What Are Entities, Attributes and Values in Semantic SEO?

Entities, attributes, and values are the three building blocks of structured knowledge. An entity is a distinct real-world thing (a person, place, product, or concept). An attribute is a named property of that entity. A value is the specific fact assigned to that attribute. Together they form the Entity-Attribute-Value (EAV) model that underpins Google's Knowledge Graph and all modern semantic search systems.

What Is an Entity?

An entity is any distinct, real-world thing that can be unambiguously identified. Entities include people, organisations, places, products, events, and concepts. The key property of an entity is disambiguation: "Apple" becomes an entity only when a system determines whether it refers to the fruit, Apple Inc., or Apple Records.

What Are Attributes?

An attribute is a named property of an entity. For a LocalBusiness entity, attributes include name, address, telephone, openingHours, priceRange, serviceArea, and aggregateRating. Attributes are the slots into which facts fit. The same attribute vocabulary (Schema.org) can be shared across millions of different businesses.

What Are Values?

A value is the specific fact assigned to an attribute for a particular entity. Values can be strings, numbers, booleans, dates, URLs, or nested entity objects. Values are what makes one entity record distinct from another of the same type. Consistency of values across multiple indexed sources is a key signal for entity confidence in the Knowledge Graph.

The EAV Model and Schema.org

Schema.org structured data is a direct implementation of the EAV model. The @type field declares the entity class. Property keys are attributes. Property values are values. Adding JSON-LD structured data makes the EAV triple explicit and machine-readable, removing the need for search engines to infer entity facts from unstructured prose.

SEO Implications

• Declare your primary entity type explicitly using Schema.org @type in JSON-LD
• Complete as many recommended attributes as possible for your entity type
• Keep attribute values consistent across your website, Google Business Profile, social profiles, and directories
• Add sameAs links pointing to Wikidata, Wikipedia, and other authoritative databases
• Write content that states attribute-value pairs in natural language prose as well as in structured markup
• Link entities to each other using nested schema objects and internal links to build a connected entity graph