Your name is important and when someone searches for it online, you want to make sure they find your correct information. This isn’t just about reputation management, it’s also about looking your best and delivering a great first impression.

The key thing to remember here is no matter what someone is searching for online, they are likely going to start with a simple Google search. Since most people share their name with hundreds or even thousands of people in the world, having your content rank for your name might be quite a challenge. This is especially the case if you share a name with a popular celebrity, politician or well-known personality.

The good news is that when it comes to ranking for your name in Google, anything is possible. Implement each of the seven methods below into your content creation and marketing efforts to see your own site and content start ranking higher for your personal name.

Create a Website or Blog with YourName.com

The most effective way to rank in Google for your name is to simply create a website or blog and have the domain as your personal name. ZacJohnson.com is a perfect example of this.

It’s not just about creating a site and putting it out there, it’s also about making sure the site acts as your main hub for everything you do online. This means you should be creating original content for the site, linking to your social media profiles and also referencing back to your site when contributing to other sites or getting quoted/referenced.

Once you have a platform in place, it’s something that will continue grow and develop with your personal brand over time — while also gaining in authority and SEO power as well.

Promote Your Social Profiles

Speaking of social profiles, Google loves to rank sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter right at the top of their search results. Depending on the competition around your name, your social profiles might already be ranking at the top of Google, even above your own websites.

You can see an example of what currently ranks in Google should you search for “Taylor Swift” below.

With millions of sites and new content pieces covering Taylor Swift every single day, it’s her social profiles (Twitter, Instagram and YouTube) that continue to dominate the search rankings.

This same method works for all names and not just celebrities. If you want your social profiles to rank higher, just keep sending more links to them using a variation of your name as the anchor text.

Boost Profiles and Authority Sites

As mentioned in the beginning of the article, ranking at the top of Google for your name is important if you want to deliver the best and most accurate information. If you are having trouble ranking your own site or want to focus on ranking other high authority content in addition to your own, this is a perfect option to explore.

For example, let’s take a look at Warren Stephens, who is an entrepreneur and has multiple bios and articles written about him online. His Wikipedia profile ranks first, then a bio on Forbes and another based around “Warren Stephens net-worth” on TheRichest. While Wikipedia and Forbes are both mega-huge outlets, TheRichest is still quite powerful to be ranking number three for his name.

Celebrity networth sites have quickly been gaining more and more attention lately as they continue to ramp up the number of celebrities, entrepreneurs, and well-known personalities they continue to cover. Even if you don’t think your one of the most famous people in the world, your profile could soon quickly be picked up by their platforms and covered in the media.

Just while doing a quick search through their Google listings I was able to easily find thousands of entrepreneurs including Kevin Harrington and Gary Vaynerchuck.

How long before we see these “networth” sites ranking on the first page for many average individuals, YouTube stars and entrepreneurs?

Guest Blogging and Author Profiles on Other Sites

While you might already have a site of your own that is ranking well for your name, it’s always a good idea to try and rank for multiple positions with other relevant content. If you are an expert in your industry, a great way to secure even more page one rankings for your name is to contribute content to other high-authority sites.

We can see this working extremely well for Neil Patel, who is a well-known entrepreneur and marketer through his blogs at QuickSprout.com and NeilPatel.com.

Not only does Neil have his own sites, he is also a contributor to many big media outlets like Entrepreneur.com and HubSpot.com. Doing a quick search for his name in Google will result in not only his main sites and social profiles ranking for his name, but also each of these contributing bios on other sites as well.

Once again, a perfect example of how you can deliver a great first impression (and your best content) when someone searches for your name on Google.

Rank with Other Content Sharing Sites

As covered in a few of the examples above, a great way to quickly rank at the top of Google for your name is to do so with other well-established sites. In this example, we are going to look at Jeff Bullas, who is one of the most well-known bloggers and social media influencers in the world today.

His site at JeffBullas.com already ranks number one for his name, then his social profiles follow afterward. However, when you move further down the list you will see his profiles with SlideShare.net and WordPress.com also make it on the first page of Google.

Even though Slideshare and WordPress.com are two extremely popular sites, not many people consider them when trying to rank for multiple positions for their name. These are definitely two free options everyone should consider when trying to dominate the whole first page of Google for their name.

Do Interviews and Media Outreach

A common theme in this article has been the power of using authority sites and media outlets to quickly rank at the top of Google. One of the best ways to accomplish this is through interviews and getting mentioned or covered by relevant industry sites that rank well.

A quick example of this can be seen if you search for my name in Google. A few years ago I was interviewed for IncomeDiary.com, and that post still ranks extremely well for my name today.

