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Can BrandYourself be used for business and personal rankings?

Short answer: You need to use a personal name.

BrandYourself is a product designed to help individual people control search results for their name — because of this, the system does not work well with business names.

That being said, BrandYourself is a very powerful tool to control and monitor the results for your name and those of your employees. Since your employees represent your business on a daily basis, they can each create a BrandYourself account to control search results for their names, and make sure your business shows up when they’re searched online.

How do I get started?

While this demo video uses the old website, the advice and steps are still relevant (and the design isn’t THAT different). You can view it here.

What’s the fastest way to push negative results down?

The quickest way is to leverage social profiles. They have content-rich about/bio profile pages, and they’re part of a network/domain trusted by search engines so they’re ranked higher and indexed quicker in general. They’re also easy to connect to your other online presences.

Given these advantages, I’d recommend starting with social profiles since they’re the easiest to set up and give you the best return on your time investment when you first begin improving your results. Our website lists out a ton of recommended profiles you can choose from on this page:

Does the number of people visiting a search result make a difference in its ranking?

While it can make a minor difference, for our purposes it’s negligible. It would take a massive amount of clicks on a result over a sustained time period for the result to be significantly affected. You’re best off focusing on improving the content, formatting and links on your profiles and links.

Note: With Google’s most recent updates they’ve introduced personalized search results. This means they adjust and determine which results to show you based on your browsing behavior (i.e. what you click on ). In this case you’ll see results moving based on what you search for, but this only applies to you—not to the rest of world. So in short, any differences you may see are likely based on your personalized search results.

What are the best social network sites to join?

See the above answer.

Is there any way I can modify my headline to improve my results?

Some good ways you can modify your headline to improve your results further is by including info such as your company, location, professional field, position, and even any pseudonyms along with your name. (e.g. Hi, I’m James Smith. I’m the VP of Marketing for ACME, INC. in New York, NY and I also serve freelance clients within the consumer web industry through my firm MKTG, LLC.)

I’m excited to say that our team is hard at work today releasing a completely new version of BrandYourself, which will make it even easier to improve your own search results. This post is a guide to all the awesome new improvements.

1. Submitting, boosting and tracking links is now easier:

We wanted to make sure you know where your important links rank and make it even easier to submit and boost them, so you can now do all that right from your home screen.

All the recommended profiles that used to be in the “Submit Links” tab in the past are now on your home screen – to reveal them, just click the “(+) View All” link and they’ll expand down.

If you see any profiles you don’t have yet, just hover your mouse over it and click “Create one.” We’ll give you step-by-step directions to create them.

To submit any other links that aren’t included in our recommended profiles, just paste its web address into the Smart Submit box and click “Submit.”

You’ll notice when you click into the Smart Submit box that we automatically show you suggestions of links to submit, including the top 100 Google results for your name. The best part: you can type keywords into the Smart Submit box (your hometown, your employer, etc.) to filter the suggestions and find links about yourself to submit.

2. All your most important info is now in your Report Card

To make it easier to see how you’re doing, we brought together your Search Score, your overall progress, and who’s Googling you into a beautiful Report Card.

To see your first page of Google results, it’s right there on your Report Card. Just click “(+) View First Page of Results” in your Search Score Breakdown section.

3. Learn even more about who’s Googling you

If someone Googles you and finds your profile, we can now tell you exactly who they are if they’re a BrandYourself user. If you want to remain anonymous when you visit another BrandYourself user’s profile, just go to your Settings and set yourself to anonymous.

We also added a new way to see the people who have Googled you: the “Personal” view. You can toggle between this and the old Table view by clicking the icon highlighted below in the Who’s Googling You section.

4. Editing your BrandYourself profile is now easier:

Now when you update your profile, the edit page will resemble your actual profile, making it much easier to edit. And thanks to your suggestions, you can now drag-n-drop your experience and education blocks to re-order them.

5. Earn points every time you do something to improve your results

There’s now a point system that tracks how much you’ve done to improve your results; the more links you submit and boost, the more points you’ll earn. You can’t redeem your points, they’re just a personal reference point as you do more and more to improve your own results. We recommend you continue earning points until your first page of results is filled with only positive results.

