Resolution assessment
How engines currently identify your brand, what they think you do, and where they confuse you with something else. Frequently the first time anyone has checked.
What an entity is, and why engines prefer them
An entity is a distinct thing an engine knows about — a company, a person, a product — with properties and relationships attached. Engines match queries to entities rather than to text, because a resolved entity carries facts they can state confidently instead of strings they must guess about.
The practical consequence is a threshold rather than a gradient. Either an engine is confident which thing you are, or it is not. Below that threshold your content can be excellent and still not be used to answer a question about your category, because attributing it to you would be a guess.
Three signal types do most of the resolution work. Consistent naming across everything you control. Structured data declaring what you are and how you relate to other entities. And corroboration from independent reference sources that engines already treat as authoritative about organisations.
Ambiguity is more common than teams realise, and it is usually self-inflicted. A trading name that differs from the legal entity, an abbreviation used internally that leaked into the site, a name shared with a larger company in another sector, or a rebrand that never fully propagated. Each fragments your signal.
The compounding benefit is that entity work pays across every surface at once. The same resolution that lets Google attribute a snippet to you lets an assistant name you in an answer and lets a knowledge panel exist at all. It is the least glamorous work in the pillar and frequently the highest leverage.
What the programme covers
The programme covers an assessment of how engines currently resolve your brand, a canonical naming and description standard, Organization and related structured data implemented properly, corroboration across the reference sources that engines already trust, and tracking of how the resolution improves.
Canonical naming standard
One agreed name and one agreed description, applied everywhere you control, so variants stop accumulating separate and weaker sets of associations.
Organization schema
Properly implemented Organization markup with @id, sameAs relationships and the properties that let engines connect your entity across sources.
Reference source corroboration
The independent sources engines consult about organisations, corrected and aligned — because self-declaration alone does not resolve an entity.
Relationship mapping
How your brand relates to your people, products, parent company and category, declared explicitly rather than left for an engine to infer.
Resolution tracking
Whether engines now describe you accurately and consistently, tested across surfaces, so improvement is demonstrated rather than assumed.
How the programme runs
The programme runs over six to ten weeks: establish how engines currently resolve you, fix the naming inconsistency that you already control, implement the structured data declaring your relationships, then pursue corroboration in the reference sources engines already consult about organisations.
- 01
Test current resolution
Ask the engines directly what your brand is, across surfaces. Where they hedge, describe you wrongly or conflate you with another company, that is the gap to close.
→ A documented resolution baseline
- 02
Standardise naming
One canonical name and description applied across your site, profiles and documentation. Free, fast, and usually the largest single improvement available.
→ Consistent naming across owned properties
- 03
Declare the relationships
Organization schema with @id and sameAs, connecting your entity to your people, products and the profiles engines already associate with you.
→ Validated entity markup
- 04
Earn corroboration
Alignment across the independent reference sources engines consult about organisations, because self-declaration on its own does not resolve an entity.
→ Corrected third-party reference entries
- 05
Re-test and report
Ask the engines again and record whether the description is now accurate and consistent. Resolution is binary enough that this is unusually easy to demonstrate.
→ Before-and-after resolution report
Keyword optimisation compared with entity optimisation
Keyword work makes a page relevant to a query. Entity work makes your brand a thing an engine can state facts about. They operate at different levels, and entity weakness caps what keyword work can achieve on any surface where an answer must be attributed to someone.
| Keyword optimisation | Entity optimisation | |
|---|---|---|
| Unit of work | The page and its target query | The organisation as a known thing |
| What it produces | Relevance to a search term | Confidence about facts and relationships |
| Main signals | Content, links, on-page targeting | Naming consistency, schema, corroboration |
| Failure mode | Ranks below a better-optimised page | Engine declines to name you at all |
| Surfaces affected | Classic rankings | Every surface where an answer is attributed |
| Time to effect | Weeks | Weeks for naming, months for corroboration |
Signals you need this now
You need this when engines confuse your brand with another company, when you have no knowledge panel despite being well established, when a rebrand has not propagated, or when your own properties refer to the company by several different names.
- Engines confuse your brand with a similarly named company
- You have no knowledge panel despite being well established
- A rebrand has not propagated to how engines describe you
- Your own properties use several versions of the company name
- Engines describe what you do inaccurately
- Your site has no Organization markup, or it is incomplete
- Assistants know your category but never name you in it
What clients see
Naming standardisation shows within weeks and is free to do. Corroboration across reference sources takes months, because it depends on third parties updating. Resolution is close to binary, so improvement is unusually easy to demonstrate by simply asking the engines again.
Where this fits
Related AEO services
Common in these sectors
The adjacent disciplines
Deciding between options
Questions about entity SEO
Each answer is written to stand alone in 40 to 60 words — the shape an AI Overview or Perplexity citation lifts. Ships with FAQPage schema.
What is entity SEO?
Work that makes search engines certain what your brand is, what it does, and how it relates to other known things. Engines attribute answers to resolved entities rather than to text strings, so ambiguity about your identity limits every surface at once.
Why do engines confuse us with another company?
Usually because your signals are fragmented. A trading name differing from the legal entity, an abbreviation used inconsistently, or a name shared with a larger company in another sector all split your evidence across several weak candidate entities rather than one strong one.
Can we get a knowledge panel from this work?
Sometimes, and we will not promise it. Panels appear when an engine is sufficiently confident about an entity and considers it notable enough to display. Entity work makes that outcome more likely; it does not entitle you to one.
Is Organization schema enough on its own?
No. Self-declaration establishes what you claim to be; corroboration from independent reference sources establishes that engines should believe it. Schema without corroboration resolves weakly, which is why the programme includes both halves.
How does this help with AI assistants?
Considerably, and it is the same mechanism. An assistant that cannot resolve your brand confidently will not name it in an answer. Entity work is one of the few things that pays across classic rankings, answer surfaces and generative citations simultaneously.
We rebranded recently. Does that make this urgent?
Yes. Engines retain a previous name for a long time, and every month without consistent reinforcement extends that. Rebrands are the case where entity work produces the clearest and fastest measurable improvement.
Find out whether this is your constraint.
Thirty minutes with a senior strategist. We pull your live visibility while we talk and tell you plainly whether a entity SEO is what you need — or whether your problem sits somewhere else.