What is personal SEO?
Personal SEO is where your name appears in a search result for your name. It's what a potential client would see when they are looking for you when they have been referred for your service. E-ttraction is your level of digital attractiveness based on being findable, credible and contactable.
It’s best to have at least 5 out of 10 results lead to you, but that will take time and we will cover more of that in future blogs. For now, let’s focus on getting you the first link.
To do that you need to know what is going to be your core site. That’s the one you realistically can get to the top of Google because it has SEO strength and the one that will likely convert a referral to the next step in your sales process.
Have one core site
Have a think about the main site you want your referrals to find? If you are in the job market or running your own business I suggest you focus on LinkedIn. It’s the easiest way to get you to Number 1, with the least effort and lowest cost.
Appearing as the first link is getting really important now that Siri, Google assistant and others will only read the first name in a search result. So as these artificial intelligent searches become more popular, particularly on mobile, the more vital it is to be at the top.
After working in the social media industry for over a decade, we know that when someone searches on a person's name, 80% of the time, LinkedIn will be the first search result on Google. The reason is that LinkedIn has a huge amount of evergreen content dedicated to individuals. By evergreen, I mean it doesn’t disappear like a Twitter or Facebook newsfeed post, it stays on your profile for Google to crawl and prospects to see.
Use LinkedIn better
One site that outranks LinkedIn is Wikipedia. This site is designed for celebrities or people ‘of note’ so although we have created them for clients, you have to back up all factual statements with public articles from reputable sources. If you have many online news articles about yourself it is possible. This will be beyond most people so a personal website, one that is dedicated to your name, can be a good solution as it will achieve number one placement. e.g. www.yourname.com.au
If you have a weak LinkedIn profile then other sites such as Facebook, news articles or a website you are featured on may show up first. The issues with these options are they are not the best way to move a prospect forward to contacting you for a job or new business. Another issue is you are not able to control the information so they may not always be positive for your brand. They can be useful for creating first-page domination, but getting the first link is the most critical.
Therefore, for most people, the best chance of getting the first link in Google is going to be LinkedIn. This is great news as many people are already on this platform, yet most people really are not using it properly to convert referrals.
Fear not! We will cover how to use LinkedIn in more detail in upcoming blogs or you can check out our free eBook on LinkedIn here.
What’s your name?
One item we need to mention regarding SEO is that it all depends on the search term. If your name is the term we want to appear for, it is critical that you spell your name the same way every time. That means not mixing up nicknames (such as Andrew and Andy), last names remaining consistent and not using stage names on LinkedIn. The name people will use to refer you to others needs to be the name that Google is looking for in LinkedIn.
For example, you are known as “Andy Ford”, or “Fordy”, and on LinkedIn, your name is Andrew Ford, that isn’t a direct match. Similar, but not the same. Try both searches and see the difference!
Name images
The final tip for your personal SEO is to name your images. When someone googles your name, it generally will have an image bar in the results with photos, so you can find that specific person. Google is smart, they know you are looking for a person and sometimes you need to see their face to recognise them.
To make it easier for Google to find you, name any images you use online with your name, business name and product name to increase SEO on your photos. (e.g. "Andrew Ford, Social Star, e-ttraction marketing or personal branding" depending on the image.) In SEO’s language, it’s called optimising your Alt and Title tags, which you can read more about here.
I hope these tips give you a starting point for your personal SEO work. There is a lot to learn! If you would like to know more or need some assistance in how to remove negative articles and how to beat famous people who share your name contact our team here.
Regards,
Andrew Ford
P.S. Why not take advantage of our free brand review by clicking below.