6. Let an expert improve your results for you with our Concierge Service

If you have a common name, a negative result you want to bury, or just don’t have the time to use BrandYourself to improve your results yourself, we’ve introduced a service specifically for you. Our new Concierge Service assigns you a dedicated search expert who will manage your account for you, develop a custom strategy and do all the work to improve your results for you.

Call us at 315-565-1799 or email us and we’ll give you a free consultation about how we can help.

7. Questions or feedback? We want to hear from you!

If you have any questions or feedback on the new version, we want to hear from you! Don’t hesitate to call Patrick (our Head of Customer Happiness) at 315-565-1799, email us at support@brandyourself.com, or even ask in the comments below.

One of the most anxiety-inducing parts about job hunting is waiting to hear back after submitting your cover letter and résumé for a position. It’s a sort of waiting game filled with uncertainty. When should you follow up? Have they viewed your application yet? Why can’t you at least get an acknowledgement your application was received?—the process can be maddening.

While there’s not much I can do to help with speeding up the response speed of hiring managers, there is a trick I’ve used in the past to quickly tell if an employer has looked at a résumé or cover letter I’ve submitted. Let me quickly walk you through the two easy methods I’ve used to accomplish this:

Method #1: Track a Link to a Resource

Select a Resource:

This can be anything that has an online destination (URL/web address). Here are a few ideas:

• Your blog full of writing samples
• A presentation example you uploaded to SlideShare
• A news article about your accomplishments
• Your personal website

Create a Trackable Link:

Once you’ve decided what it is you’d like to link to from your résumé and/or cover letter, you’ll want to head over to a service that can track clicks on your links such as bit.ly or goo.gl. Both are free and provide tracking, but you’ll need to set up a free account—so go ahead and do that now if needed.

Now that you’ve got an account set up, go ahead and copy the URL for the resource you selected earlier. Go ahead and paste the URL into the link shortener submission box on either bit.ly or goo.gl. Once you submit it, you’ll now have a shortened link that you can use.

Add The Link to Your Résumé or Cover Letter:

Armed with your trackable link, you’ll want to add it to your résumé or cover letter. Depending on what the link is, you either want to include it in your personal info or add the link into the body of the document. See below for some examples.

Track Visits:

Now that you’ve added unique trackable links to your cover letter and résumé, you’re ready to send them off. Once you’ve sent them in, you’ll want to give it a couple days to week, and then you can log in to either bit.ly or goo.gl and take a look at if anyone has clicked on the link. If the hiring manager has clicked, you’ll be able to see it on your link tracking dashboard.

Method #2: Include a Link to Your BrandYourself Profile

It you want to make things really easy, you can just link to your BrandYourself profile—it’s our favorite method by far

 This is as simple as including a link to your BrandYourself profile on your cover letter or résumé. We’ll handle all the tracking for you, so when an employer clicks on the link and visits your profile, we can tell you exactly when and where they found you.

A Final Note

You’ll want to create a unique link for each résumé or cover letter you  send out—don’t keep using the same one on all applications. You want to make sure the only visits that get recorded are those of the person you sent the link to.

That said, these methods will only be able to alert you if someone actually visits the link, so it’s obviously best suited to digital applications and documents. Ultimately, the more compelling the link looks, the more likely a hiring manager is to click on it—so make sure you use a enticing setup for the link. For example, something like “You can view samples of my best work here (add the link to the “here” part).

Alright, that’s more than enough to get started and help give you a heads up if your application materials are being viewed or not. So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and drop a link into your next application, and best of luck with your job hunt.

Whether it’s a mugshot or an unsavory New Year’s Eve party picture, if you have a negative photo showing up online it can be distressing. The good news is that more often than not the main problem is merely a lack of image content. Put simply, if there are very few images of you online (that are visible to Google), then it’s almost certain any new image will show up—negative or not. For our purposes, this means there’s a good chance that any positive images we can put out on the web will quickly rise to the top if there’s not much competition. And with a bit of time and effort, it’s often possible to eventually overwhelm the negative image result with new positive images.

Step 1: Leverage photo-oriented networks and sites

The first thing you’ll need to do is set up at least a couple of methods of putting photos online. Lucky for you, there are a ton of services out there who are happy to makes this simple and quick. To begin, choose at least 3 of the below services and sign up for accounts, fill out your profile info, etc.

