LookupPage Blog | Professional Web Presence and Visibility

Ehud Furman: A Google CV Case Study

Are you looking for advice on improving your web presence and building your Google CV?

What better way to dissect a great Google CV than by looking at that of founder and CEO of LookupPage, Ehud Furman. Let’s see what the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) look like for a query for his name and inspect the first two pages of the results (20).

Ehud Furman’s SERPs

The result right at the top is a sponsored result. You will be able to have one like this if you sign up for a LookupPage Pro account.

The top organic spot is covered by his LookupPage profile. Using his name in the URL, Ehud’s profile contains his professional biography, contact information and links to important Ehud-related pages.

The second result is the LinkedIn page for Ehud. LinkedIn is a networking platform for professionals and is an essential location for anyone looking to increase their online visibility.

In third position, Ehud’s Facebook page. Although Facebook’s privacy policies don’t allow people you don’t know to view your profile (unless you have set them to allow it), Facebook is generally the first place most people will look for information about an individual. If nothing else, a Facebook profile always ranks well in the SERPs.

Four of the next seven results appear on page one of the SERPs as the result of syndicated articles. High quality WebPR and linkbuilding articles around pertinent topics spread far across the internet. Submit your articles to as many directories as possible, and you’ll soon see how frequently they are replicated and the wonders they can work for your Google CV.

Between the articles written by Ehud in the next few positions, there are several articles written about him! Personal Branding Blog, Brazen Careerist and TradeVibes, for instance, provide content about Ehud, or at least mention him in their articles.

There are plenty of other professional profile sites which Ehud Furman is represented on. Spoke.com and CrunchBase both have profiles for him (even if they are not yet fully completed). This helps own one’s Google CV, and can be especially useful when trying to muscle out negative commentary.

Ehud Furman’s Google CV is a great example of the power of personal branding.

His Google CV is made up of a blend of professional biographies and social media profiles, submitted articles and a few mentions of his name in articles by third parties. Owning every spot on the first two pages of the SERPs is every Google CV enthusiast’s dream.

By signing up for a LookupPage account and implementing the many tips to increase online visibility featured on this blog, you’ll soon have a pretty impressive Google CV yourself.

Simple SEO Tips for Personal Branding

Ranking well on a search engine for popular keywords is just about the best thing that can happen to your website, blog and/or personal brand. Without ranking, it’s almost as if you’re not listed. Let’s take a look at a few simple tips to improve your SEO ranking.

Regularly perform keyword research – this will keep you on top of any new search trends or industry advances. Keep these keywords and phrases on hand for future content creation.

Always remember to include your links when making a comment or interacting with a user. List your URL(s) on your various user profiles (such as the listing on your LookupPage profile) and include a short bio about your expertise. Your URL is an important piece of text for reproduction – ushering in search engine spiders as well as consumers. Use your LookupPage Pro account to get your name or other keywords into your URL.

Provide an optimised link code on your site and invite others to link to you by supplying simple instructions on how to add it to their website or blog. Exchange blogroll links with others. This can be done by contacting other bloggers and agreeing to link to each other in a reciprocal fashion. Bloggers tend to keep an eye out on who is reading and linking to their content so, chances are, if they see you are linking to them, they will investigate what you and your site/blog is all about. If they like what they see, they may even link back to you.

If you have a new product or service (or any other interesting information for that matter), be sure to create relevant content around it. If users are going to be searching for the terms, be sure there is content listed online for them to find – otherwise, they might never search for you again. It’s also extremely important that you keep your content fresh so users find something new each time they visit.

Optimise all your images by using relevant keywords for the image name and caption and also by highlighting the relevance by using keywords in the copy around the image (or at least somewhere on the page).

Keep your keyword and style guidelines in mind and only spend time or money on content which will help you.

The BIG SEO tip: Create as much content as possible, but never at the cost of quality. And consolidate it.

Weekly Tips to Establish Your Online Presence: Your Reputation

The internet provides both consumers and brand marketers with a powerful voice – so let’s look at how we can create conversation and improve your reputation with your audience:

Listening to the Conversation
Listening to what the public has to say about you and your brand is important in understanding their perception.
Regularly perform searches around your brand name and other keywords to follow any relevant buzz on the go. Search within Facebook, and also on Twitter, as many of these popular sites do not yield results in traditional search engine queries.

