Why Brand Is the Core of Entity SEO in 2026

James Dooley: Entity SEO secrets in 2026. There's no one better to be speaking to than Jason Barnard when it comes down to branding and entity SEO. So Jason Barnard, you've been optimizing the algorithms for the last 27 years since 1998. I think that was before I was born. And after all that time, what do you know most SEOs haven't figured out yet?

Jason Barnard: Brand. I was thinking about it the other day. I've been working in SEO since 1998, the year Google was incorporated. So I've grown up with Google and I've been through all the ups and the not very many downs that Google have had. Very early on in my career I bet on Google. There were loads of different engines like Excite or Magdalene or Hotbot. There were dozens of them and I ended up thinking I can't work on all of them because they all have different rules. I'll focus on Google. Was it a lucky bet or a smart guess. I don't know. But it worked. I ended up with a billion page views for a kids site in one year in 2007. One fifth of that came from Google. We got 800,000 from elsewhere because I built such a strong brand. It was a kids site with two characters Buoa and Koala. We got immense amounts of traffic from people recommending us, from listicles, from schools and from Google. It created a lovely flywheel. Even though Google was not very smart at the time there was a cycle that kept elevating itself. Google would send us traffic, that traffic would convert, people would stick around, they would recommend us and that sent more traffic. Looking back the whole thing was brand. Google kicked off the fame but that billion page views came from brand. Only a fifth was from Google by the end, whereas at the beginning ninety percent came from Google. That is a really big lesson.

James Dooley: Something I wanted to touch on is frameworks because frameworks become very important depending on what you are doing and who you are doing it for. You always say you use a framework for every client. You do a lot of branding and knowledge graph optimisation and entity optimisation. Can you walk us through the framework you use for every client?

Jason Barnard: The framework is completely about brand. It is called understandability, credibility, deliverability. I call it the Kalicube process. Understandability asks whether the machine understands who your brand is, who it serves and what you offer. Credibility asks whether you are the most credible authoritative offer in your market. Deliverability asks whether the machine has enough understanding and confidence in your credibility to deliver you to the subset of users who are your audience. The Kalicube process is understandability, credibility, deliverability. Understandability sits at the bottom of the funnel when people search your brand and are about to convert. Credibility sits in the middle of the funnel when people compare you with competitors. Deliverability sits at the top of the funnel when the machine introduces you to people researching a topic before they even start asking about brands. I invented the framework in 2019. It crystallised after a conversation with Gary Illyes which gave me the final piece which was deliverability. The process works for any entity. It applies to any person, company, product, service, music group, album or film.

James Dooley: With the Kalicube process framework how can you measure whether a brand is understood? There are things that can be tracked and things that can be measured. How can the framework actually be measured?

Jason Barnard: For years I looked at the Google Knowledge Graph. If you are in the Knowledge Graph it means Google understands who you are. Now we have other machines and it becomes harder to measure. At Kalicube we have collected twenty five billion data points since 2015 from Google’s Knowledge Graph, the enterprise Knowledge Graph and branded search results. Branded search results let us see inside Google's understanding because they reveal whether Google truly understands the entity. I now apply the same strategy to ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot. When you ask who a person is, for example who is James Dooley, the answer reveals whether the machine demonstrates a solid understanding. I compare those answers with ten years of brand SER data collected from Google.

James Dooley: When we talk about entities and branding what is the difference between a brand being found and a brand being recommended?

Jason Barnard: Being found means someone sees you. Many people celebrate citations in AI because their link appears in ChatGPT answers. That means the brand has been seen which is good. But it is not a recommendation. A recommendation happens when someone asks which supplier they should choose and the machine picks you as the best solution. Supplier B might be visible but if the machine recommends supplier A then that is the true win.

James Dooley: If someone is watching this now what is one key takeaway they can implement tomorrow?

Jason Barnard: Start at the bottom of the funnel with the brand. Check whether AI understands your entity clearly and confidently. Look at your entity home page, usually the About page on your website. Explain clearly who you are, what you do, who you serve and why you are credible. Every page on the website becomes an educational opportunity to teach the machine your brand story and your credibility. Optimise the entire website as an educational resource for AI so that it can recommend you to the right audience.

James Dooley: When talking about funnels there are many frameworks like AIDA. You created a branded funnel using understandability, credibility and deliverability. Can you explain how your framework compares to those?

Jason Barnard: I analysed those frameworks over the last few years using ChatGPT and Google Gemini. I asked how those frameworks conflict with the Kalicube process. Both systems showed that it does not conflict. The Kalicube process actually enhances existing marketing frameworks. On Kalicube.com there are articles explaining how the process can be added to other frameworks to improve them.

James Dooley: Anyone watching this interested in entity SEO and branding should check out the playlist with Jason Barnard. There are ten episodes covering branding and entity SEO in 2026. Jason Barnard, it has been a pleasure.

Jason Barnard: Thanks James Dooley. Delightful.