• Google+
• Flickr
• Twitter
• Tumblr
• WordPress
• Pinterest
• Photobucket
• Facebook
• Instagram

Step 2: Gather some positive photos

Now that you’ve set up a couple of profiles, you’ll need to scrounge up a few photos of yourself that you don’t mind having online. You can either take new ones, or upload photos you already have on your computer. Keep in mind, you’ll want to have a good number of photos since image searches return more results than a regular web search. This means you’ll probably need at least a few dozen images, so if you don’t have that many, get snap-happy and starting taking a few!

Control your results by promoting professional and relevant photos.

Now that you’ve got some photos/images, you’re ready to start uploading them. Log on to your service of choice, and start submitting away.

Step 3: Let Google know the image is about you

When you upload a photo or image to any of the services suggested above, you’re going to want to make sure you let search engines know the image is you. That means you’ll need to add some descriptive info to the photo.

Add a description: if you’re offered the opportunity to add a photo description, don’t skip this step. Instead, make sure you include your full name—something like “John Smith playing waterpolo in California” or whatever it is the photo is about. The important thing is that we’re letting search engines know that the photo is about John Smith.

Captions: Same as above. Make sure you fill this out. (e.g. “John Smith at the beach in Santa Monica, CA.”)

Tag yourself: some sites allow you to “tag” people in the photo. This just means you’re able to quickly add a visual link to a person’s profile from a photo. If it’s available, make sure you tag yourself in the photo. It’s yet another way for search engines to recognize the photo is of you if that photo and profile are set to public.

Step 4: Use your profiles to push the image out there

Now that you’ve uploaded your photo and let Google and other search engines know the image is about you, it’s time to push it out there.

What you’ll now want to do now is create a new post in one of the aforementioned photo-sharing sites, or if that’s not available, share the image through your social networks (e.g. post to Facebook or Twitter, etc.). This is an important step because it’s creating yet another link to the positive photo you’re trying to promote, and presenting it in a publicly indexible form (i.e. search engine friendly).

Step 5: Repeat

That’s all there is to it. If you’ve got more search terms you need to improve the image results of, just rinse and repeat. You won’t see results immediately, but you’ll be surprised after a couple weeks when you start to see a few of your photos sneaking onto those first few pages.

The BrandYourself website is live again. Thanks for your patience while the site was under maintenance, and apologies for any frustration. I know it was inconvenient for many of you to have just received a survey promo code and then be unable to use it. That said, you should be able to apply any promo codes to your account now, and all accounts should be working normally again.

Again, we apologize for any inconvenience in the maintenance timing, and please feel free to direct any questions or concerns to support@brandyourself.com, and we’ll do our best to get back to you ASAP.

P.S. Your search result rankings and BrandYourself profile won’t be affected by the downtime, so no need to worry.

Yesterday we received an unusually high volume of incoming users and we were forced to upgrade our infrastructure to accommodate everyone.  I apologize. I know how inconvienient this is. Our  team has been working through the night so we can get everything back up ASAP. In the meantime we want to answer a few of your questions.  Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any others support@brandyourself.com.

Will my BrandYourself profile be ok? What about my search rankings? You will not be negatively affected. Your BrandYourself profile is temporarily down, which is very common and does not have a negative effect in the eyes of Google. All of your other profiles and rankings will not be affected in the slightest

 I just took this survey for a promocode.  What gives?  Again I apologize for the inconvenience. We really appreciate you taking the time. We’ll use all that data to improve the product for everyone.  Please check back and once everything is back up you’ll be able to redeem the promocode.

Again, if you have any questions you can reach out: support@brandyourself.com

Patrick

Even if you’ve gotten your Google diagnosis, set up your basic presence for Google and used our advanced  SEO techniques to raise them to the top , sometimes it’s just not enough. Sometimes, even if you do everything right, search engines make you their B*tch. This last part of the series is meant to provide effective tactics for people who have negative or unflattering content on the first page of results.

Bad Results Can Happen to Good People:

While this section may seem like it’s only relevant to politicians or criminals, negative content is something that can happen to anyone. All it takes is one bad blog post or status update from a pissed off ex, one disgruntled former client or employee, or one photo tagged in bad judgement after a night out with a friend. The point is, bad results can happen to good people, and this article is meant to walk you through the emergency tactics you can use to salvage your reputation.

