Ep. 39 Found in AI: What Is Entity Authority and Why Does It Matter More Than Domain Authority?

In this episode of Found in AI, Cassie sits down with Lars Lofgren—organic marketing veteran, former affiliate business owner, and SEO consultant for enterprise brands including Automattic and Perplexity—to dig into one of the biggest mental model shifts happening in search right now: the move from domain-level thinking to entity authority.

Lars explains how his entire SEO framework broke between 2022 and 2024, why sites with massive domain ratings started getting crushed, and what he rebuilt from scratch after throwing out everything he thought he knew.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What entity authority is and why it’s replaced domain authority as the primary unit of analysis in search
• Why sites with high domain ratings can still perform poorly in both traditional and AI search
• How Google and LLMs map entities across the entire web, not just your website
• Why Lars recommends starting with social channels before SEO, especially for new or early-stage brands
• How building your entity on platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, and Reddit gives SEO the wind at its back
• Why picking at least two channels and committing to them long-term is critical for entity building
• How the FSA Framework’s Authority principle connects directly to the entity-first approach Lars describes

Transcript: What Is Entity Authority and Why Does It Matter More Than Domain Authority?

Episode Summary: In this episode of Found in AI, Cassie sits down with Lars Lofgren — organic marketing veteran, former affiliate business owner, and SEO consultant for enterprise brands including Automattic and Perplexity — to dig into one of the biggest mental model shifts happening in search right now: the move from domain-level thinking to entity authority.

Lars explains how his entire SEO framework broke between 2022 and 2024, why sites with massive domain ratings started getting crushed, and what he rebuilt from scratch after throwing out everything he thought he knew.

Lars Lofgren’s Background in Organic Marketing

Lars Lofgren has spent his entire career in organic marketing — content, growth hacking, conversion optimization, and SEO across SaaS, info products (now called creator businesses), and affiliates. He built an affiliate business that hit $7 million in revenue in a single year. Since winding that down, he’s been consulting for select enterprise clients, including Automattic and Perplexity, on content and SEO engagements.

While everyone else ships AI-generated content at scale, Lars is going the opposite direction — trying to create content that’s actually entertaining and insightful. As he puts it, he’s “trying to do good content when everybody else is just shipping AI slop.”

Why Lars’s Entire SEO Mental Model Broke

Between 2022 and 2024, Lars experienced one of the most significant shifts in his SEO thinking. At the time, he was operating in an extremely competitive SEO category, ranking number one for highly competitive terms and generating significant revenue. Then the algorithm changed — and everything stopped making sense.

His response was to throw out his entire framework and start from scratch. Every tactic, every model, every assumption had to be re-proven. After working across dozens of sites, running tests, and rebuilding his understanding from the ground up, Lars came out the other side with a fundamentally different way of thinking about search visibility.

The Shift from Domain Authority to Entity Authority

In the old model, the domain was the primary unit of analysis. Everything in SEO came back to how strong the domain was — link profile, domain rating, domain-level signals. And for years, there was a real correlation between domain strength and search performance.

According to Lars, that correlation no longer exists.

He works with enterprise-level clients — sites with domain ratings in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, including a top 100 website on the internet. These are domains that, five years ago, could throw their weight around and rank for almost anything. Today, that’s no longer the case. Strong domains struggle in unexpected ways, while weaker domains outperform consistently.

This isn’t just about AI search engines. Lars sees this shift playing out across traditional Google results and LLM-generated answers alike. The Google algorithm has evolved significantly in the last couple of years, and the old domain-level playbook no longer applies.

What Entity Authority Actually Means

If the domain is no longer the right unit of analysis, what is? Lars uses the term entity — and he’s intentional about that word choice over “brand.”

Telling someone to “build a brand” can lead them down the wrong road. It’s too abstract. Nobody is building Apple. That’s a once-in-a-lifetime company. But there are concrete, tactical things any business can do to build an entity — even a small one in a niche market.