With a LookupPage Pro account you can see how many people are using your LookupPage to access your website or bog and who is searching for your brand terms. You will also be able to see where your visitors are originating from, which is quite helpful.

Analysing the Buzz
Now that you know a bit more about where your traffic is coming from, how it found you and why, you most likely have a better understanding of your target market and your reputation.

Analysing your website traffic helps you to understand the general movements of your visitors, which allows you to streamline your website or blog accordingly.

Use your website analytics to track the spread of your articles, blog posts and other content online, to find out how many links are pointing to your site and so on – this will give you an idea of your reputation and the impact your presence is having online.

Influencing Your Reputation
After analysis, take a look at the online locations where the public discuss your brand. If possible, create profiles on these sites and put yourself in the driver’s seat for response.

Use your new found information to contact and interact with users who have linked to your site or have strong opinions about you, your products or services.

Lastly, use your new analytics information to optimise your website or blog and include the popular search terms in your site copy or for additional online content in the future.

Learn more about your online reputation by reading the following blog posts:

• How Can Failing to Manage Your Identity Harm Your Reputation?
• How to Respond to Positive/Negative Mentions of Your Brand
• Tools to Manage Your Online Reputation

How to Interact with Social Media Users to Improve Your Web Presence

The direct connection with the public through social media can be a blessing when it comes to marketing yourself online, but there are a few guidelines which you’ll need to keep in mind to attract and interact successfully with the right audience.

Location: Choosing your appropriate location has a big impact on your audience. If you are trying to connect with users in the wrong social media sphere, they’re probably going to be irritated or are not going to accept you. Make sure you are listed in the popular social media locations, but always target the themed areas where you feel welcomed and free to interact.

Content & Interaction: When it comes to social media, etiquette and protocol are vital to attracting an audience. Social media is generally more casual than its traditional counterparts, but always stick to your brand identity and maintain this professionalism, even in a one-on-one arena.

Offer value in all your interactions with the online public. Asking questions and holding online polls is a great way to gain understanding into your audience (while showing that you care).

Try to be seen as an ambassador for your industry. Be the go-to guy or girl when your audience has a question or comment. By offering advice and information to those who seek it you will be creating natural content and improving your online visibility and transparency.

Incentives: Convincing users to join your conversation can be aided with incentives. If offering information and advice (as mentioned above) isn’t enough, a contest or competition could be what you need to attract attention.

Of course, what all of the above does is that it leads to links being generated – which are fantastic for your visibility. However, if you have a central hub which you can use as the focal point of your branding and visibility efforts, you will be much better off.

Social media is a powerful tool for increasing your online visibility, be sure to read this post on which social media channels you’ll need to utilise for your branding efforts.

Social Media Etiquette for Your Personal Branding

Social media survives on human qualities – act out or throw your weight around and you’ll soon be cast out from the ‘in crowd’. Social media can help you build your Google CV, but let’s look at some social media etiquette tips first:

Be Helpful: A great way to engage with the crowd is to offer answers, advice and interesting information wherever possible, although there is a definite need for balance when engaging with your audience.
Micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter are great for this type of one-on-one interaction, but you might not want to send out daily articles from your Facebook group as the constant barrage in a personal space will more often than not annoy members. 

Never Lose Your Cool: Like on the road, anger on the internet gets you nowhere. View all criticism as constructive and avoid a thread of bad publicity by handling any squabbles in privacy or with tact.

Publish your comments in response to criticism whenever possible to ensure that it is shown that negativity has been attended to, but only look to remove negative comments under extreme circumstances – no one likes to be censored and doing so will probably only provoke more negativity.

Blog: When it comes to promoting content and being social online, don’t only publish your own, but highlight the noteworthy work of others. Spend some time reading interesting blogs, commenting on them and linking back to yours – but don’t just comment for the sake of link creation.
When blogging about others, link back to them. This way, they not only receive a link, but are also aware of the comments made about them.

By giving as much as you receive, and making your content valuable, you’re able to earn your position, along with respect and credibility.

