Time to SEO yourself

I suspected it was only a matter of time...

2 weeks ago I had a conversation with an old friend from university. He was expecting his third child and was struggling with names. He'd been through all this before but now was viewing the process differently. After naming his first daughter with what he thought was a really unique and quirky name he turned up on the first day of her nursery class to discover that four other sets of parents had thought the same thing. How could he have been so common and unoriginal?

We discussed a few of the truly ridiculous names that some parents give and he said he was leaning down this route because "at least in the future when someone searched for her in Google she would stand out" (the family had a top-10 surname as well).

This is the first instance I know of someone naming a child with a search engine at the forefront of their mind but I'm sure it won't be the last. Big brands spend millions on managing their identity, image and ranking online because, increasingly, a search engine box is their first touchpoint with the consumer.

But take a moment to think about your own personal brand. When you do an ego search online what information comes up? Thousands of other John Smiths (including the beer)? A MySpace entry from your friends about a wild night out in Magaluf? A YouTube video? Think about the impression that this gives of 'brand me' because I guarantee you that employers and headhunters are starting to look online as part of the recruitment process.

Time to optimise youself online

So, what lessons should we learn from the search engine optimisation industry? What gets you higher up the rankings and gives you a higher profile? The two most important factors are:

1. Content - post information about yourself online but manage it carefully. Set up accounts with chosen social networking site. Services like LinkedIn, Facebook or MySpace. Think about keywords you want to be found for and make sure they are included.
2. Links - join your industry's trade associations. Participate in meetings. Speak at conferences. Write on discussion boards, blogs and journals for your industry. Give quotes in your company press releases. Network. And provide somewhere to link back to your own personal website, your blog or a LinkedIn page.

It is time to spend some time controlling your personal profile online.

Alternatively, you could choose to change your name by deedpoll and hope that 1,000 other Louise White's have more to hide than you do...

Rory Brown, Incisive Media