Here’s what to do when negative results show up when you Google yourself:

Option 1: Get it Taken Down

This option is often the first step people take, however, there are a couple of issues with this route:

• The Person doesn’t have to take it down: Unless you own the content (what are you waiting for, go take it down!) this is highly unlikely and not as ideal as it sounds. For one, the web is like the Wild West, it is not governed by regulations and laws and it is very hard to have anything legally removed. Chances are there’s a reason the other person put it up in the first place, and they have no intention of removing it.
• The Result is Always Archived: Secondly, even if they do  remove it, that doesn’t necessarily remove it from search engines. Search engines archive (or cache) search results, meaning many times the result still shows up and people can read about the content right from the result page in Google. That being said, in some cases it is worth it to try and have the content removed, in which case: Submit a legal complaint to Google : Only do this if the content is clearly slanderous or illegal in some other way that can be proven in a court of law. For the vast majority of cases you’ll have to use our other tactics.

Option 2: Bury It

This is the whole idea we’ve been preaching in this series: raise positive content higher in search engines, essentially burying content farther down the page. While this doesn’t technically remove it from search engines, it does drastically decrease the chances someone searching for you finds it. In fact, 93% of people don’t even go past the first page, and even if they do, they’ve just gone through an entire page of positive content that lets them know who you really are. This means, you don’t only need one or two results on the first page, you need enough to bury the other content. Here are the best ways to create high ranking content that will bury the negative result:

Basic Tactics:

Make sure you have the basics covered before jumping to the more advanced tactics:

• Create a basic online presence: This includes buying your domain name, building a personal website, creating profiles like facebook, twitter and LinkedIn and joining online directories.

• Make sure that content is search engine optimized: There are certain things you can do with your content to make sure they are as search engine friendly as possible. For more read:

• Part 2 of this series: Intro to Personal Search Engine Optimization
• Part 4 of this series: Advanced Tactics to Boost Your Google Ranking

Additional Content That Shows Up High:

Sometimes, a well-optimized, basic online presence (as outlined above) is not enough to bury something off the first page. Depending on how high the unwanted results shows up and how credible it is, you may need to get as much high-ranking content on the first page as possible. Here are a few other creative ways you can quickly get content on the first page:

• Throw a party and put the event on MeetUp: Yes, we’re serious! As we mentioned earlier in the series, you should create a personal profile on MeetUp–a place where people create and attend events–because Google ranks these profiles very high. Most people don’t realize Google often ranks events on meetups even higher than your profile there. Throw a party and make sure you:

• Use your name in the event title “Patrick Ambron’s party for Boston Dog Lovers”.
• Take the time to actually create a party people will want to attend and invite all your friends to RSVP on the event page. It might be a little investment, but the more people who are attending and linking to the page, the higher it will show up, so it’s well worth it (plus, its a great excuse to throw a party.)

• Write a Press Release and release it on PR Newswires: Most people don’t realize they can use the same tools PR agencies use to automatically distribute press releases  across the web. There are a handful of free newswires, but if you are serious, I recommend shelling out $300 for PR NewsWire as it’s one of the most effecitve newswires on the web.

• You can write a press release about any life event–you graduated college, you started a new job, you just created a new website, anything. The point is you want any positive content to show up higher than those negative results. Tip: Remember to include links to other places the person can find you online.

• Comment on news articles: As you can imagine, any results coming from a domain like the NYTimes is considered highly credible by Google. Commenting on articles in places like these is an effective way to get a high ranking result. While they aren’t the best possible results about you, at least they aren’t negative. Make sure you link to your personal website, this way when someone finds it, you can direct them to more positive information.

• Create profiles on your schools website, or local gov’t website (like the library): As we highlighted in advanced tactics (link) search engines consider .gov and .edu the most credible on the web, and rank them accordingly. If you want to get content on the first page quickly you should create as many profiles on .gov or .edu sites as possible. Here are some places that you can create .gov or .edu content:

• Check Your Local Government: Browse every single website your local government offers, from townhall to the local library). There is a good chance there is some place that will allow you to create a profile, or comment on an article. For example, take a look at the website from this Library in Deleware
• Contact your alma matter: Check your college’s website to see if there is anywhere you can create a profile. Be creative. It might be in the intramurals section, or in some small on ampus group, like this space exportation club in Cornell. You’re just looking for anywhere you can create a profile or result
• Write a guest blog post for your local gov or local college: If all else fails, most government sites and college programs have blogs. Figure out an article you could write that would be relevant and reach out and offer to write it. For example, if a college has a program for your field, volunteer to write an advice piece

• Write an article for a major blog or news site: This is an easy way to get a result on the first page. Contact your local newspaper and offer to write a piece on your expertise. There are also blogs that allow people to blog for free as long as the content is quality such as the Huffingtonpost.com and Examiner.com

Option 3: Bump it off:

While entirely possible, it’s obvious that burying something off the first page requires a lot of time. There is a little known, but very valuable piece of information when you find yourself in this situation that could save you a lot of time: Google only likes to rank one result on the first page per domain.

