Entity-based link building, explained from Google's own docs: what the Knowledge Graph is, how links and anchor context are used, and what is only theory.
Entity-based link building means earning links and mentions that help search engines understand what your brand is and what topics it belongs to, not just links that add to a count. Google has confirmed the building blocks: it keeps a Knowledge Graph of real-world entities and the relationships between them, it uses links to judge relevance, and it reads anchor text and the words around a link. None of the Google pages cited here describes a rule that scores a backlink by how two entities relate. Here is what is confirmed, what is a reasonable reading of it, and how to put it into practice.
What an entity is, in Google's words
Google introduced the Knowledge Graph in 2012 as a model "that understands real-world entities and their relationships to one another: things, not strings." The example was a search for Taj Mahal, which could mean the monument, a musician or a casino. The Knowledge Graph lets Google tell which one you mean.
Google's help page on how the Knowledge Graph works says its facts "come from a variety of sources that compile factual information", and that knowledge panels "are created automatically by Google Search Algorithm when there is enough information available on the open web."
By Google's account, a knowledge panel is created automatically once there is enough information about an entity on the open web, and that can include a business.
What Google says about links and context
Google's link best practices open with this: "Google uses links as a signal when determining the relevancy of pages and to find new pages to crawl." The same page says anchor text tells people and Google something about the page it points to, and advises: "the words before and after links matter, so pay attention to the sentence as a whole."
Google's page on how it ranks results adds that "one of the factors used to determine quality is understanding if other prominent websites link or refer to the content." Note the "or refer to": the sentence covers references as well as links.
Those are the confirmed parts. Links help Google judge relevance, the text in and around a link tells Google what the linked page is about, and links and references from prominent sites are a quality signal.
What is theory, not confirmed
None of the Google pages cited here describe a link being weighted by how two entities relate, or a link from a low-scoring site in your field being worth more than one from a high-scoring site outside it. Any precise rule of that kind goes beyond what these pages document, and is theory built on the pieces above.
For third-party scores such as Domain Authority and Domain Rating, our post on whether Google uses Domain Authority explains what each one measures.
How to build links with entities in mind
From here to the end of the post, the advice is our own approach, built on the confirmed points above, not a method Google publishes.
- Make your brand easy to identify. Use the same business name, description and contact details everywhere you are listed. On your own home page, Google's Organization structured data guide says the markup can help Google better understand your organization's administrative details and "disambiguate your organization in search results." Our sameAs schema guide shows how to point that markup to your official profiles.
- Get listed where your field is listed. Reputable directories and profiles in your industry connect your name to your category, and can help people find you. Our guide to niche vs general directories covers which ones are worth the time.
- Look for links from sites about your topic. A link from a page about your subject sits in text that describes what you do. That is the context Google says it reads.
- Write descriptive, natural anchors and context. Google says good anchor text is "descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to the page" it sits on and the page it links to. When you supply text for a listing or a guest post, describe what you do in plain words. Do not force keywords into the anchor: Google's spam policies list "links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites" as link spam.
- Count mentions, not only links. Because Google refers to prominent sites that "link or refer to" content, an unlinked mention on a prominent site in your field may still count. Our post on backlinks vs brand mentions looks at how the two compare in AI search.
The short version
Google confirms that it models entities, that links help it judge relevance, and that the words around a link matter. None of the pages cited here describes a scoring rule for entity links. In practice, the steps above come down to a consistent brand, listings and links in your own field, and plain, descriptive context around every link.
