Connect entities with stable IDs and distinct page nodes.

Resolve the identity before assigning an ID.

A connected graph describes distinct things and the relationships between them. In JSON-LD, @id provides an identifier for a node so another description can refer to it. Decide what that node represents before choosing the string. A company, its product, its founder and a page describing the founder are not interchangeable identities.

A stable identifier should remain consistent across the site’s output while the underlying thing remains the same. A canonical page URL with a fragment is a common pattern. It is a convention, not a claim that the fragment creates a public profile or that a search engine has recognized the identity. Record one accepted pattern and use it across the relevant emitters.

The W3C RDF concepts describe graphs in terms of subject, predicate and object. The JSON-LD specification explains how identifiers and node references are expressed in that format. These foundations support connected descriptions; they do not certify the factual accuracy of the nodes.

Read this complete fictional three-node graph.

This fictional example stipulates that Example Agency’s visible organization page names Alex River as its founder. A visible profile at https://example.com/people/alex-river/ carries Alex’s name and founding role, and Example Agency publishes that profile. Reserved example.com addresses and all names here are instructional placeholders; no real founder, employment, award or customer result is asserted.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@graph": [
    {
      "@type": "Organization",
      "@id": "https://example.com/#organization",
      "name": "Example Agency",
      "url": "https://example.com/",
      "founder": {
        "@id": "https://example.com/people/alex-river/#person"
      }
    },
    {
      "@type": "Person",
      "@id": "https://example.com/people/alex-river/#person",
      "name": "Alex River",
      "url": "https://example.com/people/alex-river/"
    },
    {
      "@type": "ProfilePage",
      "@id": "https://example.com/people/alex-river/#webpage",
      "url": "https://example.com/people/alex-river/",
      "name": "Alex River \u2014 founder profile",
      "mainEntity": {
        "@id": "https://example.com/people/alex-river/#person"
      },
      "publisher": {
        "@id": "https://example.com/#organization"
      }
    }
  ]
}

There are three nodes because there are three things: the agency, Alex and the profile document. Organization.founder points to Alex’s Person ID. ProfilePage.mainEntity points to that same Person ID, and ProfilePage.publisher points to the organization. The reference objects reuse identifiers instead of copying a second full identity with a slightly different fragment.

No worksFor property appears because the fictional brief establishes founding but does not establish Alex’s current employment. No sameAs, product ownership, credentials, image or awards are added. A real deployment would need approved facts and current platform checks before release; this graph is an escaped teaching example, not deployed markup.

Audit duplicates across every emitter.

Collect the data supplied by the theme, plugins, custom templates and rendered components. Record the observed ID, type, label, URL, relationships and emitter. Look for one thing described under competing fragments, one identifier assigned to different things, inconsistent identity facts and references to an ID that no accepted record owns.

Compare the evidence, not just the strings. Two nodes called “Example Agency” might refer to a legal business and a separate brand, or they might be accidental duplicates. A product name matching a company name does not settle that question. Confirm the entity boundary with the source owner, then choose to reuse, separate, merge or hold.

For a confirmed duplicate, choose the accepted identifier, update affected definitions and references, remove conflicting output and reacquire the final pages. Keep a change record of the old IDs and affected emitters. A redirect between web pages does not automatically repair every embedded @id reference. Do not add sameAs between a founder and company to disguise an identity conflict.