What does that mean? Let’s pretend someone wrote an op-ed bashing you in the HuffingtonPost, and it shows up as your number one result. It’s going to be a lot of work and a lot of time to get ten other results to rank higher than the Huffington Post and push it off the first page.

It would be easier if you simply bumped it off by replacing another result on the Huffington Post in your top ten. While this may seem like a tall order, you’d be surprised how easy it is to create a well optimized result on almost any domain.You just need to figure out how you can publish something on the site.

For example, poking around the huffington post you would realize they allow you to create your own profile on the site (huffingtonpost.com/myname). All you need to do is create a profile that is more relevant to your name than the bad article. A few things to remember when making your profile:

• Include your full name: Make sure you use Your name in the profile. This will be included in the URL and the title-tags, which is must if you want to beat the article
• Fill it out with as much information as they let you: The more ifnromation you can include about yourself, the more relevant it will seem to Google. Remember, talk in the third person. You want Your Name everywhere.
• Link to as many other profiles as possible: As you’ve read in our SEO Basics (link), the more places that a profile links to about a certain keyword the higher it will rank. Link to other definitive sources about you–hyour website, your facebook, etc–and google will value it more. Remember, use your name in the link text.
• Keep that profile Active: Eventually the article will get old, which give your profile an edge. Keep commenting on article and doing anything else that keeps your profile updated
• Link to it and share it everywhere: If you’ve built a basic online presence (link), make sure you link to your profile from everywhere–personal website, facebook, Google+, etc. The mroe links this profile has, the better chance it will outrank the negative article. Share it on facebook and twitter. The more social traction it gets, the better your chances.

Conclusion:

This concludes the series. If you follow these steps you should be able to improve your search presence no matter what your situation is. If you found this series helpful, you might be interested in signing up for BrandYourself’s free online reputation management tool. It simplifies the entire process and makes it easy to get your best content on the first page of Google and monitor your progress. Sign up here or call 315-579-2874. If you havent gotten around to it yet, you can find the rest of there series here:

• Make Search Engines Your B**ch Part 1: Diagnose Your Google Ranking
• Make Search Engines Your B**ch Part 2: Intro to Personal Search Engine Optimization
• Make Search Engines Your B**ch Part 3: Building the Foundation of Your Online Presence for Google
• Make search engines your B**ch Part 4: Advanced Tactics to Boost your Google Ranking

Once you’ve built a foundation for Google, it’s time to apply all the basic SEO Rules to your content. This article will go through all the different content you’re building to make sure they are as search engine friendly as possible.

Choosing the Right Domain:

As we highlighted in Part 3, getting your domain is the most important thing you can do to get a result on the first page. They play an incredibly vital role in search engine algorithms, but there are a few things you want to keep in mind to make sure you get as much value out of that domain as possible: 

1. Not all domains are created equal:While this isn’t quite as important as it used to be, there are certain domain-types that search engines tend to rank higher. For example, .edu and .gov domains are considered the most credible since you need to be a legitimate educational or government institution to get one. For a personal domain, try to stick to a .com or a .net. Avoid some of the newly popular domain-types like .me or .tv since they don’t usually rank as well.

2. Make sure your name is included exactly as is: For example let’s say your professional name is Pete Kistler. If PeteKistler.com is taken, it’s much better to buy PeteKistler.net or PeteKistlerOnline.com, then to alter your name slightly and buy PeterKistler.com, or PeterLKistler.com. This goes back to keyword placement.

3. Register it for as long as possible: There are two reasons for this. First, the longer a domain is registered, the more credible search engines consider it, and two, you want to protect your own domain name. Even if you aren’t using it, you don’t want somebody else with your name to buy it themselves.

