Five tips for boosting your online profile - Women's Agenda

Five tips for boosting your online profile

Networking and making new connections is a great way to grow your business if you do it right which is why I wrote a book called Start with Hello. It helps people do just that.

Imagine you’ve met someone for the first time at either a networking event, or just going about your normal business day, and you have swapped business cards. What is the first thing you are going to do when you get back to your office? You are probably going to Google them and, make no mistake about it, they are probably Googling you too. Are you confident with what they will find or do you need to do some work on what shows up?

Here are five easy ways to boost your online profile with Google and make yourself web worthy:

  1. Set up your LinkedIn profile

    Everyone should have a LinkedIn profile and because the site carries so much credibility with Google, your name will generally come up within the first few listings on the first page. Spend some time filling out the important parts of your profile such as your professional headline, your summary, adding your skills and most importantly, adding a great head and shoulders picture of yourself. I like to add in some of my personality so I write it from myself rather than the third person because I think it gives off a better online view of who I am and not the cut and pasted corporate babble.

  2. Publish some great articles

    What can you submit to well-known news sites such as The Sydney Morning Herald or Forbes and the like? The more popular the site, the better Google ranking it will have. Articles and opinion pieces from you about your industry will take time to create. Coming up with the right angle and writing to the standard these sites demand, you may need to use a PR company in the beginning to get you started. They have the contacts and expertise that might get your piece published initially. Once you have a track record with the publication you may be able to do it on your own.

  3. Leave comments on other blogs

    Not all blog comments will show up on Google because of the particular platform’s settings but many do. Leaving constructive comments on a post will do two things. Firstly, it exposes your own brand to the rest of the audience, so others become aware that you exist particularly as a useful resource, and secondly the comments posted may appear in a Google search for your name.

  4. Be careful what you tweet

    Remember that anyone can search for you on twitter and read your tweets going back over the last seven days and more. The saying “you are what you post” is very true here and only recently, I had cause to look at somebody’s recent tweets because a client was concerned about what the individual had been posting. A good rule of thumb is “never drink and tweet”, there have been many drunken celebrity blunder tweets so steer away from becoming one yourself.

  5. You and YouTube

    As Google now owns YouTube, it makes sense then that your Google ranking could be improved by having some great videos on your own channel. Just make sure your name is in either in the video title or the video description so Google can find you and bring you to the search surface.

These five thing will ensure that you have the best online profile that you can so when you are searched something great comes up with your name attached to it. Of course, if someone has the same name as you and is not web worthy, it pays to know in advance so you can at least say, “don’t confuse me with ‘insert name here’ when you Google me”. That way, you can pre-empt confusion and possible embarrassment. After you have made the effort to put your best digital foot forward.

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