CitationDesk

Guide · 8 min read

Entity Coherence — the Schema.org chain that earns citations.

LLMs don't cite anonymous strangers. They cite named, coherent entities — sites whose identity is consistent across every page, with linked profiles that confirm the brand exists outside its own walls.

What entity coherence is

When ChatGPT or Claude decides to cite a source, the model is implicitly choosing between "cite the site as an authority" vs "summarize without attribution". The choice depends on whether the model can confirm who the site is. Entity coherence is the structural property of a site that makes that confirmation easy.

A coherent entity has:

  • A consistent brand name everywhere — title, OG, schema, footer, favicon
  • An Organization schema with name, url, logo, and sameAs profiles
  • A Person schema for the author or operator with their own sameAs chain
  • A visible /about page that links back to the same identity
  • The same identity surfaces in cross-references — when a Reddit thread or LinkedIn post mentions the site, the names match

Incoherence kills citation. If your <title> says "Hydration Math", yourog:site_name says "Sourdough Hydration", and your Organization schema says "Bread Calc Co", the LLM has three plausible "who" signals and chooses to cite none of them.

The canonical schema chain

Drop this JSON-LD block into your global <head> — once, applied to every page via your layout:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@graph": [
    {
      "@type": "Organization",
      "@id": "https://yoursite.com/#organization",
      "name": "YourSite",
      "url": "https://yoursite.com",
      "logo": "https://yoursite.com/logo.png",
      "description": "One sentence about what your site is and for whom.",
      "sameAs": [
        "https://www.linkedin.com/company/yoursite/",
        "https://twitter.com/yoursite",
        "https://github.com/yoursite"
      ],
      "founder": { "@id": "https://yoursite.com/about/#author" }
    },
    {
      "@type": "Person",
      "@id": "https://yoursite.com/about/#author",
      "name": "Your Name",
      "url": "https://yoursite.com/about/",
      "jobTitle": "Founder, YourSite",
      "sameAs": [
        "https://www.linkedin.com/in/yourname/",
        "https://github.com/yourname",
        "https://substack.com/@yourname"
      ]
    },
    {
      "@type": "WebSite",
      "@id": "https://yoursite.com/#website",
      "url": "https://yoursite.com",
      "name": "YourSite",
      "publisher": { "@id": "https://yoursite.com/#organization" }
    }
  ]
}

Three nodes, three @id URIs, cross-references via @id. Every page that renders the layout inherits the chain automatically. Per-page WebPage or Article schema then references { "@id": "https://yoursite.com/#website" } for isPartOf.

sameAs — the underrated signal

sameAs tells LLMs "this entity also exists at these other URLs". It's the structural bridge from your site to your brand's presence elsewhere. Two principles:

  1. Minimum 2 profiles per entity. One profile is suspicious; two confirms the entity is real and third-party-discoverable. Three or more is ideal. Common choices for a Person: LinkedIn, GitHub, Substack, Twitter/X, ORCID for academic work, Wikipedia if you have an article.
  2. The URLs must resolve. Broken sameAs URLs are worse than missing ones — LLMs that follow them and find 404s deprioritize the source. Audit annually.

Bonus: when your sameAs includes a Wikipedia URL (because your site has been cited there), the entity graph compounds substantially. Wikipedia citation is the +95 multiplier in the Citation Oracle for a reason.

Five common coherence failures

  1. The OG mismatch. og:site_name says "Bread Calc Co", Organization schema says "Sourdough Hydration". The fix is one line per source.
  2. Person schema without sameAs. Schema for an author with no profile links is barely better than no Person schema at all. Add LinkedIn + GitHub minimum.
  3. Anonymous /about page. The page is required for E-E-A-T but tells the reader nothing about who runs the site. LLMs read /about with high weight.
  4. Org schema applied only to homepage. Organization needs to render globally — every page. Most framework defaults put it only on the home route.
  5. Logo URL broken. Schema declares a logo at /logo.png but the path 404s. LLMs check.

How to verify your entity graph

Three checks:

  1. Paste any page URL into validator.schema.org. You should see Organization, Person, and WebSite in the parsed output. WebPage or Article (per page) shows up too.
  2. Run the Citation Readiness Score on the URL. The Entity Coherence dimension surfaces missing or weak signals with specific fix recommendations.
  3. Click each sameAs URL manually. Each must resolve to an active profile owned by the same entity.

Most sites we audit score 0.3–0.5 on Entity Coherence at first measurement. Adding the schema chain above takes an hour and lifts the score to 0.7–0.9. The lift compounds because every page on the site now inherits the coherent graph automatically.

Score your own site against this guide.

The free Citation Readiness Score runs every signal from this guide against any URL. ~90 seconds, no signup.

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