Building Your Personal Website:

In part 3 of this series, we encouraged you to build a personal website using a free sitebuilder. We mentioned that your goal is to let search engines know this is the most comprehensive source on the web about you, so its important to fill it with as much information as you can. Here are some important things to keep in mind when creating  your site to ensure it is as search engine friendly as possible: 

1. Create Relevant Pages: If you want your site to show up high, you want to make sure it’s filled with as much relevant, updated content as possible. Here are the pages you need to include:

• About Me: This is your chance to fill your site with all the information you’d want someone to know about you. Include your personal bio, education, your work experience and your personal interests. If you have any examples of your work, upload them here. This is the page that lets search engines know there is a lot of relevant information about YOUR NAME.

***Tip: Use your name wherever possible. For example, instead of “I am a marketing professional……”, say “Pete Kistler is a marketing professional……”

• My Links: This is where you should link to all the other places someone can find you online. This includes your social media profiles, online directories, and everything else we suggest you build in part 3. This sends search engines to even more content about you, making your site that much more credible. As highlighted in Part 2, SEO basics, links are an important factor in search engine rankings. The more credible pages about you your site links to (and vice versa), the higher it will rank for your name.
• Social Stream: Add a feed of your most recent updates from networks like LinkedIn and facebook so visitors see all of your social activity in one place. More importantly this also keeps your website constantly updated and relevant, which is a very important part of its search engine ranking.

***Tip: A free BrandYourself account includes a personal website you can build in a couple minutes that includes all of these pages and is automatically optimized to show up high for your name. Sign up here to try it.

2. Create a Blog:  Blogging serves two functions that help your site show up higher. First, it’s another easy way to keep your site updated and relevant. Second, every post you write is a potential result that can show up on your first page. The more content you create and share, the more chances you have to be indexed, linked to, and of course, ranked by search engines. Here are some things to keep in mind to get the most out of blogging:

• 1 hr a month: You don’t need to be a professional blogger to blog. Write one post a month. It’s as simple as reading an industry article or op-ed and writing a brief summary and reaction to it.

3. Keyword Placement:There are certain places on a page search engines consider more important than others. Once you’ve finished building all of your pages, you want to make sure you include “Your Name” in each of these places:

• Navigation: By including your name in the navigation (think “About Pete Kistler” instead of “About Me”) you let search engines know Your Name is one of the most important elements on the page.
• Headings: Make sure you include your name in the heading whenever you start a new section. For example, there should be a heading over your work history, labeled “Pete Kistler’s Work Experience” depending on which sitebuilder you used, there will either be an option to make a heading, or you can do it manually in the html using the <h1>Your Name </h1> tags.

***Tip: Only include one H1 heading per page

• Anchor Text: Anchor text refers to the underlined text that indicates that text is a link (example: The anchor text for Pete Kistler: Personal Website is “Pete Kistler: Personal Website”). Since links are such an important part of the algorithm, you want to make sure search engines know what the links are about. On you’re “My Links Page”, make sure you label each link with your name such as “Pete Kistler Twitter” rather than just “twitter.”

***There are many other places you can include your name within the HTML , like your page Title Tag. By using a service like BrandYourself, you can ensure your site is automatically as search engine friendly as possible.

Social Media Profiles:

 As we mentioned in Part 2, social media profiles are excellent results that you can push to the top of search engines. The following tips will help you ensure they are as search engine friendly as possible:

1. Keep it clean or keep it private: Before you start promoting a social network, it’s important to remember that everything you post is public and can be seen by everyone. For example, if you use your Facebook profile to post wild photos or political comments, you might not be putting your best foot forward. Some people opt to keep their profiles private, but keep in mind, nothing is really private. Updates can still find their way into search results and into the wrong hands. Keep your profiles professional.

2.Make sure you use your actual name: If you want your Twitter profile to show up high for your name, make sure your username is petekistler or Pete_Kistler, not Chilldude33.

***Tip: If your user name is already taken, simply use some variation like PRPeteKistler or Pete_Kistler.

3. Link to all your other content: Make sure you include a link back to your website and as many other profiles as they’ll let you include, as we mentioned before links are a very important factor in search engine rankings. The more credible pages your site links to about you (and vice versa), the higher it will rank for your name.

