Nowadays it seems like new reports are coming out every day about how potential clients and employers are doing searches online to research people before hiring.
This means you need to be in better control of what they see and the goal here is to control at least the first page of Google as best you can for your brand name keywords so when people search for your brand name they will see mostly or all results owned by you! Here are some simple, yet effective tips to manage your brand better in the Google search results.
1. Create Sites and Subdomains
One of the most powerful ways to get more spots on page one is to create sub domains and other sites that also target your brand’s keywords. If you don’t already own various extensions of your domain such as .net, .org and .co, grab them now so you can develop something on them.
You could create a blog on these domains, a non-profit or anything else you can think of. Ideas for subdomains could include blog.yourdomain.com, reviews.yourdomain.com, coupons.yourdomain.com and so on. The key here is to actually make these sites useful for your visitors and customers in addition to them helping you with your own brand management.
Ranking these additional sites and subdomains for your brand keywords should not be very difficult so long as you get backlinks to them using the proper anchor text and post useful content on them.
2. Go Social
Social profiles are great because they rank really high in the organic search results. Get on every social site possible such as Twitter, Facebook, Google + and even sites like about.me. If you can get your name, a url back to your site and a description, sign up! It’s even better when the site allows you to add html links where the anchor text can be your brand keywords linked back to your website or social profiles. You should also signup to forums in your niche and review sites such as Yelp and Google Places. Basically any authority social site.
Many sites also allow you to link to multiple social profiles, add your RSS feeds and so on. Do this whenever you can and always try and use your brand name when you link back. The more backlinks you get to your sites and social profiles using your brand keywords as the anchor text, the better your rankings will be for those keywords.
3. Stay Active
If you want all your social profiles, sub domains and sites to stay on the first page of Google you need to stay active on them. By active I mean posting fresh content on a regular basis, promoting the sites/profiles and attracting backlinks.
Services like Posterous.com will make your life a lot easier by allowing to you to link up many of your social profiles and blogs together so that when you update Posterous, the content is posted to ALL your synced sites and profiles. This can save you a ton of time.
Start developing your additional sites and social profiles now and you will be thankful you did.
