic processing + SERP data).

When processed, you will be able to quickly see which pages can rank for multiple terms, terms you can target with a single page, or which need to be broken into multiple pages.

3. Find FAQ content ideas

Back in Ahrefs again, you can hit the Questions toggle to see… well questions related to your entities:

Now you can go build out some dedicated FAQ pages around your topics or improve existing content with them.

4. Find affiliate keywords

Drop in affiliate money terms like ‘best‘ or ‘review‘ into the includes toggle and Ahrefs will show you commercial terms to go after:

Summary

There you have it, how to quickly extract entities using Google images, Ahrefs, a simple Google Sheets template and a chrome extension.

Happy entity extracting (said no one, ever).