Career Invention: Take Your Coaching Practice to the Next Level

Personal SEO: How To Manage Your Reputation Online

Monday, June 21st, 2010

Have you given any attention to your online reputation lately? Whether you’re in the middle of a job search or promoting your own business, it matters. Big time. And all the time.

Consider these cautionary tales…

A top executive knows that she’s being recruited for an opportunity that would be a major promotion. She hasn’t paid much attention to her online reputation until she does a Google search on her name. All the positions associated with her are out-of-date or irrelevant. And to make matters worse, a very unsavory character has the same name as her. Ouch.

A budding entrepreneur has been accepted to be part of an endorsed-team of service providers. She’ll get lots of marketing opportunities and instant credibility by being associated with this brand-name team. Until they Google her and see her unprofessional web site that doesn’t fit the group’s image. They rescind the offer and she doesn’t know how to get a second chance with them.

Both of these women need Personal SEO (or search engine optimization).

Fact: if someone is considering associating you with THEIR reputation, they are going to dig into YOURS. And Google is their first stop.

When was the last time you checked your own online reputation? And do you know what you can do to manage it?

Here’s the Personal SEO process that I teach my clients:

Assess -> Influence -> Monitor (repeat)

Assess: Who are you online?

Google yourself. What’s on the first page? Don’t agonize past the first page; most people will not look past page one.

Page one DOES matter though. If you do appear there, you absolutely want it to be content that you can impact. And if you don’t appear on page one at all, it’s worth doing everything you can to drive your personal results higher in the Google rankings.

Ask five people you know how they would look for you online. This exercise is especially valuable if you have a common name. Which keywords did they use? Repeat their searches and see what you find.

If you have Google Analytics installed on your website (you do, right?), then you can see what search phrases bring people to your site. Do they represent how you want to be found?

If someone else is placing highly in the search you wish to occupy, try to determine what is giving her those results. A detailed analysis of this may require a little pro assistance but sometimes it’s very obvious. Maybe she has a very active blog or a domain name that includes her name. If you visit her site, how is she using your desired keywords in her content? In headlines? In links? In the blog title?

Influence: Create content that drives your preferred results higher in Google.

You can’t “control” what Google shows. No one can and anyone selling you that is ripping you off. No one can guarantee you first-page placement on Google.

You can, however, influence the Google results by creating valuable, quality content. First, it’s imperative to create content that represents who you currently are and how you want to be found.   Second, if you can get links from other sites to your content (these are known as inbound links), that will help you enormously in your Google placement. Inbound links are like gold for Google rankings.

Prominent sites like LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com), Facebook (http://www.linkedin.com) and Twitter (http://www.twitter.com) usually return highly-ranked results. You might not love the idea of having profiles there but at least YOU get to control the content. Be sure to use the “Summary” on LinkedIn and the profiles details on the others to anchor your personal brand with keywords.

Google Profiles (http://www.google.com/profiles) is underrated and easy to set up. And, of course, Google loves to return itself as a result!

Set up profiles in social networking sites even if you’re not going to be very active.  They get great placement in search engines and they create essential inbound links to your site.

Include a current photo on your profiles, preferably a professional-looking photo. Use the same photo on every profile. Creating visual consistency will go a long way to distinguish from others with a similar name.

If you are an entrepreneur, a blog is a great vehicle for creating high-value content that will get picked up by Google. Have a conscious keyword strategy for your blog. Post frequently or at least consistently. Generate buzz on Twitter to get inbound links.

Here’s a bit of bad news: if you find something on Google that you don’t like and you don’t own the page or the profile, you’re out of luck. Generally speaking, you can’t have it removed. However, you CAN influence the results that Google returns by creating content that could drive the negative results further down in Google’s results. If the undesired page is an outright lie, you may have a legal matter to consider.

Monitor: Periodically watch your search results and notice what creates influence for you.

Repeat the Google searches that you did in the assessment step and track your progress over time. It may take a while to improve your search ranking but conscious action will have an impact.

Set up Google alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) to watch your name and keyword phrases. These alerts can also be a great source of people and blogs with which to connect or sources of content to share via social networking. Leaving links on other blogs can also create inbound links for you. Periodically, review your social networking profiles for consistency and currency.

Repeat

Just as reputations are built on consistent performance that meets expectations, Personal SEO is improved by consistent creation of relevant content, especially if it attracts others to link to you.

Don’t wait for a nasty surprise to discover your online reputation. It’s completely manageable right now.

Do you have other questions about managing your reputation online? Please post them in the comments.

Laurie Foley is a Certified Career Invention Coach who has been helping people and organizations thrive online for more than 15 years. Resourceful and intuitive, she’s an online business and marketing coach for those who want to create meaningful work and amplify their message. lauriefoley.com

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