#personal seo

In part 1, I examined some things to think about before embarking on your personal SEO journey. In part 2, I'm going to dig into the various strategies you need to follow in order to dominate Google's search results (or, at least, get your head above water).

Register Your 'Name Domain'

What do I mean by 'name domain'? My name is Ben Alvord. My name domain is benalvord.com. If somebody is searching for 'ben alvord', Google will give a degree of authority to a website that has a domain which includes the searched for term. Not a very high degree though, to be honest. If this was 1995, your name domain would rank #1 for your name the moment you launched your website, but Google long ago figured out that this is too easy of a way to rank highly for something, so they diminished the influence of the domain in their search algorithm. It does still help a bit though.

Regardless of the search rankings, you're going to need a website that will serve as the center of your web presence. You might as well put something together now and get ahead of the game. After you sell your book for seven million dollars, you'll be way to busy feasting on caviar and funneling champagne to spend any time building a website. Also, having a well put together personal website will be one slight point in your favor as prospective agents evaluate your query.

Arghhhhhh, how do I register a domain name? Don't worry. It's pretty easy. Just head over to register.com. Type the domain name you want into their helpful search box. If the domain name is available (meaning no one else has already registered it), you can easily move through the steps to register it. If it is not available, you can always register a domain that has a different extension. If I had not be able to register benalvord.com, I probably would have instead registered benalvord.author.

Build Your Personal Website

This post is not about how to build your personal website, which would require an entirely different set of information. That said, creating a personal author website that will reside at the personal domain you have just registered is a key component of your personal SEO. I am lucky, as skills picked up from my 'day job' enabled me to very easily create a website for myself. As this will not be the case for most of you, here are some high level pointers.

If you have the means, just pay someone. I believe whole heartedly in this advice, for some many things in life. For instance, when I woke up in my condo ten years ago to find a bat flying around my bedroom, I did not try to remove said bat myself. I army crawled the hell out of there and called an exterminator.

If you are able to pay someone, I'd recommend using a service like upwork.com to find a freelance 'web person' to design and build the site for you. Sites like Upwork (and they have competitors too) allow you to post the job you need done, and then have prospective freelancers bid on the work. You can see reviews of each freelancers past work, to make sure you don't hire a lemon. If I were going to pay someone to build me a small website like this, I would not want to pay more than $1,000. You might be able to find a good person to do the job for you for as low as $500. I probably wouldn't go any lower than that - otherwise you might end up with something really terrible.

If you cannot afford to pay someone to build you a website, I would recommend using a service like Squarespace or Weebly to build the site yourself. This may sound intimidating, but the entire business model of these services relies on the idea of allowing non-technical people to build their own websites. They've made it very easy. Don't be scared. Just jump in.

Very important. If you use one of these services to build your site, you need to make sure that the final URL of your website is something like benalvord.com instead of something like benalvord.squarespace.com. The services all allow you to setup custom domains, and once you have signed up, will provide support around how to get your custom domain up and running.

Start Blogging

Maybe you already blog in some fashion. Sweet. Move on to the next section. I had avoided blogging for much of my life (by 'much' I mean 'all') because I was afraid that the words I was outputting into my blog would somehow become unavailable for whatever creative piece I was working on. 'Only so many words in my brain,' I would tell myself. I still sort of believe this, but I've started blogging anyway, because blogging is essential for optimizing your personal SEO.

Google loves fresh content. This fact is one of the pillars of modern SEO strategy. If your website is not generating fresh content, Google will begin to think of it as 'stale' or 'outdated' and you will not show up as highly in search results. This is true both for the SEO of your own name, and just SEO in general. By blogging, you can begin to show up in search results for things other than just your name. For instance, if I blog about how I've written an urban fantasy novel set in Boston, and someone searches for 'boston urban fantasy', my blog post may show up and send them along to my site.

You should include a blog as part of your personal website. This is your best approach for SEO purposes, because then all of that fresh content is showing up under your personal domain, as opposed to something like benalvord.blogspot.com. Also, when people inevitably link to your brilliant content, your main personal domain will gain those inbound links (I will explain this more in a moment).

Sidenote: my own blog is actually not part of my main website. This is because I am a dumbass. Do not copy me. I plan to remedy this situation in the future.

Other sidenote: if you already had a blog before you actually created a personal website, I would not change the domain of that blog. Hopefully, your blog already has some traction in the search engine results, and changing your domain is a tricky process that can more easily be done wrong than done right.

