Did you know that 77% of employers search the names of potential hires? Find out how to maximize those search results!

What is personal SEO anyway?

SEO stands for search engine optimization–basically controlling the stuff that shows up when a person searches for something.

Personal SEO specifically is making sure that people who search for your name find you. And not some guy who got arrested last weekend for public indecency on Granville. (Or maybe that was you?…) OK, even if it was, read on for some tips on reputation management!

Difficulty level: John Smith

Some folks have it easier than others. If you have a unique name like, Soleil Moon Frye for example, personal SEO will be simple for you! But this is both a blessing and a curse: because with great personal SEO, comes great responsibility. Rest assured that if Soleil Moon Frye writes a blog or is quoted on the Huffington Post saying she hates pugs, and the following month is up for a gig with the Pug Lovers of North America, they will be none too pleased when they see her search results.

On the other side of the personal SEO coin are the folks with an extremely common name, like John Smith. What’s a pug-loving John Smith to do to get his name out there? As with any SEO venture, specificity and associated keywords are the solution!

John R. Smith, Esq. in Vancouver, BC

Perhaps John Smiths are a dime a dozen, but you’re not just any John Smith. You graduated from UBC Law and now you’re hunting for a job in Vancouver and you’re gonna make it after all! These are your keys to success. You want to:

#1 – Modify your professional name

Add your middle initial or a suffix. Anything that’s valid and decreases confusion with other folks who share your name. Be sure to choose something and be consistent.

#2 – Choose a title or field of association

What kind of work are you applying for? What’s the industry term for your, well, industry? You want to start associating that term with your name. For example, “John R. Smith lawyer”.

#3 – Choose a location

Make sure to associate yourself with the location you are in/hoping to work in. For example, if you’re based in the BC lower mainland, go ahead and use Vancouver since it’s the most commonly cited city in the area (even if you technically live in Burnaby).

All of these options are best established using a professional profile building tool like LinkedIn, Twitter, or something industry specific like GitHub for software devs.

So you made a huge mistake

Let’s be honest: we all make mistakes. We reach the age of majority at 18 and suddenly we’re considered adults, but our brains haven’t even finished developing. Maybe you shared a lewd photo on your public Facebook account or got caught plotting to burn down the banana stand.

Either way, you need to practice some reputation management. Basically, you want to take control of the message. Most people don’t look past the first page of search results, so your goal is to push the bad stuff down to the second page. You can do this in a variety of ways:

Create a website or blog

This is by far the best option. First, consider purchasing your name as a domain URL (or an available variation of it, anyway). From there, the content creation matters somewhat less, as long as you’re certain to include an “about” page that is titled with the name you use professionally. Create links to it throughout your website and other social media accounts with your name to shore up the association.

Create social media accounts

One of the approximately hundreds of factors that impact your search engine ranking is called your domain authority. This is a number out of 100 that indicates the “confidence” the web has in the legitimacy of your site. Basically, your personal website will probably have a domain authority of 20 or less to start out. And that’s OK, it doesn’t mean it won’t rank! But you definitely want to also use sites like Google+, Twitter, and Facebook who have enormous authority and are willing to share. As always, create profiles using the name you prefer professionally!

Create other professional accounts

Industry specific sites that allow you to create a profile and share your work like GitHub, CodePen, or Dribbble (yes, selfishly these are all in my industry). Not sure where to turn for your particular sector? Reach out to coworkers or classmates and see what they’re using!

Build a brand, not a robot

Even if you are creating your website and online profiles to mitigate a problem, it’s worth it to put some time into establishing who you are using these platforms. Build a personal brand that meshes with who you actually are. Try brainstorming ideas for your brand using a word cloud or other information aggregate (or ask your friends or coworkers). Don’t just tell employers what they want to hear. Milquetoast information falls on deaf ears–people know that isn’t really you. No one actually likes being a “detail-oriented, goal-minded individual”, they like going on hikes or eating chili cheese fries.

There are lines that you can cross when sharing personal info, certainly. Openly, aggressively sharing your religious or political affiliations on professional profiles can lead employers to hesitate. Even if they share your identities, knowing those details in the hiring process becomes a murky liability from a legal standpoint. So keep that in mind when you’re building your online presence.

