Note: Not to be confused with Entity Pillar Pages, which are the pages on your Entity Home Website that declare entity facets for algorithmic recognition. Cornerstone Entities are about entity relationships in the knowledge graph ecosystem; Entity Pillar Pages are about website architecture on your own property.

It’s a virtuous cycle. If I can improve an AI engine’s understanding of my Cornerstone Entities, I will improve an AI engine’s understanding of me. And if I can improve an AI engine’s understanding of me, I will inevitably improve an AI engine’s understanding of them. That bidirectional flow is why Cornerstone Entities are the starting point for Entity Optimisation, not a side concern.

What are Cornerstone Entities in SEO?

When working on Entity Optimisation, you will have one Focus Entity which is the main basis of your work: a person, a company, a music group, a product… Cornerstone Entities are the foundational entities within the ecosystem of the primary entity.

The concept is similar to cornerstone content in search engine optimization (SEO): you can build on top of these and they will support your work on peripheral entities. Cornerstone Entities are those that have the closest, strongest, and longest relationships with the Focus Entity, and building AI engine confidence in those relationships cements an AI engine’s understanding of who you are and what you do.

For a company like Kalicube®, which is the Focus Entity, the Cornerstone Entities are Kalicube® (the company itself), Jason Barnard (the CEO and founder), Kalicube Pro™ (the SaaS), Kalicube® Academy, Kalicube® Tuesdays (the Livestream Event Series), and a few key people within the company.

For Yoast as a focus entity, the Cornerstone Entities are Yoast (the company itself), the Yoast SEO plugin, and founder Joost de Valk and CEO Thijs de Valk.

For a person like myself Jason Barnard, the Cornerstone Entities would include Jason Barnard, Boowa and Kwala (because my wife and I created them and they became popular), Kalicube® (the company I founded), The Barking Dogs (my music group from the 1990s), “With Jason Barnard” (my podcast), and The Fundamentals of Brand SERPs for Business (my book).

So, use the relationships between your Focus Entity and its Cornerstone Entities to build AI engine understanding. The cycle is virtuous in both directions: strengthening the algorithm’s confidence in a Cornerstone Entity strengthens its confidence in the Focus Entity, and vice versa.

How Do Cornerstone Entities Fit Into Knowledge Panel Management?

In the context of Knowledge Panel management and AI representation broadly, Cornerstone Entities are absolutely key to a clear and accurate Knowledge Panel and to how AI systems represent you. Google is a child and it understands and learns in a manner that is very similar to a child. It can only learn something new if it can understand a relationship to something it already understands: the closer, stronger and longer, the better.

If we can communicate clearly to the child multiple close, strong and long-term relationships with entities it already understands well, Google the child is MUCH more likely to understand and be confident in this new information.

“If I can improve an AI engine’s understanding of the Cornerstone Entities, I will improve an AI engine’s understanding of the Focus Entity. And if I can improve an AI engine’s understanding of the Focus Entity, I will inevitably improve an AI engine’s understanding of the Cornerstone Entities.”

These Cornerstone Entities are also often the best candidates to be included in a Knowledge Panel and so, working to improve its understanding of those, you will enrich the Knowledge Panel of the Focus Entity…. And probably add the Focus Entity to the Cornerstone Entities’ Knowledge Panel too. Beautiful.

A well-managed Knowledge Panel on a Brand SERP is a must for any company - it conveys a positive, professional image to your audience and shows that Google and AI systems know who you are, what you do, and what audience you serve.