The same holds true for even big name celebrities or entrepreneurs who do interviews or get covered for stories based around their success and fame. If you do a search for “Lori Greiner” of Shark Tank, you will see interview-based stories from BusinessInsider.com, Inc. and Entrepreneur.com all ranking on the first page for her name.

Not sure how to get media coverage on sites like Entrepreneur or Inc? Simple… just look for the author bio section in each article. Share their content, build up a relationship and maybe your story is a perfect fit for their next article.

Don’t Forget About the Power of Video

Video is a fascinating beast in itself, yet one that is often overlooked by content creators that mainly focus on “text” based articles.

Here’s two quick things you need to know about video.

1. People love to share and reference videos
2. Google loves to rank video since they own YouTube

Now that you know that, you should definitely be using video in your content outreach and SEO practices.

It’s also not just YouTube video that ranks well either. Sites like Vimeo and DailyMotion rank very nicely as well.

Still not sure how effective video ranking can be? Richard Branson is one of the most well-known and successful entrepreneurs in the world, with billions of searches for his name annually. With all of that competition in play, do you think a video would rank for his name on Google? — The answer is yes, and even more surprising… it’s not even a YouTube video!

Don’t Just Rank #1 — Rank for All Ten!

The ultimate goal for everyone trying to rank in Google for their name shouldn’t be to just grab that elusive number one position, but instead to rank for multiple (if not all) page one locations.

Run through the above seven working methods again and see what type of content you may already have ranking in Google. It’s much easier to improve your rankings with any existing content that you already have ranking on page 2 or 3 pushed to page 1, versus trying to come up with new and original content of your own.

In the world of SEO and ranking at the top of Google, it’s all about getting your content in the right places and building authority links and references around them

Expert roundups are getting a lot of attention lately. If you haven’t participated in one, I’m sure you’ve at least seen them being passed around through social media or even found on your favorite site. The main reason why expert roundups are such a hot content creation method these days is that not only are you creating new content and value for your audience, your site is also getting a ton of social media shares, expert exposure, and authority in the process.

This is also one of the main reasons why I decided to launch my Rise of the Entrepreneur podcast, with the focus on interviewing experts within our industry.

Here’s a typical 5-step formula for how to create and find success with an expert roundup.

1. Choose a hot topic or question relevant to your niche
2. Email/outreach experts the question within your space
3. Once you get enough answers, publish them all to your site
4. Send outreach again to your experts and ask them to share your post
5. Repeat the process and continue to promote previous roundups on your site

The formula works extremely well and it one of the best ways to get expert names within your niche on your site. Since the experts who contribute content back to your site are getting free exposure and a link back to their site, it’s no problem for them to spend a few minutes answering your question and getting back to you.

If you are currently in need of an expert round-up for your own brand or blog, contact me and let’s make it happen! We’ll put together an action plan and outreach strategy that works best for your niche and target audience.

Examples of Expert Roundups in Different Markets

What’s even more exciting about this type of content creation, is that it works in really any niche market. Sports, business, entertainment, finance… they all have hot topics and talking points that can easily be covered.

Let’s take a look at several examples of different successful expert roundups in various industries today.

21 Branding Experts Love Using Infographics

The actual value in expert roundups is always a big question. Sure, you will likely get a lot of engagement, backlinks and social shares to your article, but how are you generating new business or money from it? In this infographic roundup, the question asked was how to use infographics within your outreach and marketing. This is perfect for the site, as they are an infographic design service. No matter what type of roundup you are creating, always try to have a monetization play in effect as well.

80 Blogging Experts Share their Tips on How to Start a Blog

Expert round ups are all about creating content for your existing audience, while also helping you reach new audiences and further establish yourself as an authority. Below you will find a perfect example of this in motion, through my how to start a blog expert round up. As with most expert round ups, the concept was simple… as a bunch of site owners one question that they could provide a great answer for. The end result was over 80 different ways to find success with blogging — all from proven experts who already put their recommended tip into action.

22 Nutrition Experts Want to Keep You Healthy

The health and weight loss space is flourishing with content that is read, shared and viewed millions of times daily. In short, there is a never ending need for creating new content in this space. An excellent way to accomplish this, while bringing a new feeling into this mix, is through expert roundups. In this nutrition expert roundup post, Nutrition Fox was able to share numerous tips with their audiences, while creating an effective new way to increase backlinks, views and social activity in the process.

75 Relationship Experts Share their Advice

When you think about expert roundups, you probably don’t think about some of the best niche markets and industries that they could be used in. This relationship roundup is a perfect example. What makes it even more exciting is that over 75 different experts were able to contribute to it!