Online Directories: 

The more online directories you build, the more results you can potentially push to the top, and the more links you create for all of your other content. Below are some of directories that search engines consider the most credible.

• BigSight
• LookupPage

Conclusion:

If you follow these steps, and the rest of the articles in this series, you will have an incredible edge on anybody else with your name.

You are now well on your way to having a great first page of Google! However, in some cases there is something specific you need off the first page. A negative review, a damaging blog post, or just someone people are mistaking for you. If this is the case, continue on to Part 5: Emergency Tactics For Fixing a Negative Search Result.

The rest of the series:

• Part 1: Diagnose Your Google Ranking
• Part 2: Intro to Personal Search Engine Optimization
• Part 3: Building the foundation of your online presence for google
• Part 5: Emergency Tactics For Fixing a Negative Search Result

If you’re finding this series helpful, you might be interested in signing up for BrandYourself’s online reputation management tool for free. It makes it easy to get your best content on the first page of Google and monitor your progress. Sign up here.

You’ve diagnosed your Google presence in part 1 of this series and learned the basics behind Personal Search Engine Optimization in part 2. Now it’s time to actually start building the foundation of your Google presence with these basic steps everybody should follow to get started. The idea behind this part is simple: you can’t make your google results look better if you don’t have any good content in the first place.  So let’s get the basics in place, and by next week you’ll be ready to move on to Part 4: Advanced Tactics to raise your content higher in Google.

Step 1: Purchase Your Domain (yourname.com): 

Purchasing your domain name is quite possibly the most important step you can take if you want to show up on the first page of Google. It’s a $10/year investment and incredibly easy. You can buy your domain at any number of registrars such as hover.com, 1and1.com or GoDaddy.

Step 2: Build a Personal Website:

Now that you have your domain, it’s time to build a personal hub on the web where you can display everything from your work history to your personal interests. Today, anybody can create their own personal website, without having any technical knowledge. There are a lot of options out there but we usually recommend WordPress. It’s easy to get set up, but also allows for a lot of customizing as you develop your personal identity online and get more comfortable (or if you’re interested in tweaking your design, etc.).

Step 3: Get on Social Networks:

Search engines tend to rank social media profiles like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin high, and for good reason: They require some sort of authentication to create, so search engines view them as more credible. Also important, they are constantly updating, making them extremely relevant due to their “timely” content (learn about SEO basics). In short, if you’re wtrying to show up higher in Google, creating professional social media profiles is essential. (We’ll go more in depth about the best profiles to use and how to structure them in Part 4: Advanced Tactics).

Step 4: Fill Out Your Profiles:

Joining social networks is a good first step by itself, but the true power of these services doesn’t come through until you completely fill out your profile. You want Google to find your profile, so give it as much relevant info as you can. Be sure to add links to your other social profiles as well.

Conclusion:

Depending how competitive your name is, you could very well start seeing many of these places populate your first page of Google after only a week or two. Remember, social media may seem all fun and games, but these profiles are essential for the foundation of your online presence. Stay tuned to the rest of the series for tips on how to boost all of these profiles higher in search engines.

• Part 1: Diagnose Your Google Ranking
• Part 2: Intro to Personal Search Engine Optimization
• Part 3: You’re Here Already
• Part 4: Advanced Tactics to Boost your Google Ranking
• Part 5: Emergency Tactics For Fixing a Negative Search Result

If you’re finding this series helpful, you might be interested in signing up for BrandYourself’s online reputation management tool for free. It makes it easy to get your best content on the first page of Google and monitor your progress. Sign up here for a free account.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of creating or improving content to make sure it shows up as high as possible in web search results for the right keywords (in the case of personal SEO, your name).

1. Why Is Personal SEO Important?

Short and simple, search engines make mistakes.

Every time someone conducts an online search, search engines like Google and Bing use complex algorithms with hundreds of factors to make sure the most relevant results show up highest—but sometimes they make mistakes.

You probably know somebody who has made an entire personal website yet it doesn’t show up as a top result in searches for their name. There are a number of causes for poor results, such as a poorly structured page which makes it difficult for the search engine to understand. Other times, the site does not seem as credible as it actually is. Worst of all, sometimes the search engines isn’t even aware the content exists.

