Topics, Entities, and Relevance
How Google understands what your site is about.
Google does not rank pages in isolation. It evaluates topical coverage, entity relationships, and semantic relevance across your entire site.
Beyond keywords
Google stopped being a keyword-matching engine years ago. It now understands topics, recognizes entities, and evaluates relevance at a semantic level. This changes how you should think about content planning.
What entities are
An entity is a thing that Google can identify and understand: a person, a place, an organization, a concept, a product. Google maintains a knowledge graph with billions of entities and the relationships between them.
When Google processes your page, it identifies which entities you mention and how they relate to each other. A page about "Python programming" is connected to entities like Guido van Rossum, CPython, pip, Django, and data science. A page about "python snake" is connected to completely different entities.
This entity recognition is how Google disambiguates queries and understands context. It is also how Google evaluates whether your content is comprehensive. If you write about Python programming but never mention any of the related entities, Google has less confidence that your content is thorough.
What topics are
A topic is a cluster of related entities and queries. "Project management" is a topic that includes entities like Gantt charts, sprints, stakeholders, and tools like Asana and Jira. It includes queries like "how to manage a project", "project management methodologies", and "best project management software".
Google evaluates your site's coverage of a topic, not just individual pages. A site with one page about project management is less authoritative than a site with pages covering methodologies, tools, team management, timelines, and risk assessment.
This is what topical authority means in practice. It is not a score. It is Google's assessment of how thoroughly and reliably you cover a topic space.
How relevance works now
Relevance in 2026 operates at three levels:
Query-page relevance. Does this specific page answer this specific query? Google evaluates this using semantic understanding, not keyword matching. Your page can be relevant to a query without containing the exact words.
Page-site relevance. Does this page fit within the broader topic coverage of the site? A page about SEO on a cooking blog is less relevant than the same page on a marketing blog, because the surrounding context is different.
Site-topic relevance. Does this site have authority on this topic? A site with deep coverage of SEO topics has more relevance for SEO queries than a site that covers everything superficially.
What this means for content planning
Plan in topics, not keywords. Instead of targeting individual keywords, map out the topic space you want to own. Identify the entities, subtopics, and query clusters within that space.
Build depth before breadth. It is better to thoroughly cover one topic than to superficially cover ten. Google rewards depth within a topic more than breadth across topics.
Connect your content. Internal links between related pages help Google understand your topic structure. A page about "project management methodologies" should link to your pages about specific methodologies.
Cover the expected entities. For any topic, there are entities that a comprehensive treatment should mention. If you write about email marketing and never mention deliverability, segmentation, or open rates, your coverage looks incomplete.
How UpSearch helps
UpSearch identifies the topics and entities associated with your site based on your actual content and GSC data. It shows where your coverage is strong and where gaps exist. Use this to prioritize which subtopics to cover next.
Takeaway
Think of your site as building a case for expertise in specific topic areas. Each page is a piece of evidence. The more complete and interconnected your evidence, the stronger your case. Isolated pages without topical context are weak evidence.