Aggregators and Social Bookmarking: Social bookmarking and content aggregators are great ways to spread your articles and news, but avoid the temptation of only submitting your own content. Submit the content of others in your networks, and create a mutually beneficial approach to seeding content.
Go too far with creating links of no interest to anyone but yourself and you’ll soon be known for bad social media etiquette, if nothing else.

Avoid the Dark Side: eMarketing is known for its ‘spy vs. spy’ code of morality. White hat methods, the good and trustworthy practices of eMarketing, are not always discernable from grey and black hat techniques, but if something doesn’t feel right it probably isn’t.

Avoid covert methods such as creating fake accounts to approach the competition or defend against negative publicity – this is not only morally questionable, but is often extremely obvious.

Remember, you don’t have to be active on social media sites if it isn’t inline with your brand identity, but you do need to claim your space before someone else does. Above all, find the balance between using the media for releasing information, creating an online presence and improving your brand transparency.

Using PPC and SEO Together to Improve Your Google CV

By creating themed content and structuring your information in a logical way, you can portray a higher level of credibility to search engines. Eventually you will rise up the SERPs and therefore users will see you as being more credible.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of creating content in such a way that search engines naturally see your content as valuable and of interest to the user.

By running a pay per click (PPC) campaign, you can be sure that you’ll be included in the SERPs. Most PPC ads are displayed either at the top of the page, or just to the side of the top ranked results, with the advertiser only paying when his ad is clicked.

Some fundamental rules of search engine marketing (SEM) include:

•    Use consistent keywords and synonyms when necessary.
•    Use your keywords in meta data, headings, sub-headings, links and body copy.
•    Link between the pages within your website or between individual blog posts.
•    Create external links pointing into your site. The more relevant the link text and the destination page content, the more benefit you’ll receive.

Top Tip: Have patience. SEM is an ongoing process. Although PPC can be implemented immediately, it might take a while until SEO’s full rewards are evident. In this case, one can use the former to supplement the latter while it gets up to speed (or to cover the keywords that SEO can’t reach).

Use LookupPage Pro to Instantly Improve Your Google CV

How can you instantly build your Google CV? With a LookupPage Pro account you can have your information displayed at the top of your Google CV – alongside paid listings (PPC ads) and organic content (SEO content).

Create and manage your own profile on LookupPage. Display your business details, logo and contact information on your profile, and have your business noticed with a listing on the Business Lookup.

Read more about the various LookupPage packages available to you.

Essential Online Locations for Personal Branding

The web presents many areas of opportunity to increase your online profile. It comes down to deciding which opportunity you should harness and how much time you have to invest. Let’s take a look at some of the essential locations for your personal branding:

Facebook: Currently one of the top websites, Facebook is one of the first places to start your personal branding campaign. The following three formats are freely available to you: Profile Pages, Themed Groups and Fan Pages.

Blogging and Micro-blogging: Regular blogging is great as it helps you build an audience, generate fresh content and start conversations. At the moment nothing seems to be as responsive as a micro-blogging tool like Twitter. Changing the face of customer relations, Twitter improves general interaction and helps individuals connect with their audience.

Forums: A staple of the internet since the early days, forums are an ever-popular location for topical conversation. Join some discussion forums around your brand themes and use the opportunity to interact with the public while increasing your online visibility and in-bound links.

Search Engines: Integral to building an online presence, search engine marketing (SEM) – utilising PPC and SEO – will do wonders for your Google CV. Although SEM is a long-term venture, using search engine optimisation tactics gives your content a better chance of ranking on search engines, for free. On the other hand, PPC advertising could have you included in the ‘sponsored results’ for your keywords without breaking the bank.

To ensure that you rank in the sponsored results for searches on your name, create a LookupPage profile with your details as well as links to your site. With a pro account, you can even personalise your URL.

Article Syndication: Social media is a great arena for personal branding, but publishing your articles on directories is also extremely important when striving towards an impressive Google CV. Writing relevant articles, submission and syndication – when done correctly – can add huge value to your personal branding campaign. Read more about article syndication here.

Promote Your Business on LookupPage Business Index

As part of our service, we at LookupPage are constantly looking for additional, efficient, innovative and low cost ways for you to brand yourself and your business online.