2. How Does SEO Help?

By employing general SEO tactics, or using a tool like our online reputation management tool you can make sure all of your best content is as search engine friendly as possible. This means your best content will be:

• Quickly found by Google
• Structured so search engines can quickly tell it’s about you
• Linked to and stored in credible databases and directories across the web so search engines know it’s trustworthy

What Factors Do Search Engines Use to Rank Content?

Search engines employ algorithms with hundreds of factors to determine how to rank results. However, there are a few mainfactors you should always keep in mind:

1. On Page SEO Factors:

These are factors within the actual page. The good news is, if you own the content, you have direct control over these:

Frontend & Backend Structure/Architecture: Any content on the web is supported by a number of frontend and backend computer languages or code—things like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and so on—which communicate information to the search engine and your computer. However, problems arise when people create great content, but it is so poorly structured that search engines are unable to properly communicate with the website and therefore have no idea what the page is really about. There are many things you need to be mindful of as you structure your code–the sitemap or navigation of the page, the history of the domain, the placement of headings and dozens of other things.  It can seem daunting, which is why we wrote this series to walk you through the most important parts. (It’s also why we created an online reputation management tool that takes care of it all for you.)

Relevancy: This one is simple—keep your content updated. If your content hasn’t been updated in a long time, search engines start to view it as irrelevant. (Tip: by adding a social stream to your site you can keep your site updated because your status updates from places like Facebook or Twitter will automatically be posted on your BrandYourself profile page.)

Keyword/content: When a search engine visits your page, you want to make sure it quickly understands which words and phrases are the most important—what we call keywords. For example, if you want to rank for “YOUR NAME”, but “YOUR NAME” isn’t written anywhere on the page, a search engine would have no idea to rank it for that. There are two important elements to keep in mind:

Placement: There are certain places on the page that  search engines consider more important than others, so that’s where you want to include YOUR NAME.  These include outwardly visible areas–the URL, page headings, bolded words and anchortext—as well as areas in the backend– title tags, heading tags, meta-tags, and descriptions. You want to include YOUR NAME in all of these places.

Density: Search Engines also take into account the density of these keywords throughout the site, to make sure any content on the page lines up with those words.  This way, you can’t simply stuff keywords, like YOUR NAME, in those important places, even if the page is about something entirely different.

2. Off Page SEO Factors:

These factors aren’t directly tied to the content on your page and are meant to gauge the page’s outside credibility. Since you can’t directly control these factors, it’s important you dedicate time to the most important ones:

Incoming Links: Search engines consider each link to a site as a “vote” for that site to show up higher. The more places that link to your site, the higher search engines will rank it. However, the credibility of the link is also important. For example, a link from CNN.com is weighted more heavily then a link from a random no-name site. This is one of the most important factors in SEO. It’s a time consuming but very important step, which is why our online reputation management tool helps you streamline the process.

Social Sharing: Sharing a page across social networks is one of the easiest ways to build credible links. If you share a relevant, valuable page, people will pass it around, signaling a great deal of credibility to search engines.

Avoid Black-Hat Techniques That Get Your Content Banned

OOP (Over-Optimization Penalty): Many search engine marketers are tempted to try to “game” search engines and create an artificial edge by abusing the above factors. Fortunately, search engines are smart, and these “black hat” methods are quickly caught and harshly penalized (banned from results). These include:

• Keyword Stuffing
• Cloaking
• Link Stuffing

We don’t condone these tactics, nor are they effective, so I won’t bother explaining how they work. However, it’s important you don’t accidentally employ anybody who uses them. As a basic rule, if  you ever encounter a service provider or a product that guarantees quick results, chances are they use black hat techniques and you should take your money and run. It’s not worth doing anything or working with anyone that gets you permanently blacklisted by Google and other search engines. (Note: Most honest SEO tactics take anywhere from 2-6 weeks to start showing results).

Conclusion:

While all of this may seem daunting, you can start one step at a time and know that just by understanding the above you have a far deeper comprehension of how search engines and SEO function than the average person. Be sure to check out the other articles in this series as well to support you in your quest for search engine domination!

• Part 1: Google Yourself! Diagnosing Your Online Reputation
• Part 2:  Intro to Personal Search Engine Optimization
• Part 3: First Steps for Owning Your Search Engine Results (coming soon)
• Part 4: How to Raise Your Website or Favorite Profile to the Top of Google (coming soon)
• Part 5: How to Fix a Negative Search Engine Result (coming soon)