An <strong>entity</strong> is a thing search engines recognise -- a person, a product, a place, a concept. An <strong>intent</strong> is the reason behind a query -- desire, comparison, transaction, reassurance. Most SEO advice optimises for one and quietly hopes the other follows. The SEO Colour Wheel maps both at once so you can see where you are over-serving entities and starving intent (or the reverse).
Because the gap between "you appear" and "you convert" usually lives at the intersection. A page can rank for the right entity and still answer the wrong intent -- and you will never see it in a keyword report.
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New to the framing? Take the interactive SEO Colour Wheel quiz -- it surfaces which intent segment your current content is overweight in. Already familiar? Use the interactive chart instead.
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Refreshed and extracted from earlier article first published — 4 March 2025