How Writers Can Dominate Search Results: 5 Steps to Owning Your Personal Brand

Posted by Donna on December 9, 2009 under branding, search engines |

There’s a great article from Vertical Measures I often pass along to eCommerce business owners I know: Be Proactive With Your Reputation Management.

This article stresses the importance of ownership of your brand. When someone is looking for a certain brand online, the top results should be official sites or supplemental sites for those brand names — not “garbage”. Imagine if the top link for a brand or individual was a bad review? Try searching for Wal-Mart. There’s plenty of “hate sites” about that monster of a store. (For that I am actually thankful, but I digress.)

As a writer, what does this mean for you? It means that if people are searching for you online, that you should not just be showing up, but appearing high. If you are not a household name, a public figure locally, or have not written heavily for the Internet, chances are there are very little reasons your name would show up in the search engines. After all, the spiders can only find information that exists. This was something someone asked me at the talk I did Monday. Her name turned up few results. But, the reason why? She had no online presence. It’s seems obvious, but for some, a reminder of this is needed.

If the only results that are showing up when you type your full name into a search engine like Google are links to newspaper articles that you were included in, old school rosters that have made their way online, sports scores, or other tidbits, you need to do some brand building. In the article from Vertical Measures, you will see that the author took a screen shot of the first page of Google search results when “vertical measures” was searched for. I followed their lead and did the same for me to demonstrate how, over time, I was able to own my name and my brand.

Search Results When You Search for Donna Talarico in Google

Here, you can see that when you search for Donna Talarico even without the quotes, I own the whole first page. (As of this writing anyway.)

1. My writing blog

2. My facebook profile

3. An article I wrote for a site, Associated Content, a content site which ranks very well

4. The Barnes and Noble page for a book of essays

5. My LinkedIn profile

6. My personal, more candid, blog Daily Dose o’ Donna

7. My profile at Amazon.com

8. My profile on a private social media network, through Ning.com

9. My Twitter account for my work username, @cactus_donna

10. My MySpace page (Wait? I still have one of those?)

Bonus link - My Google profile

What do I think about my search engine results?

Overall, I am happy with what I see. Anyone looking for me can clearly see what I do professionally - eCommerce and writing. The results show that I am social media savvy in that Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, and even a Ning profile all show up. While I think the article I wrote in 2007 about me not being domestic is cute, I’d rather it not show up on Page 1. I’d rather my profile on the Ning site not show up in the results. And, since the book available on B&N is something I self-published in 2005, I’d rather that not show up either. But other than that, I feel comfortable with what is displayed. There’s no doubt in my mind that since this post mentions my name so many times, that this will eventually make its way to Page One.

I hadn’t Googled myself in a while, so I decided to see how deep I could go before another Donna Talarico showed up. On Page Two I still own all the results, with links to newspaper articles I’ve either written or have been interviewed for, or to other blogs, forums, or websites I frequent. It isn’t until Page Four that another Donna Talarico shows up. Then, all the other results are still related to articles and other mentions of me, and then, it’s all me until you hit Page Eight. Now, I have been online so long that my GeoCities page (RIP) used to show up first, until Yahoo! recently laid GeoCities to rest. I have been producing content for print and online publications since the late 90s and have jumped on board every social networking site early, so I’ve had time to develop this. Any social media expert will tell you that building rankings does take time, and since my profiles, articles, and such have been around for gosh, nearly a decade, I am fortunate that I rank well. I share this here to demonstrate how, over time, you can totally capitalize on being all over the Internet to help create and control your personal brand. (Attention future husband: I will probably keep my maiden name.)

What if I have a common name and want to stand out in the search engines, too?

The best advice I can give is, since you are likely a writer or in publishing, add your personal tagline to every web entity you have, such as Joe Smith, freelance writer or Lisa Jones, literary agent. This way, when people are searching for your name with some other keywords, you will be more likely to show up. It should be understood that people with common names are going to turn up a lot of results, so users will naturally use some type of identifier to go along with that name to dig deeper. So, use some extra keywords to define who you are, in addition to just your name.

To get starting building your personal brand as a writer:

Step 0: Find out where you stand
Google yourself. What comes up? Who comes up? Do a lot of other people have your name?

Step 1: Start with a solid, branded foundation
Create a blog and/or personal website and have a custom domain name with your name. This will serve as your hub. When you utilize your other social media tools for writers, such as Twitter and Facebook, you will link back to your personal blog/website.

Step 2: Be sure to create as many profiles as you can.
If you are not on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, sign up. If you feel other networks also suit you, consider them too, perhaps Flickr, YouTube, or writing-related profiles such as Publisher’s Marketplace, AuthorAdvance, etc. As you can see from my results, the popular social networking sites and blogging platforms have some pull in the search engines. Use that to your advantage.

Step 3: Don’t make croutons out of your search results
The key to tip two is also keeping up with them. These profiles you create are also most effective when they are fresh — not stale. That’s right. Don’t make croutons outta your search results. This means that if these results are showing up and searchers are clicking on them, you will want to keep up them and make sure you are maintaining them. People often tell me that they won’t have time to write if they get sucked into all of this. You don’t have to get sucked in. I admit that I do. But once you get everything set-up, the hard part is done. Check in a few times a week. Create a schedule you are comfortable with. But, do keep updating, because search engines like fresh content. This is why you see rankings change all the time. You must not let things go, or down those listing go. But, you don’t have to update hourly either. Find the balance that works for you.

Step 4: Big brother yourself
Set a Google alert up for your name so you can be made aware when you are listed somewhere. This helps you monitor your brand, as well as let you know when search engines have spidered your name/sites/profiles.

Step 5: Get out your megaphone
Promote. Share your links with others. Friend people. Follow people. Comment on other blogs. This will help you grow, and also help you build links, which is another key to getting a higher ranking.

Those are some tips for how social media can help enhance search engine rankings and how, as an author, you can begin to manage to own your personal brand. Good luck! And please comment with any other ideas, or any other strategies you may have, as well as RT this post if you feel some of your network would enjoy this.