How 27 PR Experts Handle A Media Crisis

Something like reputation management and PR is huge for any existing personal brand, business or organization on the internet today. We all know that once something goes online, not only is it there forever… it also has the potential to go viral and cause problems quick! So what would some of the smartest minds in PR do to protect themselves? You will just have to check out this expert roundup to find out.

12 Foodie Expert Share their #1 Tip for Health Eating

No matter what type of blogger or expert you might be, healthy eating is something everyone can relate with. While most bloggers are focusing on creating roundups that are extremely niche focused, bringing together a collection of food bloggers to contribute to a great generic topic like healthy eating is a perfect way to reach new audiences around the world. Wondering what these food bloggers recommend for cooking fast and easy healthy meals? You’ll just have to check out each of their answers in the foodie roundup.

30 Expert Opinions on Why Men Cheat in Relationships

If you want to have one of the most read and well-respected relationship sites on the internet, you are going to need to have some expert advice for your audience as well. That is exactly what you will find at Marriage.com. Not only does their site have thousands of articles on relationship, love, and dating, they also have expert roundups as well. One of the more popular ones on the site focuses on why men cheat and highlights the opinion of thirty different relationships experts and their own unique reasoning.

Gardening Experts Trying to Save Your Garden

If you have a question about your home garden or even how to grow one… where do you go? For most people, it’s probably the local Home Dept or Lowes. Instead of trekking out to the store, why not search online and see what you can find. An excellent way to provide a useful resource to your audience while also answering commonly asked questions is through gardening roundups like the one featured below. Not only is this roundup niche specific, it’s also evergreen content — as it will be useful year after year whenever gardening is in season.

25 Experts Discuss the Future of SEO

In the world of online marketing and branding, expert roundups seem to take place on a daily basis. A few of the most common reasons for this is that so many people in our industry are willing to help each other out with information, while there also being a wide range of sites and resources always looking to create valuable content through such roundups. A perfect example of this can be seen at RankWatch, where they compiled answers from 25 different marketing experts to help us all better understand how to rank in Google and what the future of SEO might hold.

16 Cycling Bloggers Want You To Go Biking

When it comes to creating content for a niche focus blog, it’s all about knowing what your audience is looking for. For example… if you had a biking blog, how much could you possibly write about on biking? I’m sure there is plenty if you are in expert in this space. Another option is to simply interview other biking experts within your industry as well. Here’s a perfect example of a roundup in the cycling space.

10 SEO Experts Want to Expand Your Site Reach

Yes, I’ve even featured a few expert roundups of my own on a few of my sites. Some people like to go with super long roundups and will try to get as many people as they can to contribute. On this one, I simply went with 10 and it worked out extremely well. All it took was a few minutes to send out emails to a few SEO experts, send them a question and then compile all of the answers into a nice looking roundup post.

90 SEO Experts Discuss Effective Link Building

When being in a competitive niche industry like SEO or online marketing, associating big name experts with your site can be a huge deal. Tim Soulo did a great job with in this in his ahrefs roundup which featured 90 different SEO experts within the industry. Not only did this result in massive shares and branding for the site, it was also hitting their target audience as well — people wanting to do more with their SEO.

Beauty Experts Discuss Personal Looks

If you search around Google long enough, you will probably find expert roundups on just about anything. I was able to come across this one on a lesser known beauty blog, but it was still enough to grab my attention. The goal of this site is to review hair straightening products. Through the use of this personal looks roundup, I’m sure they were about to creep their way higher in the search results and move passed a lot of their competition.

48 Experts Share their Preferred eCommerce Platform

In the world of online marketing and business, it’s always important to choose the right hosting, advertising, and ecommerce platforms. With so many different solutions to choose from, what better way to get an idea of what’s working best, than through the use of asking experts what they are using. That is exactly what you will find in this ecommerce software round up. This round up was yet another one, completed by Minuca Elena.

16 Experts Look into the Future of Virtual Reality

When you have access to a lot of experts (which is something we all have), sometimes you just need to get creative. Don’t feel that you need to always ask the same SEO or marketing questions. Some of the best roundups or conversations happen when you step away and get more personal. A great example of this is seen in the virtual reality roundup with experts in the mobile application space. Let’s check back on this post in a few years and see how many of them were on the right track!

