One of the most frustrating problems in SEO is when a client’s website fails to show up for searches of their own brand name. This fundamental visibility issue strikes at the heart of digital marketing, but the solutions often lie in overlooked basics rather than advanced tactics.
For more insights on technical SEO fundamentals, check out our comprehensive guide to technical SEO auditing.
The Entity Foundation Problem
During my recent Unscripted SEO podcast interview with Jason Barnard of Kalicube.com, we explored how modern search engines understand brands as entities. As Jason explained: “If it doesn’t understand who you are, it can’t attach credibility signals, EEAT, or I call them NEET, N-E-E-A-T-T. It can’t attach those credibility signals to something it doesn’t understand. So that understandability is the foundation. If you don’t have that, you’re not even in the game.”
This insight reveals why many brand visibility issues stem from a lack of clear entity signals rather than traditional ranking factors. For more on entity optimization strategies, see our guide on local SEO entity building.
The About Page as Entity Home
Jason emphasized a critical starting point that many overlook: “The very first thing to do is look at your About page on your company website or your personal website if it’s a personal brand and make sure it states clearly who you are, what you do, who you serve, and why you’re important within your industry, that it links out to all of the corroborative sources, all your social media profiles, all of the articles that talk about you.”
He calls this the “entity home” – what Google refers to as the “point of reconciliation.” As Jason noted: “You need to own it. If you don’t own it, they’re going to attach it to LinkedIn or Instagram. I’ve seen pop stars whose entity home is Instagram. You don’t own it. That’s rented space. You don’t want that.”
Real-World Solutions from the Trenches
Chris Jackson from ChurchSEO.io provided two compelling case studies that demonstrate practical solutions:
Client 1 – The Hidden Interference Problem This client had used GoDaddy Airo for their website, which included a chatbot that was mysteriously injecting odd text into the meta title. Jackson’s solution involved killing the chatbot and fixing standard elements: meta title, meta description, and H1 tags.
A second issue emerged: the pastor was running a separate blog platform that shared the same brand name, creating confusion about the canonical brand entity. Jackson resolved this by consolidating the blog onto the main site, followed by citation and press release campaigns.
Client 2 – The Nuclear Option Sometimes the problem is more fundamental. This client had a site-wide noindex tag preventing any pages from appearing in search results. After removing this digital invisibility cloak, Jackson installed RankMath, configured schema markup properly, and optimized basic on-page elements before launching citation and press release campaigns.
Understanding schema markup implementation is crucial for entity recognition – learn more in our schema markup guide.
The Broader Digital Footprint Strategy
During our conversation, I noted how this connects to broader entity optimization: “Since you came about in the age where a person of your talents was known as a webmaster… We’re integrating the available signals to whether that’s through email, organic search, creating entities, connecting to other websites through our site and through our business to change how we’re perceived and hopefully drive traffic based off of that perception.”
Jason agreed, explaining his evolution from traditional SEO to entity-focused optimization: “Whereas SEO would at that time have been focusing purely on the website, I was focusing on the digital footprint already. And that was a huge difference. So was bringing my SEO skills to a wider range of sites.”
The Modern Algorithmic Reality
The conversation revealed how search engines now operate through what Jason calls “the algorithmic trinity” – LLMs, knowledge graphs, and traditional search results all fed from the same web data source. This means controlling your digital footprint impacts all three systems, though with different time delays: “A search results are going to be relatively reactive, a week maybe. A knowledge draft is going to take three months. An LLM training data is going to take you a year.”
For more expert perspectives on the evolving SEO landscape, explore our other Unscripted SEO podcast interviews featuring industry leaders discussing similar challenges and solutions.
Practical Next Steps
For SEOs facing brand visibility issues, the solution often lies in these fundamentals:
- Audit your About page – Ensure it clearly states who you are, what you do, who you serve, and includes corroborative links
- Check for technical interference – Look for chatbots, plugins, or code injecting unwanted content
- Consolidate brand mentions – Eliminate competing properties that dilute brand entity signals
- Verify basic technical setup – Confirm no site-wide noindex tags or other blocking elements
- Implement proper schema markup – Help search engines understand your entity structure (learn more in our schema implementation guide)
- Launch citation campaigns – Build consistent brand mentions across relevant directories and platforms
The most striking insight from both the interview and case studies is that brand visibility problems often stem from basics rather than advanced tactics. As Jason concluded: “Maybe if you want Google to know about you, you should tell it about you.”
Sometimes the most complex problems have the simplest solutions – you just need to know where to look.