Put your website to work

Your site should be a “set it and (sort of) forget it” project. Build it well, flesh it out, and let it do its thing. A good website and established online presence is your best promotional tool. Even if you aren’t actively looking for work, becoming known in your industry, area, etc is critical for the future of your career.

Looking for some more no nonsense SEO tips? Check out my latest epub on creating and optimizing your content for great results.

If your restaurant’s website isn’t in the first two pages of results when you search your cuisine and your city, I’m sorry to say: you’re doing something wrong.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a complex topic–way too complex to cover completely in a single blog post! That being said, my aim here is to help you learn more about a few common errors that anyone can make and how to correct them.

Common Error #1: Your menu is in PDF format

If you own a restaurant, I’m sure you already know that your menu is your crown jewel! But no one is going to know that you serve only Oceanwise seafood or that your foodtruck has the only vegan hotdogs in the city if they can’t find your page when they use their favourite search engine.

I know you’ve got an awesome, professionally laid out, print quality menu in a PDF–that’s important for building your restaurant’s image. But while PDFs may be composed of text, that text isn’t being “crawled”, which means search engines can’t find it!

Solution: Build an online version of your menu

I know it’s intimidating if you’re not used to working with web publishing software like WordPress. But it’s designed to be user friendly, and there are a variety of tools at your disposal that can help you recreate your menu online in an attractive and accessible way. Here’s a plugin (WordPress add-on) that can help:

Shortcodes Ultimate – Build attractive site elements, zero HTML/CSS required! Make things like custom buttons, eye catching headers, calls to action, and many more. Check out the plugin page to see some demos of what it can do.

Common Error #2: You don’t make your contact info SUPER clear

A user shouldn’t have to click more than once to find this info! In fact, it’s best if they don’t have to click at all. The most important thing to ask yourself here is: what do I want folks to take away from visiting my restaurant’s website?

• Visualize my restaurant and my cuisine

• Know and understand my menu

• Be aware of my location(s) and my hours of operation

The last thing you want is for a user to navigate away from your site or “bounce” before they can get that vital information.

Solution: Include all important info on your home page

Yes, a home page (or “landing page”) can be visually attractive AND include lots of information! Build with your goals in mind. Integrate elements where possible. There’s a few different plugin solution options here:

Soliloquy Lite – a responsive (AKA mobile device friendly!) image slider creator that is very user-friendly and low barrier. You could easily add images of your dishes alongside your important information and embed it in your home page or “landing page” so that visitors will see it straight away.

Sticky Header – a sticky header is one that follows the user as they scroll, so they can never accidentally navigate away from your important information. Easy to setup and customize.

Sticky Widget – this plugin is similar to the Sticky Header above, except it uses the sidebar/widget interface to make an element that follows the user no matter where they navigate. Be sure and only use one or the other for best results.

Common Error #3: Your keywords are too generic

You don’t just serve pasta at your restaurant, right? You serve handmade, fresh pasta. You serve gnocchi, you serve tortellini, you serve ravioli. So why would you use the keyword “pasta”?

People want to come to your restaurant for a variety of reasons: maybe they’ve heard the food is good. Maybe you one of the only purveyors of this cuisine in the city. Maybe you’re just open late and nearby! But the best way to hook someone is with specifics–the same goes for search engines.

Solution: Describe your restaurant as you might to a guest

I’m sure you have a lot to say about the items on your menu and why you founded your restaurant–so don’t suddenly turn tight-lipped when giving your pages titles, URLs/permalinks, and keywords. There are a wealth of generic SEO tools out there that can help you get this job done right, but it’s important to consider a bit of this theory first!

If you haven’t already, make sure you’ve got an SEO plugin installed on your WordPress site:

SEO by Yoast – this is the most popular option, and it has a pretty straightforward interface that “scores” pages with colour coded icons to let you know how optimized they are for your chosen keyword. It will also provide you with details on how to improve your page’s score if it’s low. Also, it’s free!

Premium SEO Pack – looking for a more high powered option? For just a one-time fee of $40, you can grab Premium SEO Pack, which even has a specific function dedicated to optimizing for local search results. That’s in addition to a variety of other features that SEO by Yoast doesn’t offer. The folks who developed Premium SEO Pack have an instructional video at the link, so even if you’re worried your tech abilities aren’t where they need to be to use it, it’s still worth a look.

So, what do you think? Do you have issues/concerns that weren’t covered? Leave them in the comments or drop me a line.