In collaboration with Robert David Hunter, one of Personal Branding Blog’s best commenter’s. Robert currently works for International Quality and Productivity Center in New York. London based IQPC produces conferences and seminars for business leaders across 30 different industries. In his role as a Finance Division Sales Executive, Robert leverages his banking industry expertise in bring the top people and companies in Finance to these events. He is also on site at these conferences to represent the interests of his clients.
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We work to develop personal brands to let people know who we are and what value we brin
g to professional relationships, be they people or companies. It’s important to remember, though, that a well articulated brand is only as effective as how many people are actually seeing it. More viewers, more potential relationships. Of course, this leads into a general marketing discussion but we wanted to focus specifically on Google visibility.
Your visibility on Google is the gateway to your Web presence. People looking for you go to Google. It is the search engine of record. If Google says you don’t exist then in a very real sense you don’t. Your searchability is a critical measure of your brand.
Google ranks relevance to a query, such as a person’s name, through it’s PageRank™ algorithm. Needless to say, it’s highly complex. There are scores of ways to make your webpage more friendly to this system. However, let’s be practical and keep it to the bare minimums that everyone should be doing.
- Establish a profile on LinkedIn - PageRank™ regards LinkedIn more highly than other social networking sites. It can make it easier for people to find you and you can put links to your other web activities on your profile.
- Reciprocate site links – PageRank™ counts the links to your site from other sites in determining where it ranks you. Consider reciprocating site links with other people in your network. Bear in my mind that putting a link on your site says that you are recommending it. Be sure it’s a quality site that has relevance to your brand.
- Make your title tag site relevant – PageRank™ gives added weight to a site’s title in searches. This should seem obvious. Consider having your name and the general theme of your site in title.
You will notice that some popular social networks carry a lot of weight (see picture above) in Google. From what I’ve noticed, Facebook, LinkedIn, Lyro, Technorati, YouTube, Twitter and Blog Catalog are favorable. You should join these popular services, so that you can “own your brand” on Google. If you have negative publicity associated with your brand, by joining these networks, you can push those results down, so that if someone Google’s you, your personal brand will be secure. Also, purchase your domain name immediately (yourname.com).
If your name is Britney Spears, Oprah or someone else that is famous, you need to focus on differentiating yourself by middle name or a quick catch phrase. This can be somewhat challenging and may require some tuning and SEO/M expert craftsmanship. When you have a unique name, it’s far easier to stand out, shine and control your rankings. Blogging is the easiest way to climb to the top, as blogs are updated more frequently and there are more link-backs within blogs that catapult your rank.
Related posts:
- Personal Brand Audit: What’s Your Google Score? This is part 3 in the “Personal Brand Audit” series....
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Interesting ideas. What would be your advice to those of us with difficult to spell names? This seems to have its advantages – it will probably be unique – and its challenges – will people be able to find you? What’s your take on this?
My name is difficult to spell, especially because Charles Schwab’s name is so strong. Do what Connie Bensen did, purchase http://www.conniebensen.com and http://www.conniebenson.com.
Well, a few months ago… after one of my seminars, a P&C insurance broker came up to me and said, “Hi, do you know who Tim O’Brien is?” “umm.. ‘the person to know?’” “YES! I’m also Tim O’Brien”
Apparently, he was doing some ego surfing and realized that his name is pretty well known, strategically. And he figured he better do something about it, or else his own personal brand will be lost.
FYI: You may know of a Tim O’Brien… he’s “a person to know” (that’s his catchphrase) in our “personal branding trade.”
Tim O’Brien (and another colleague at his firm) are now great clients.
Likewise, you may know of Krishna De… she too is in our ‘personal branding trade’ (I believe she spoke at the PB Summit). I once commented on her blog and asked her how she ups her own PageRank, given that Krishna is a “famous deity” in my Hindu heritage. I’m not worried… she’s doing fine, with Krishna’s blessing no doubt.
And speaking of misspellings… I own ViksBlog.com and the often incorrectly, VicsBlog.com… it’s similar to PPC (adwords) campaigns… buy commonly misspelled terms/names!
~ Vikram
PersonalBrandMarketing.com
Vik, these names are all familiar to me, but as you note, people outside this niche may get confused.
HI Dan,
great post. I’ve always been fascinated about online personal branding and the “GOOGLE ME” trend, and i even opened an Hebrew blog about it.
Here in Israel this is much more easier to brand your name online on-line in because there is much less competition, but it seems that people don’t really care about their Google searchability.
on the contrary, some of my friends even afraid to put their full real names on the net, because they dont want someone will find them…
what do you think i should tell them
It depends on their situation. I recommend a blog or personal website with yourname.com domain. This way you can control what is seen when someone Google’s you.
If they aren’t looking to “make it big” fast or are content with their current job, personal branding online becomes less relevant.
I have been Googleing myself for years.
You just gotta find sites that get spidered and post something about your wears.
See…
http://www.google.com/search?q=Randy+Grover
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