Personal Branding: Own The Top 3 Spots In SERPs
With human resources and recruiters turning to social media and search engines to help them find, recruit and evaluate job applicants it is important for you to lock down the top three search results when someone enters your name as the search term.
If you are doing a good job of promoting the personal brand you have created then this should not be a problem. The top three spots can be occupied by your social media profiles. Your LinkedIn profile, your twitter name, your blog or even your FaceBook profile can all take up slots on search engine results pages.
Here is an example of the top three search results on Bing for the term “Justin Freid”:
One key to this is inserting your real name i.e. Justin Freid into the URL’s of the sites you are attempting to have rank atop the SERPs. Often people are not optimizing their site for their given name and are more focused on their industry or company. But if you simply use your name as your username for these accounts it will appear in the URL. (Search engines dig that)
For example my Twitter username is @Justin_Freid and the URL for my twitter page is http://twitter.com/Justin_Freid. I also created a unique URL on LinkedIn and now my LinkedIn profile URL is http://linkedin.com/in/justinfreid.
Since there is not too much competition for the name Justin Freid (Only one other active social media user/blogger) I was able to secure these spots fairly easily. If this tip does not achieve the results you are looking for you can always turn to some link building and use your name as the anchor text.
By simply submitting your blog to directories such as the Yahoo Directory and Dmoz with your name as the anchor text can add value. You should also be actively using your social media profiles to promote your personal brand name. If you are presenting valuable info to your network chances are you will receive quite a few inbound links to your blog posts or profiles.
Another great option to build links to your social media profiles and especially your blog is utilizing guest posts. This is something I just began to put into action and has caused a plethora of back links pointing to my blog. Any blog post you write you should include a short bio at the end that sums your brand, where your work and has a link back to your blog. Here is an example of what I use:
Justin Freid is an internet marketing entrepreneur who currently heads up SEO and Social Media marketing efforts for Peterson’s College Search. You can find Justin’s thoughts on the world of social media and SEO on his blog, Justin Freid | Search and Social Media Marketing and follow him on Twitter under the handle @Justin_Freid
By using this at the end of any blog post I write I place links to my website and to my Twitter profile, all work as a vote and tell search engines that these pages are important to the search term “Justin Freid”. The more links I have with proper anchor text the better the chance is I can own the top three results across Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Great article. I unfortunately have the same name as a bigtime Hollywood actor, as well as the slight misspelling of an old NFL pro, so I will never list for my actual name.
Thanks Brian, that does sound like quite a challenge. Have you tried creating a website that is solely optimized for your name? i.e. your name im the Title, H tags, content and a bunch of inbound links with your name as the anchor text?
I have the same problem as Brian – as my name is Mark Jackson – probably the two most common names put together.
With that said I do agree with the article that it is important to dominate the top of your chosen name based search term – so I am targeting my business name – MJDIGITAL as that is not very common (even though it is a tad unimaginative!)
Still – good article – thanks.
Maybe this is me talking nonsense, but it seems like Google isn’t a company run strictly by the top and they seem to be doing quite well.