Why You Need to Own the First Page of Google for Your Name
One of the main goals for online professionals and business brands is to rank for their “name” in the major search engines. It’s not just about ranking in the number one position, but filling up the main page of results as much as you can. The reason why you need to rank in as many spots as possible on the main page, is that this gives you ownership over what is ranking on the first page for your name/keyword and allows you to manage your online reputation.
Let’s look at it like this…
Say you are a dentist and rank #1 on the search results for your name and maybe even “dentist + city name“. You know all of your customers/patients are happy and you’ve never had any complaints. But what if one patient didn’t say anything to you but then take their complaints to the internet! Now all of a sudden their complaint is ranking on the first page of Google for your name! This is the absolute last thing you need and it will greatly hurt your business if anyone is looking up your name before they become a new patient.
This reason in itself is why it’s important for you to rank in the search results for the most important terms around your brand name and your business.
What Do People Find When They Search Your Name?
An easy and awesome way to do this is through the use of social networking profiles. Since the major social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ are large and established sites, they actually rank very well and quite fast!
How to Check Your Reputation on Google
While social profiles are a great way to build up your rankings and listings in the search engines, what are some of the best ways for you to monitor every time your name or brand is mentioned on the internet? You could visit Google and search for you specific terms to see if there are any new movements, but this will take a lot of time. Instead you can use Google tools such as Google Alerts and “Me on the Web” to automate the process.
Other Quick Tips for Increasing Main Page Rankings
There are many other ways that you can rank on the first page of Google for your desired keywords and names as well, such as building out new web sites and blogs focused on your name, profile or business. The success rate using this method will vary depending on how complex of a name you are going after. Obviously if you have a generic name like “Joe Smith”, this will be quite tough. The more unique your name, the better chances you will have to own the complete first page of Google results. Also don’t be afraid to build out some long tail sites and posts to redirect traffic and links back to your main sites, further increasing their rankings.
If you’ve never take the time to see what other sites are ranking on the first page of Google of your personal or business name, now is the time to look. You are likely already ranking number one, but now you need to focus on owning the other nine locations as well!
Hello Zac,
thanks for this post.. I have not yet created twitter account for my website. Now i will surely do it… I want to ask some question, how we can use linkedin to get traffic from it ??
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Great article!!! It is very important to for your name to be first page of Google! I am proud to say my name is #1 in Google! 🙂
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My name is really unique so I pretty much hold the first page of Google very easy.
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Nice post Zac and completely agree. I wrote a similar post a month or so back about how you've got to start thinking about yourself as a brand.
My biggest problem is that there is a US politician (Republican!) with the same name as me, who makes the news a lot. But yes could be worse, one of my friends is called David Cameron (poor guy!).
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Yea – I think I have this one covered pretty well. 😉
Thanks for the information Zac! I've tried Brand.com and it is a great way to control what appears on the search results (the top positions) either for our name or the brand. But then we have to make sure we take care of the negative reviews in a good manner otherwise it will still be hard to get rid of the bad mouths lol 🙂
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Great advice, Zac! When it comes to protecting your online image, it's best to have as many positive things online as possible. The more positive reviews people see the more likely they will do business with you. The internet is the grand majority of consumers' first impressions of you and your business, so it has to count!
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Hey Zac,
Boy do I ever agree, we need to definitely rank for our own name or business. My business is my name and I'm happy to say that I show up in several of the top positions and I love that there is an actress with my same name and I outrank her. Have for years now. I'm sorry, I just find that funny.
I did use Brand.com for awhile and learned what I needed to do so I did put all of that into place. Now to stay on top of it.
We definitely need to pay attention to this and hopefully there are some unique names out there that you'll find you don't have a lot of competition with. I wish mine was one of those.
Great share and have a wonderful day.
~Adrienne
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Hi Zac,
I unfortunately was not able to get my domain with my name. I did get a variation and I monitor my name with Google Alerts.
I now realize how important it is to take care of your name and brand it properly. What would you do if someone did see a negative complaint on the first page? Just want to know what one can do if this happens? Thanks for sharing this and I think we all should be paying more attention to our brand on Google and the social media sites, have a great day.
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Great post!
I tried Google Alerts before. But when a friend of mine told me that there's a website called topsy.com wherein I found out that there's a lot of social media mentions about me.
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@Susan – Keep an eye on the domain for your name, if it isn't in use, a lot of times people will let them expire. Also, you should also register the domain names for your kids while you still have the chance!
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Zac, I use to do Google search for my brand to keep track of it mentions on weekly basis. Apart from this, I use Google Alerts and Moz.com Fresh Web Explorer tool to keep track of mentions for the website that I'm working on.
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Can't agree more. Ranking no. 1 for our names and brands definitely give everyone a sense of security and truthfulness. Got to check my own name now.
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I totally own page one for my name, page two and page three. I guess it's the advantage of having a somewhat unusual and rare surname. There is some other guy in this world named Arthur Burlo, but he doesn't appear to be very active on the Internet. He contacted me once on Facebook accusing me that I was an impostor.
Thankfully no one left bad reviews about me on the Internet, which means either that I am AWESOME, or very unpopular. I will leave it to you to guess which is which.
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