Search engine algorithms are top secret. I would be willing to bet that only a very select few really understand how they work within their own companies. I have been fighting the good fight and have had incredible results with search engine optimization on Philoking.com, but only recently have I discovered a serious flaw in my personal branding, and it has brought to light some inconsistencies in the algorithms that provide results.
I could be way off base here, but at least in my opinion, Google, Yahoo and Live Search are the three most popular search engines. Recently I have began monitoring vanity searches on those services with the terms “Philoking” and “Jason Burns.”
Now this site is no gangbuster of traffic, sure I get tens of thousands of unique visitors a month and my Google Page Rank is 4 and growing, but it’s no monster site, that’s for sure. Never the less, I would hope that many cases would find it higher in relevant search results and especially in the case of Yahoo and Live, they do not.
I will disclose that I spend the majority of my time tailoring to Google, but I do submit sitemaps to the other two and would expect similar results. If you go to the top three and search “Philoking,” I am in the following places:
Yahoo Live! Rank 1 1 3
No big surprises here, on Live! I am bested by my own Flickr profile twice on Live! before my domain which matches the keyword 100% ironically, makes the cut.
My name is completely different though, look at these results.
Yahoo Live! Rank 3 12 7 Top Result bbbburns.com Myspace Hoya burns
So recently I ran a question on Linkedin.com to get some suggestions for how to raise my branding on my own name and I got some great answers. I have implemented these suggestions and will see how they work. The top suggestion email came from Scott Allen from http://entrepreneurs.about.com/
#1 – Put your name in your site title, e.g., “Jason Burns’ Philoking.com”, etc. The title tag is the single most important piece of content on your site regarding search engines.
#2 – You don’t seem to have an “About me” page on your site. Create an About page and make the URL http://philoking.com/jason-burns (or /pages/jason-burns or whatever)
#3 – Modify your template so that Jason Burns in the “Posted by…” is a hyperlink to the About page you just created.
#4 – Write some articles (at least 10) and submit them to EzineArticles.com and maybe a couple of others. In your byline, make your name a hyperlink to the About page from step 2.
Do that and I can just about guarantee you you’ll be #1 for just your name within 30 days. And then you can buy me a chai latte.
Thank you very much for the tip and you can guarantee that if it works I’ll do more than buy you a tea!
I would love for this to become more of a live SEO discussion, please comment and tell me how you have helped brand your website.