An entity is the primary identity of a business — typically the company or personal brand name — and how that identity shows up across the entire web. LLMs and Google break everything down into topics, items, and relationships. They’re constantly mapping and remapping these connections. The question is: where does your entity sit within that map?

That map doesn’t just live on your website. It includes Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, open Facebook groups, podcasts — anything these systems can crawl. All of those touchpoints are components of your entity.

How Fake Entities Prove the System Works

Lars shared something fascinating: he’s seen people in the shadier corners of the internet create entirely fake brand entities. By strategically building up an entity across multiple platforms, these fake brands earn trust from Google and LLMs — even when their domain has practically no authority.

If Google trusts the entity, it trusts the domain underneath it. That’s why a site with a domain rating near zero can rank number one for competitive terms. Google connects the entity to the domain, and the entity’s trust transfers down.

For legitimate businesses, the takeaway is clear: your domain is just one small piece of a much larger picture. What your entity looks like across the rest of the web matters significantly for both traditional search and AI visibility.

Which Channels to Prioritize for Entity Building

When it comes to choosing platforms to build your entity, Lars recommends thinking through a few key criteria.

First, your customers need to actually be there. If you’re selling tactical axes, you probably don’t need to be on Pinterest — but Reddit might be a goldmine.

Second, pick channels your team is genuinely excited about for the long term. Even if a channel isn’t the mathematically perfect choice, sustained enthusiasm and consistency matter more than optimization on paper.

Third — and this is critical — pick at least two channels. If you’re 100% dedicated to a single channel and it deteriorates, you’re starting from scratch. Diversification protects your entity.

Lars acknowledged that Reddit is heavily preferred by LLMs and Google, but he also understands why some teams want nothing to do with it. It’s a weird platform with its own set of norms. And that’s okay — there are options.

Why Lars Says Don’t Start with SEO

This might be the most counterintuitive piece of advice from someone who describes himself as an SEO diehard: don’t start with SEO.

For small businesses, new businesses, or startups at day zero, Lars recommends building the entity on social and earned channels first. SEO still generates significant revenue, and strong SEO performance still helps with LLM visibility. But without an established entity, SEO efforts feel like pushing against a wall.

Lars has experienced this firsthand — going all in on SEO with quality content, strong search intent alignment, and solid on-page optimization, only to have Google show zero interest. But when he builds a YouTube channel or invests in Reddit first, then returns to SEO, things take off. The entity trust element acts like wind at your back.

The recommendation: get on at least two social networks that align with your audience and skill sets. Build consistently over time. Then, as the entity strengthens, layer in SEO. You’ll move faster and further than if you’d started with SEO alone.

Practical Steps to Start Building Entity Authority

Stop thinking about your domain as the whole picture. Your domain is one piece of your entity. What’s happening on LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, podcasts, and third-party sites all feeds into how AI engines and Google understand who you are and whether you’re trustworthy. If your website is the only place your brand exists online, your entity is thin.

Pick at least two channels and commit to them. Don’t go all in on one platform. Pick two that align with where your audience actually is and where you or your team can show up consistently. Consistency over time is what builds the entity signal.

Don’t start with SEO. If you’re early stage or rebuilding, build your entity on social and earned channels first, then come back to SEO with the wind at your back. You will move faster.

Audit how AI engines see you right now. Not what you’ve published — how it’s being read and interpreted. If your entity isn’t showing up in AI-generated answers, that’s not a content volume problem. It’s an entity authority problem, and it’s entirely fixable.

If you’re trying to figure out how your brand fits into AI-first search or where to get started with your strategy, head over to cassieclarkmarketing.com to get started with your AI search visibility audit.

If we haven’t met yet….

Hi, I’m Cassie, a fractional content strategist for early-stage startups who focuses on AI search optimization.

If AI-generated answers are already influencing your buyers, your content strategy needs to account for that. I build content programs that connect strategy with execution: clear positioning,  systems, and content that actually drive revenue. If you’re ready to stop guessing and start growing, here’s how we can work together.