Personal SEO
What is Personal Search Engine Optimisation (P SEO)?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and the broader term Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has been a growing necessity for any businesses that have a web presence. The “build it and they will come” mantra was nothing more than a myth. Any business model has to pay attention to attracting customers. On the web, even if someone knows you exist, a visitor is likely to start in a search engine to find a specific web site. If the search engines do not know you exist, a visitor would have to know your web address to find you.
The process of maximising the probability that a user of a search engine will find a specific web site or page is called Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). With the shear volume of sites, the competition is fierce and it is an ongoing process to ensure a web site is as visible as possible.
Search engines collect pages of information from the internet and store them in large databases. When users ask for information from these databases (by entering key words) the search engines use mathematical formula to provide answers that it believes are the most relevant to the keywords specified. These mathematical formula are called algorithms and are held closely guarded secrets. No one person can say they know the secret algorithms of a search engine at any one point in time.
The good news is, that there are some simple best practices to follow that allow a web site to be optimised and found by the users of search engines. Over the years that I have been involved in the development and marketing of many business web sites I have had teams of people in-house and outsourced to look after Search Engine Optimisation and Search Engine Marketing. There has been a lot of “smoke and mirrors” and wild claims made by some companies that they have secret techniques. When I have looked carefully at what has actually been done, success comes from sustainable implementation of simple, well established best practices.
What is personal Search Engine Optimisation (pSEO)?
As web technology has become more user friendly, more and more people have the ability to create web sites of their own. Personal web pages, blogs, wikis, small business sites, social networking sites all make up what today is branded Web 2.0, the new age of user contributed content.
Everyday, anyone that uses the web, is creating a digital trail of information about themselves. This audit trail is called their digital footprint. Sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Bebo, XING e.t.c. have encouraged users to create a personal profiles of their professional and personal lives. Through the use of search engines this digital information is findable, and is being used without many of us even realising.
Employers are using the web to background check individuals before they make any hiring decisions. Employees are searching for information about their peers and employers. Recruiters are using the internet to research names for projects that they are working on. Your current clients are using the internet to find more information about their suppliers. It goes on, if you have not used Google, Yahoo or MSN to search for information held about yourself, then you should.
It is important not only that you are careful about what you put online about yourself. It is also important to understand how to promote the information you have and ensure it is found by the people that you want to find it. The net result of promoting the good information, is that any information that you are not so proud of will be hidden or rather made less visible. It is very rare for someone to go beyond the first 2-3 pages of search results, so by promoting the good stuff, you have essentially eliminated the impact of any negative information. This forms the basis of reputation management online.
How can this site help you?
I have created this site as an experiment in personal SEO (pSEO). Over a period of time I am going to share a series of steps that will help to highlight what works and what does not, so you can implement a process for yourself. The end result will be a process that you can follow to improve your own ability to increase visibility of web pages that you create.
Keep an eye on the blog and the experiment pages to get updates on progress. If you have any comments, stories or examples of improving your own personal brand online, do not hesitate to contact me directly.
