What is an Optimized Entity, and How Do I Optimize Entities in Entity Hub?

Modified on Fri, 28 Aug at 2:59 PM

This article explains what an Optimized Entity is, why the optimized status matters, and how to mark entities as optimized in Entity Hub.

An Optimized Entity is an entity you have identified as strategically important and chosen to actively manage.
Optimizing entities enables focused performance reporting in Entity Performance Analytics, makes entities eligible for Topics, and helps you prioritize entity governance.
After reading this article, you will understand which entities to optimize and how to mark an entity as optimized from within the Entity View Report or the Entity Manager.

Context, Required Knowledge, & Why This Article?

As you use External and Internal Entity Linking, Schema App identifies entities across your website automatically. However, not every entity mentioned on your site is equally important to your organization. Some entities may represent your brand, products, services, or areas of expertise, while others may only be passing references.

Optimized Entities let you identify the entities that matter most so you can manage them more closely and access deeper reporting about their performance. Optimized status can be applied to entities identified through External Entity Linking, Internal Entity Linking, or both.

Problem & Objectives

Problem: Schema App may identify many entities across a website, making it difficult to distinguish strategically important entities from entities that do not require ongoing reporting or management.

Objective: This article will help you understand the purpose of Optimized Entities, determine which entities should be optimized, and mark entities as optimized in Entity Hub.

What is an Optimized Entity?

An Optimized Entity is an entity you have identified as strategically important and chosen to actively manage. This is similar to identifying a high-priority keyword that you want to monitor in traditional SEO.

Marking an entity as optimized helps focus your entity reporting and management activities on the concepts that are most important to your organization.

What Does Optimizing an Entity Enable?

Performance tracking in Entity Performance Analytics (EPA): Clicks, impressions, and click-through rate (CTR) are only available for entities marked as optimized. This keeps reporting focused on the entities you actively want to monitor rather than every entity Schema App identifies across your site.
Eligibility for Topics: Only optimized entities can be grouped into Topics. Building a topical structure therefore starts by optimizing the entities that belong to the Topic.
Closer governance in Entity Manager: Optimized entities are typically the entities you will revisit to refine labels, review SameAs matches, and adjust relationships as your content evolves.

Optimized status can be applied to entities identified through External Entity Linking, Internal Entity Linking, or both.

How to Optimize an Entity

You can mark an entity as optimized from either Entity Reports or Entity Manager.

Option 1: Optimize an Entity from Entity Reports

Go to Entity Reports and locate the entity in the Entity View table.
In the Status column, click the star icon (☆) next to the entity.
Confirm that the star fills in (★), indicating that the entity is now optimized.

To remove optimized status, click the filled star (★) again.

Option 2: Optimize an Entity from Entity Manager

Go to Entity Manager and select the entity from the sidebar.
Click Edit Entity in the toolbar.
Use the Is In Scheme dropdown to set the entity to Optimized.
Click Done to save your changes.

Choosing Which Entities to Optimize

You do not need to optimize every entity Schema App identifies. Because optimized entities are the entities you will report on and actively manage, keeping your optimized entity set focused makes Entity Performance Analytics reporting and your Topic structure more meaningful.

Prioritize entities that are:

Central to your brand, products, services, or areas of expertise.
Relevant to the keywords and topics you most want to be found for.
Identified frequently across your website, such as entities with a higher URL count in Entity Reports.

Conclusion

Optimized Entities help you distinguish strategically important entities from the broader set of entities Schema App identifies across your website. Marking an entity as optimized enables Entity Performance Analytics reporting, makes the entity eligible for Topics, and helps you prioritize ongoing entity management.

Once you have identified the entities that matter most to your organization, you can optimize them from either Entity Reports or Entity Manager and use them as the foundation for more focused entity reporting and topical organization.