You can now start benefiting from relevant business traffic and improved business search engine ranking by getting your business listed on LookupPage business index.
Listing your business details on LookupPage is easy and will help you promote your business by adding a direct link to your website from our Business Lookup index (view example) and our People Lookup index (view example).

To start promoting your business, please follow these simple steps:

• Login to your LookupPage Account
• Click the update button on your business details section
• Fill in your business name, website address, logo, and business description
• Save your updated LookupPage
• Upgrade your account to Pro (click here to view all the Pro benefits)
• Search your business and view your listing on our Business Lookup index

Weekly Tips to Establish Your Online Presence: Promoting Your Latest Blog Post

Promoting your latest blog post is an important aspect of creating an online presence and can be extremely advantageous when done correctly. If you’re still not convinced as to how a blog could have any impact on your online visibility, be sure to read this post: Weekly Tips to Establish an Online Presence – Blogging.

When creating content, remember that you’ll want to use keywords that inform the search engine spiders (and ultimately the search engine users) on the focus of your content. These keywords should be used in the URL address, all titles, meta data, links, image descriptions and captions as well as within the body copy.

When submitting your post to a social bookmarking site or a blog aggregator, use these keywords in title, summary and so on (and remember to use your standard username and image if you need to create new accounts).

The following are some worthwhile social bookmarking and blog catalogue sites:

•    Blog Hub
•    Bloglisting
•    Delicious
•    Digg
•    Reddit
•    Sphinn
•    StumbleUpon
•    Technorati

Compare your content. A good way to establish your online presence through blog promotion is by spending a little time on other blogs. Look for posts which may be similar to yours, perhaps a little outdated from a different angle. Comment on these blogs, sharing your opinion and link in a casual and meaningful way.

Making Your Content Easy to Share

The process of syndicating your content will become easier with practice, and the more well known you are (and the better the quality of your content) the more the general public will spread your message for you.

You can improve the chances of your content being passed on by including Chiclets, or social media buttons, to your individual blog posts. This allows readers to share your content easily.

Use a micro-blogging platform such as Twitter to release an extremely brief summary of your post and link to it. If your post offers value, users will pass it around. Follow this up by repeating this step on your Facebook profile (either through status, shared links or wall posting in your group or fan page).

Once you’ve worked out which sites are better for you, and which provide you with more benefit, take a look at some of the useful Firefox extensions (such as the StumbleUpon application), and other specialised applications which have been developed to help you out.

All of these methods we discussed increase the likelihood that your audience will notice your worthy content. Remember to promote each individual post, while never forgetting how much distribution can happen naturally with user-friendly sharing functions and – above all else – worthwhile content.

How to Choose Your Keywords for Branding

Choosing the right keywords isn’t always black and white, so the more insight you are able to acquire the better your campaign. Let’s take a look at some keyword research and allocation methods.

Make a list of the words which are most relevant to you. This should include your name, brand name and slight spelling variations, product or service names, industry terminology and other phrases which the public might use to find you or your services.

Secondly, take a look at what keywords your competitors use. You can do this by looking at the ‘Page Source’ of your competitor’s site (in Firefox, View>Page Source). Here you can see what keywords are used for that particular page (title, meta description, meta keywords, h1 tags, etc). You can also Google the keywords you are thinking of using and see which of your competitors are listed in the SERPs.

Performing Keyword Research

Find yourself a free keyword research tool and start doing some keyword research. With your initial list of words, take a look at the search volumes for these words, as well as the suggested synonyms. Add these synonyms and search data to a spreadsheet. This will make organising and picking the right keywords a lot easier.

Finding the balance between popular search terms and popular marketing terms is the biggest challenge. Some keywords might be the first consumer choice, but are extremely competitive – using a slightly less popular term or blending two phrases can help you receive traffic.

Once you’ve selected your preferred terms for optimisation, don’t discard the database of keywords and phrases you have compiled. This can always be helpful in the future when needing topics for content creation and can be updated easily.

If you are looking to establish a web presence, your name is going to be your most important key phrase. Start out by signing up for a LookupPage account – you will see the profile move up nicely in the SERPs and you can use a host of tactics to get more instances of your name onto the first page of the SERPs, thereby building a solid Google CV. 

