• by Chris , Jon Ostler , January 5, 2006

I had an interesting revelation over the Christmas break while talking with my brother, who was visiting from the U.K. He was concerned that people looking for him through search engines (Googling him) often got confused with other well-known Nick Ostlers. He was also concerned that the listings that were relevant were for specific projects and did not necessarily present an accurate picture of all his work and current activities. Nick is in fact a screenwriter and scriptwriter based in the U.K.

I offered to sort out this issue out for him, and have started to set up a personal site that will in time provide a well-ranked destination for those doing a bit of research on this young U.K. screenwriter.

The truth is that we all spend a lot of time ensuring that our companies and clients sites are well ranked for relevant phrases, but we often overlook our own personal brand presence online. If you were Googled, what would people find? Often it may be a page on the site of the company you are currently working for, or maybe a company you used to work for. Alternatively it may be a conference you spoke at or an article you published. Hopefully you don't have any rankings like our poor President, with www.bushorchimp.com coming in with a No. 5 ranking in the Google search for "George Bush."

Given that you may leave a company or that an article or conference listing could prove misleading, I suggest that if you are developing a personal brand, as you pursue a career with lots of networking and profiling opportunities, then you should implement a strategy to take control of your search presence by maintaining and promoting, via links, a personal bio on your own domain name.

I must admit that I have been amiss in developing my own personal brand online. I've been sitting on jonostler.com for the last two years and have never quite gotten around to doing anything with it. Looks like I've found my New Year's resolution.

So what should you do to develop your personal branding rankings?

1. Search for your name and see what and who comes up.

2. Use quotes when searching for "your name" to see the number of pages that contain it. If your name is John Smith, you may have a few issues ranking against the 4.6 million pages returned. (If you're interested, the top ranker here is Captain John Smith,1580-1631.)

3. Register your name with either a .com or .name

4. Publish a full, up-to-date biography. Keep the site focused on business.

5. Add a recent picture.

6. Add a contact form (don't publish your e-mail address unless you want to receive thousands of offers for Viagra and once-in-a-lifetime share offers!)

7. Add a blog if you have a lot to say! (blogger.com using the FTP publishing option is good.)

8. Obtain links from articles, newsgroups and blog postings, conferences and your company site. Make sure the linking text starts with your full name--for example, "Jon Ostler's Full Bio."

9. Keep the site up to date!

10. If all else fails, maybe paid search could be a relevant option?