17 Marketing Experts Share Their Favorite Logo

When you see a logo design from the likes of McDonalds, Starbucks or Disney… how does it make you feel? Some of the most famous logo designs in the world today don’t even have names associated with them, yet people know who/what they are. Some people will a lot of money just to have a brand name logo on something, versus getting a generic version. Logos make people feel differently about brands around the world and this logo design expert roundup is a perfect example of why and how. Not only is this roundup focused on the thought process of different marketers and why logos make us think the way they do, it’s also a great promotion tactic for the site to push their logo design services.

39 Companies Share their Key Methods for Retaining Talent

Running a business in the world on the internet today is hard enough. Keeping your best employees and staff is even harder. This is often referred to as ‘employee retention‘ and is something that every business will need to go through and something that some are betters with than others. In this expert round-up from TimeDoctor, we can learn from 39 different businesses and tech-companies on what they are doing to grow their business, while also keeping their best employees

50+ Internet Security Tips from the Experts

The more focused your expert roundup is to the core of your business, the more likely you are to find success. Internet security probably isn’t one of the most exciting topics to read or write about, but when you bring in a lot of expert opinions, it instantly becomes more interesting. This is also a great example of how to create content that helps with backlinking and social activity.

28 Parenting Bloggers Share their Buying Mistakes

Mommy and parenting bloggers are some of the most powerful people on the internet. While most of them won’t have a massive reach or following, the following that they do have is usually quite loyal. The same holds true for many of the shopping and coupon bloggers out there as well. When they aren’t saving money or dishing the dirt on the latest parenting tips, you might just find some of them on parenting expert roundups like this one.

25+ Industry Veterans Reflect Back on Affiliate Summit

To bring this “expert” expert roundup series to a close, I wanted to bring us back to one of my best and most favorite roundups on the internet — which also happens to be right on this very blog. This round up is from Affiliate Summit attendees (mainly industry veterans), who were all asked what their favorite / most memorable story or event was over the past 15 years of Affiliate Summit events. This round up was perfect for many reasons, but mainly because they were all genuine stories that related not only with other Affiliate Summit attendees but also the person telling the story.

As mentioned in one of the earlier roundup examples… don’t feel obligated to always just ask a single question. Feel free to make it more open ended to bring more conversation and engagement to the table.

Creating Your Own Expert Roundups

Now that you’ve seen what’s possible with expert roundups, it’s time to start creating one of your own. The most time-consuming part of this whole process is the outreach process, as you will need to individually email each of the experts you would like to include within your roundup. What takes even longer is the process of actually finding the contact information for each person. To help with this process, I highly recommend using a solution like Outreach Ninja (14 day free trial).

Once the outreach process has taken place, then it’s a waiting game to see who is getting back to you. Again, a tool like Outreach Ninja can help with this, as you can build contact lists and see how is getting back to you — which is useful for future roundups. After going live with your roundup, be sure to then contact everyone who contributed, to let them know it’s live. Tell them you will be promoting it through social media and you’d appreciate if they could do the same.

Follow the example expert roundups above and the quick action guide above to start creating similar high-quality posts for your own site!

Don’t forget — If you are currently in need of an expert round-up for your own brand or blog, contact me and let’s make it happen! We’ll put together an action plan and outreach strategy that works best for your niche and target audience.

When I first started creating websites back in the mid-90s, it was quite a task! Not only was everything in HTML, it was also a process of individually uploading images, pages, making sure they were all connected together, using FTP software and everything in between. I actually used this same process to create all of my sites up until 2007, then I started using WordPress — which also lead to a massive uprising of drag-and-drop site builders that quickly eliminated the need to ever touch a line of code or have any required design or site skills.

This is exactly what you will find at SITE123, one of the top sites on the internet for creating a website within minutes, and also never needing to worry about technical design skills or hiring a designer to work on site. SITE123 has made this process extremely easy and straightforward by allowing users to sign up, select a ready-made style or layout from their directory, then add content and go live with their site.

It’s really that simple, and today we are going to look at why and how SITE123 became one of the top go-to sources for creating a site online.

SITE123 Makes Website Building Easy

As you can imagine, the website hosting and creation space are extremely competitive. However, SITE123 has established themselves as one of the key players in this space, while also providing their users with everything they need to get started with a personal or professional website of their own. In fact, there are now more than 1.25 million websites running on their site builder platform right now.

If you’ve ever wanted to start a website of your own, but haven’t made the leap yet, there were probably a few common reasons why. More often than anything else, people are scared of the idea of going live with a site and needing to learn something new. Another common reason is the associated costs of having a website. The last reason might have been that you just didn’t know what you would do with a website in the first place.