Get Some Inbound Links

What is an 'inbound link'? This is just when another website links to your website. Why are inbound links important? Because inbound links to your domain is a very important factor in how Google ranks your website. The basic idea here is that if nobody has linked to your website, Google assumes this is because your website is unimportant (or just shitty) and will therefore not rank it highly.

Obtaining inbound links is by far the hardest part of SEO. If you are Stephen King, and you create stephenking.com, you will have no problem getting people to link to your website. They'll just do it, because you are Stephen King. If you are a lowly, unpublished author though, no one is going to just link to you out of the kindness of their heart. "Hey everybody, you should check out the website of this great author you've never heard of! You can't actually read his book yet, because it's not published, but seriously, check it out!" #thingthatdoesnothappen

So how can you obtain inbound links? Before I break this down in an ineffective list, let me say that I am very open to ideas here. Gaining inbound links to the personal website of an author who no one has heard of is well-nigh impossible.

Blogging: This is really your best bet. No one wants to link to your dumb author website, but if you write a great blog post about something, they might link to that. So blog, blog, bloggity blog.

Leverage any websites you have direct access to: What's that? You work as a plumber and you already have a website for that business? Link to your author site. Your cousin created a tribute website to his pet alpaca that died in a tragic Slip-n'-Slide accident? Ask him to link to your website. These links aren't great (as Google prefers links from websites of a similar theme, like writing) but when you are starting from zero, anything link you can get counts.

Online Directories: online directories are websites that are just categorized links to other websites. This can be a good way to gain links to the website of a business, but directories do not contain categories for unpublished authors. Why would they. There are some directories out there for authors/writers, but again, not if you're unpublished. I did find this one directory where I could create a profile and link to my site.

Quid Pro Quo: Tell other authors that you will link to them if they link to you.

Pray: Maybe God will link to you? Hasn't worked so far.

Self Linking: Here you would create multiple websites (i.e. one for each book you've written) and link them all to each other. I've only written the one book though. I'll make websites for each chapter of the book! That's it! No.

Really, just blogging: As an unpublished author, it's all about the blogging. Sigh.

Be More Social

As an unpublished author, your easiest way to fill up that first page of search results is to create social media profiles.

Google+: "But no one uses Google+ though!" you say. True. But if you don't create a Google+ profile, you will hurt Google's feelings. Seriously, for SEO, a Google+ profile under your name is key.

Twitter: Register a Twitter handle under your name. This one is also key, because if you maintain an active Twitter account under your name, the Twitter account itself you will almost definitely show up on the first page of results for your name. You want to take up as much of the real estate on that first page of search results as possible.

Facebook: You probably already have a Facebook account, and it's probably already showing up on the first page of results. You can also create a separate 'fan page' on Facebook for yourself as a author. The problem with this is that a 'fan page' that has no actual fans is very sad. Like a band playing in a room with no one watching. Unless you know you can get a decent number of actual 'likes' on a Facebook fan page, I wouldn't create one yet.

Have Video of Yourself to Post?

Google reserves space on that first page of results for relevant video content. If you have video of yourself that pertains in some way to you being a writer (maybe you read poetry at an open mic?), post that video to Youtube with your name in the title of the video. I've actually done this already (posting multiple videos of myself at Moth shows), but the only video on the first page of results is still about Doppelgänger Ben signing his college football letter of intent. Booooo. Possibly more video views will help your video show up in results? I'm actually not sure.

Patience

SEO takes time. It takes time to gain links to your content, and Google itself may be slow to rank newly created websites and domains (this may be true, or it may be an old wives tale - you know, those old wives who sit around making shit up about SEO).

I've already done everything in this post (except patience) and here is where my personal SEO (rankings for 'ben alvord') stands as of right now. Spoiler alert: 'tis not good.

2 search results on the first page are directly related to me (Twitter profile, Quora profile that has nothing to do with my writing)

3 search results on second page related to me (LinkedIn, Vimeo & Wordpress profiles - not related to my writing)

personal website (benalvord.com) ranks on page 9 of results

blog ranks on page 10 of results

As someone who is -

Seeking representation for my novel

A 15-year professional in realm of digital marketing

Trying to think of useful things to write on Tumblr

Struggling with my own personal SEO

- I figured I would write about how to optimize your personal search engine optimization if you are an unknown writer.

