LookupPage Blog | Professional Web Presence and Visibility

Optimising Your Images to Boost Your Google Image CV

Not only do optimised images increase your chances of receiving traffic from image-based search requests, but using images as a self promotion tool adds to your relevancy which holds significant benefit for your search engine marketing (SEM) campaign.

How to Optimise Your Images for Your Website or Blog

The most important property for an effective image is a strong recognisable character – especially in logos, profile pictures and so on. Your profile images should always look professional and be the face to the name.

Avoid changing your picture unnecessarily. On a platform such as Twitter, your followers get used to your profile picture and changing it means straying from a unified online image. Your followers might find it difficult to relate to you if your profile image is constantly changing, and may not invest as much trust in you or cease to follow.

Optimising your images is a relatively easy process, but choose your keywords wisely and try and keep them relevant to your personal branding as well as descriptive to whatever is depicted in the image.

You can make your images more relevant to the page content by using descriptive filenames, captions, ALT and Title attributes for the image – and NEVER forgetting to keep the rest of the page optimised to the same, or related keywords.

Consistency and relevant keywords in profile images will be recognised by human users as well as Search Engine spiders, meaning that your Google Image CV is more likely to display your image.

Owning Your Online Identity: Avoiding Impostors

A malicious blogger or an overenthusiastic prankster can be seriously damaging to your online identity. The time has come to own your online identity and put up a strong defence against potential impostors.

Cover More Ground

Owning all the online profiles for your name is the first step in avoiding impostors. These profiles also help to increase your presence, so remember to optimise them accordingly. Linking between these profiles creates a credible path back to your website or blog.

Protect Your Online Content

Make sure to watermark your images, either with a digital watermark or a visible copyright logo. Including a Terms and Conditions page on your blog or website which clearly specifies ownership can help you in the unfortunate event of future legal processes.

Stamp Out Negativity

A malicious campaign against you can come from all angles, but owing your position in the SERPS is vital to your online identity. Don’t leave it until you need to flush out a damning article from the top spot, take a look at how to build your Google CV.

Know Your Status

Generally speaking, ‘fatal’ brand attacks are the product of not only an unsuspecting victim, but an ignorant one. Being aware of your online reputation is vital to understanding your market as well as finding any disgruntled individuals out there before they move from single blog posts to dedicated blog sites and elaborate masquerades.

Let Your True Identity Shine Through

Operating online often demands full transparency. If your online identity is already well established and your audience knows you well, it should take a lot to lead them astray.

Failing that - be sure you know how to constructively respond to negative mentions of your brand, when necessary.

Keep Your Passwords Secure

Last but not least, protecting your personal information and securing your connection is necessary against

online impersonators. Use multiple passwords and change them regularly (but never recycle them). Keep your computer safe by installing a firewall and up-to-date antivirus protection.

Geo-locating Yourself for Better Self-Branding

Pinpointing your location with search engines such as Google and Yahoo! (in other words, geo-locating), is a handy self-promotion tool. Specifying your geo-location makes it easier for search engines to confirm your global position and therefore include you in their local listings.

Methods to Geo-Locate Yourself for Better Self-Branding

Increase your online visibility to relevant users by using these geo-locating tactics and by owning the most pertinent Google CV possible:

• Using your country domain, such as ‘.co.uk’ in the United Kingdom, or ‘.no’ in Norway - even if it is redirected to a ‘.com’ standard. This helps to easily identify your location.
• Listing your position on Google maps and other online cartographic services will highlight your position for search engines. This also allows for the possibility of automated ‘site links’, an image map of your location, to be included in your SERPs which includes links to a few of the primary pages on your site.

• Mention your location in your biography and contact details on any social media profiles, such as Facebook or Twitter.
• Make contextual references in the copy of your website or blog and include your town and country in your meta data – and not just on your contact page.
• Make reference to your town and country, as well as the coordinates of your physical building to make it easier to locate on a map or via GPS.
• List your blog on your local aggregators to make it easier for those in your area to find your blog online.
• Including yourself in your local business listings and directories is good for your local search engine listings as well encouraging general enquiries. There are plenty of business directories which you can include yourself on such as Business Lookup and your local Yellow Pages.
• Specify your location in Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools or any other analytics or search engine platform that requires registration details.

4 Tips for Attracting New Blog Readers

Blogging has made it easy for anyone to publish content online. Regular, fresh content is important for anyone looking to increase their online visibility, but this content is useless without an active readership. Here are some tips on how to increase yours…

1). Increase Your Syndication

Make sure to keep up to date with the more popular bookmarking and directory hotspots and use TrackBack URLs so you can tell how far your new content has spread and identify any new active readers. Read this post on how to enhance your online presence with article syndication for more information.

2). Comment on the Blogs of Others

Joining the discussion on the blogs of others is a great way to attract attention, increase engagement and create new readership. Be careful not to create the impression that you are just hunting for links, but rather add some value to the conversation and ultimately try and create the same activity in your blog’s comment sections if they aren’t already a place for conversation.