SITE123 makes this decision process quite simple, while also giving you solutions to these many questions in the process. As mentioned, SITE123 makes the process of creating a website dead-simple, and there are no design skills required. The platform also allows users to get started with a website of their own for free, which provides 500MB of storage, 1GB of bandwidth and also a subdomain. As for the reasoning of why you might want to start a website… I could give you a million! However, consider your options with starting an online diary, a blog, a new business, something you are interested in, or maybe just throwing together a few ideas and going live with a site, then seeing where it goes.

No matter why you create a website, SITE123 makes the process easy.

The Most Simple Site Builder Ever?

Over the years, I’ve tried a lot of different platforms and built many websites using drag-and-drop platforms or even complete CMSs like WordPress. If you are completely new to site building and don’t want to mess around with any of these advanced CMS platforms of designers, you will love how simple SITE123 is.

After creating a free account on their site, I was able to create the start of my new site (below) in less than two minutes. Simple click on any area of the site design on the right side of the page, then you can fill in the details and customize it through the options on the left side menu.

In the screen above you can see the “Homepage” customization options, but also take notice of the many other sections as well — such as the inner pages, design, settings, domain, and more. Click on any of these areas, and a whole new tab section will appear for you to make all of the customizations and changes to your site.

You can actually watch the short 2-minute video below to see how quick and easy it is to run through the site design wizard and completely customize the look and feel of your site in just minutes.

Of the many features built into SITE123, I love how the site is instantly being made and updated as you created it. This will make the content creation and design process so much easier for anyone who is completely new to the concept of site ownership.

SITE123 Offers a Wide Range of Site Templates

Earlier I touched upon some of the most common reasons why someone might not have a website of their own yet. We also covered how easy it is, but we can also see the many different ideas, focuses, and markets you could create a site for as well.

When you first sign up for a SITE123 account, one of the first questions is what type of website are you interested in building? Based on your selection, the site builder will then select a theme that you can start working off of.

No matter which of the categories or templates you choose, each user is given access to a wide range of features that are built right into the platform. These features include, but aren’t limited to:

• free hosting
• free SSL/HTTPS encryption
• unlimited web pages
• email accounts
• 24/7 website support
• access to their large image, icon and video library

Depending on the focus of your site and the style you go for, users will also find different features and design structures within each theme. A perfect example of this would be if you selected “photography”, you would then find the theme is more visual focused and allows for the uploading and displaying of images and photos throughout the site.

To truly understand and experience the many features and site designs on the platform, it’s best to sign up for a free account and start playing around with the site builder tool.

How to Start a Blog with SITE123

As mentioned earlier, there are many drag-and-drop site designers on the marketplace today, but many of them are just for building static sites. What makes SITE123 stand out from the crowd is that they have blogging capabilities built right into their platform. This makes the concept of blogging even easier, and especially for anyone who might want to avoid learning how to use WordPress altogether.

Keeping with the simplistic navigation and setup as most of the features on SITE123, setting up your own blog through their platform is quite simple as well. All you need to do is select the “Add New Post” button, and start adding your content. The option is also there to edit/delete content as needed.

Just like all website and design templates on SITE123, blogs are fully responsive and viewable on all devices as well.

When working on an individual post (shown below), the option is also there to schedule for your content to go live at any given time. You can also see the text/formatting options on the right side of the page as well. All extremely simple to use, and pretty much no technical learning or design skills required.

If you are familiar at all with the concept of blogging, this will all seem quite simple. If not, SITE123 makes the process easy enough. All it takes is a click of a button to insert images and videos, add links to your text, adding tags, titles and descriptions are also a breeze as well.

Again, the best way to learn and experience this firsthand is to simply create an account and see what you can start making on your own.

What is the real cost of SITE123?

SITE123 is a business — which means they need to make money. However, they’ve done an extremely good job at catering to all markets with this, while also making their technology and site builder free for anyone who wants to go live with a site of their own.

If you would like to go live with a free site, all you need to do is sign up and that’s what you will get. This includes a subdomain, and limitations of 500 MB of storage and 1 GB of monthly bandwidth. For anyone just wanted to get started with a personal site of their own and wanting to learn the process, this is more than perfect.

However, if you want to go more professional and start a business or branded website, it’s definitely recommended to go with one of their premium plans — which start out at just $9.80 per month. You can see a break down of each payment and membership plans below.

Some of the most immediate benefits of going with an upgraded plan on SITE123 is getting a free domain name, having the branded floating tag removed, and also the ability to set up e-commerce features on your site and getting much higher levels of storage and bandwidth.

Now that you’ve seen how easy it is to create a site with SITE123, why not create an account and get started with one of your own?