What Do I Mean By 'Personal SEO'

If someone searches for your name on Google, what shows up? Are the results on the first page related to you, or some other person who shares your name? If you are absent from the first page, or barely on it, you need to improve your personal SEO.

If You've Really Worked for 15 Years in Digital Marketing, Why Does Your Own Personal SEO Suck?

So nice of you to ask :)

It's a boy's fault. Some boy named Ben Alvord, who is not me. What a dick.

Doppelgänger Ben, as I call him, is an athlete. I suspect that he is a distant relative of mine, because he ran all the same events as I did in track (I was faster though. How do you like me now, Doppelgänger Ben? I challenge you to a race 20 years ago!) Doppelgänger Ben also plays football and is good enough to be mentioned in college football recruiting websites and local news articles. These mentions dominate the first page of search results for 'ben alvord'.

Not good.

Why Should I Even Care?

If you read interviews with agents concerning what they look for when evaluating potential clients, the term 'web presence' comes up a lot. While you can have a decent web presence without good personal SEO, at the end of the day, agents are going to Google your name, and if you don't show up, this is not a positive thing.

You Are Lucky If...

Your name is a unique one. Your competition in personal SEO is other people that have the same name as you. If your name is so unique that no one else shares it, your personal SEO is going to be really easy. This is because Google, much like nature, and lazy husbands, and me, abhors a vacuum. If your name is Bumbleduck Weeninheim... first of all, congratulations. That's an awesome name. Also, if someone Googles your name right now, nothing comes up. This means that the first time you post anything online which includes your full name, it is going to show up first on Google. In fact, Google that name right now. I bet you this Tumblr post is the only thing that shows up.

You Are Screwed If...

You share your name with someone prominent. I have a friend named Tom Clancy. He's screwed. He'll never show up on the first page of Google for that name. Too many people love Patriot Games. If you share your name with someone as well known as Tom Clancy, you are going to need to refer to your 'author self' by an alternate name. My friend might want to use 'Thomas Clancy' as his pen name, but even that won't do, as Google knows that everyone searching for 'thomas clancy' is really a huge Patriot Games fan who just loves the book so much that they feel the need to search for its author using his formal name.

To combat this, my friend would need to either add a middle initial to his name, or just straight up create a pseudonym.

But My Mom Gave Me That Name!

Listen, I understand that you're jealous of Bumbleduck. We all are. But nobody cares. Fine, your mom cares. But Google definitely doesn't care. I guarantee you the first thing your agent and/or publisher is going to do if you manage to sell your book is make you change your name. You may as well get a headstart.

What If I Share My Name With Someone 'Non-Prominent'

A few years back, I worked with a woman named Esther Schindler, who is a writer and editor in the technology space. You probably haven't heard of Esther, but she dominates the internet. Seriously, internet is to Esther Schindler as hot dog is to Joey Chestnut. Esther may not be a household name, but she is absolutely a prominent person on the internet (and within Google's index). She's the kind of person that can tweet a link to a blog post and drive thousands of visitors to it. If you share your name with someone like Esther, you're going to need to go the pen name or middle initial route.

Doesn't Anyone Get to Keep Their Name?

Yes. As already discussed, the aforementioned Bumbleduck Weeninheims of the world are good to go.

If you share your name and search results with someone who is present in the Google results, but not firmly entrenched, you can keep your name and displace them from the results. But how can you know if this doppelgänger of yours is firmly entrenched online? You need to look at both the depth of their presence in the search results and the authority of the websites which mention their name.

Navigate through the second, third and fourth pages of the search results. Is your doppelgänger filling out the search results this far back into the results? Further? The more results that show up for them, the more entrenched they are.

On the first page of results, what websites are listed which reference your doppelgänger? Google is going to rank websites of significant authority higher than those websites which are less known. There are many factors that go into how Google views a website, but for our purposes, if your doppelgänger is showing up in a search result for a website that you yourself have heard of, that is going to be a tough search result to rank higher than. For instance, one of the search results for Doppelgänger Ben is on espn.go.com (ESPN's main domain). That is the only search result of my personal doppelgänger which really gives me pause.

So What's the Plan?

I am not going to start using a middle initial.

I'm also not going to refer to myself as Benjamin Alvord. There was a Civil War general with that name who would reach up from the grave and swat me off the first page of results if I tried to adopt that name. Plus only my mother calls me Benjamin (when I'm thirteen and she's pissed at me).

No pen name either.

I am going to displace Doppelgänger Ben from the rankings.