Weekly Tips to Establish Your Online Presence: Article Syndication

One of the most important aspects to establishing an online presence is content creation – knowing how to create worthwhile articles and where to submit them is essential to a successful campaign.

Create Your Article

Use the right keywords in all the right places (titles, subtitles, link text and around relevant images). It might take a bit of time to find the right keywords, but do some homework with some free keyword research tools and perform some manual searches for your keywords to see what results the search engine returns.

Popular article formats include web press releases, link building articles, blog posts and so on.

The article is not an advertorial, it needs to provide readers with relevant information, but not mention your brand. You may however promote your brand in the ‘about the author’ section at the end of your article (also known as a boiler plate).

Blogs and Blog Posts

Keep in mind that you’ll want your blog itself to be noticed just as much as the individual pages, and you can do this by submitting your blog to the many free social bookmarking and aggregating sites available for use online.

These blog directories catalogue the themes and often traffic stats about your information resource, and can greatly improve your Google CV.

Article Topics

Search engine spiders love fresh content and the more content you have the better for your SERPs. But how to go about getting ideas for articles? A Twitter profile is a great way to speak to your market, hear what they have to say and respond. But why not go one step further, and use their questions and comments as fodder for blog posts, then publish the blog / article online – making sure to send the inspiration a link to the blog post.

Keyword research is a great way to understand search psychology. By running through a few of your keywords you’ll come across a few bizarre phrases with high search volumes. A unique article topic with a high search volume – that’s two birds with one stone.

Create Profiles

Before you start submitting content, it may be easier for you to create all the accounts you need. Visit the various article directories and social bookmarking sites and create profiles which reflect your branding – save the details in a spreadsheet (but be wary about saving any passwords).

Remember to keep these profiles consistent, and provide the URL link on your profile page to your website or blog.

Publishing Articles

Do a search for article directories and decide which you’d like to be included in before submitting your profiles.

Create a summary, or use the intro paragraph as an article summary if it’s relevant as is. Extract the appropriate keywords and insert them into the section dedicated to keyword allocation. In most cases you will need to apply some basic html in order to submit your article.

Take a look at some of the articles we have submitted to directories for a better idea of what article syndication can do for you.

• Your Google CV
  
• How to Rise Above the Recession: Branding Yourself Online
• Personal Branding: Your Google CV, Web Presence and Reputation Management

Creating an Identity for Personal Branding

Creating an online presence through branding yourself online isn’t as difficult as you may think. Hardly an overnight process, but worth the effort, personal branding ensures that you’re well represented online, and ultimately that you are in control of your online reputation.

Keywords: Use a free keyword research tool to look into keywords to use when representing yourself online. Google your name and other keywords to see what results they currently yield. Your name and/or brand name will be very important keywords.

Image: Use the same picture or image logo throughout. This makes you instantly identifiable, especially between social media platforms. Tag yourself in photos online, and generally make yourself seen.

Name: Like your image, keep your name consistent. Make sure that the spelling and punctuation are always identical, not only to make you recognisable with humans, but also the search engine spiders. Do a few searches for your name to see what your Google CV looks like. If your name is already extremely popular (or is riddled with negativity) you may want to consider an alternative. Read this post on how to claim back your Google CV for more information.

Enthusiasm: Be enthusiastic online, without being annoying – the more active you are the better your web visibility. Always be willing to share information which would be of use to your audience – information which they would associate with you and your branding.

Form Relationships: Remember, online you’re likely just a stranger to most. Creating relationships can take time, so befriend people naturally, rather than going on a massive ‘friendship campaign’. Always be polite online – you wouldn’t want a potential employer overlooking you due to a heated debate you had online many years ago.

Professionalism: Chances are you’re moulding your personal identity to increase your business portfolio or to find work. If so, remember to include your professional information across all you profiles (with your CV if possible), and clearly explain what you do and what your expertise is.

Identify Yourself Online

Before you get stared, it’s probably a good idea to create an online interaction guide for your identity, if you don’t already have one. This document will determine how you operate online (list of keywords etc.), how you communicate with others and how you carry yourself online overall.