3). Promote Your URLs

Promote your blog URL as well as your RSS feed URL. Use your blog address when commenting on the blogs of others, feature it on your LookupPage profile, in your email signature, on all your social media profiles and everywhere else available. Encourage RSS subscriptions by including the link in your newsletters and all other communications.

4). Optimise Each Post

This might sound like a given, but you’d be surprised as to how many optimisation and syndication opportunities are overlooked. Create a checklist of steps towards better optimisation and syndication. High quality content with great optimisation will make your blog easier to find, and harder to resist for returning visitors.

Read this post on how to promote your latest blog post for more great tips on building a successful blog.

Consolidating Your Communication Channels for Personal Branding

Great for credibility, solidifying your online identity and increasing your audience, consolidating your communication channels for personal branding will help you improve your online image, web presence and visibility.

Your Personal Branding Links

Promote your various social media profiles on your LookupPage profile, your newsletter, your website and your blog and vice versa. Linking between them is essential if you want internet users and search engine spiders to find them. 

Not all links are created equal, so only use optimised links to spread search engine ‘link love’ (include keywords in ALT tags, anchor text etc.). If HTML isn’t your thing, it might help to create a resource of keyword optimised link codes that you can just copy and paste into your messages or articles.

Channel Your Web Presence

Increase credibility by always ensuring that your messages come from the same source. If Facebook is your default communication platform, don’t send half your messages from your new social media profile with less contacts and incomplete biography and contact details.

If you happen to cover the same topic on your blog as in your newsletter, mention this as a nod towards dedicated readers (e.g. “As mentioned in the newsletter…), showing that you aware of the duplicated content while also creating a link to your newsletter signup page or other database of subscribers.

Personal Branding Contacts

Increase your networking connections between platforms by importing your mail contacts into your various channels. Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn allow for easy importing, meaning you can invite your audience to make contact with you across your many channels.

91% of LookupPage Pro Users Rank in the Top 10 Search Results on Google!

When it comes to getting you noticed on Google's first organic results page, i.e., your Google CV, LookupPage gets the job done. To reveal its effectiveness, we randomly sampled ten percent of LookupPage $7.95/month Pro users on April 14, 2009. We found out that 91% of their pages ranked in the top 10 search results on Google, for searches on their name. But here's the real kicker: 73% rank on the top 3 results and 52% rank #1 for searches on their name. The above ranking results together with the complementary sponsored listing included in the premium memberships, results in higher traffic - For every visit to a free LookupPage, Premium members average 30 visits. How's that for results!

To learn more about LookupPage premium services, visit our products pages.

Ranking this high isn't as simple as signing up for LookupPage Pro and waiting for the results to happen automatically. On LookupPage, content = higher ranking. LookupPage premium members' pages are on average much more complete and up-to-date than free members' pages. For example, 75% of premium members have updated their about info in the personal details section, compared to 26% of free users. Regardless of your membership type, the more content you add to your profile the more you improve the chances of being visible on search engines.

To update your LookupPage, login to account here. If you are a new user, you can sign up an account here.

Finding Your Personal Branding Copy Style

Finding your personal writing style is not an overnight process, but it shouldn’t be a totally unnatural process either.

Consider your target audience: Think about the typical audience member and imagine talking to them in real life. Or go one step further, get out there and interact with them. If possible (and consensual) record your conversations to analyse the style, tone and words used and try to incorporate this into your own copy style.

For the benefit of search engines, it would be wise to do some research into keyword search volumes. This will help to identify valuable terms and also understand the psychology of your audience. When it comes to online copy, keyword optimisation is as important to your personal branding as good grammar and spelling.

Copy Style Consistency

The strong positioning of your brand depends heavily on a consistent copy style. Consider writing a hypothetical external perception of the character behind your copy style to help you maintain your ideal image. Male or female? Age? Casual or to the point? Peace maker or craver of controversy? What is your unique selling point or memorable characteristic to your copy style?

Consider this broad identity every time you ‘put pen to paper’ and you’ll soon be on your way to a personal writing style for branding yourself online.

Most importantly - before you publish any content online, have a checklist ready of style, spelling, grammatical and formatting fundamentals to double check so as to maintain a quality standard for yourself.

How To Release Brand Updates to Increase Online Visibility

Releasing information online is quick and cheap, but important messages often go unnoticed online – or worse, the audience grows weary of weak or repetitive content. Here’s some thinking on how to release information effectively:

The Social Media Press Release (SMPR): In the old days, a press release would be a hard copy of basic information on the topic, a quote and maybe a photo or two. These days, it’s a little more three dimensional…
A Social Media Press Release is the best way to release important information online. The document should contain the key facts (important information managed in snippets), suggested quotes for use, boilerplate (or standardised article footer about yourself or your brand), dynamic links to all your other resources such as your LookupPage profile, Facebook pages, RSS feeds, brand images etc. as well as your full contact details.

Twitter and Micro-blogging: You can create ‘Tweets’ which notify certain people and also act as a teaser featuring a brief summary and link to your full article or blog post. 140 characters is all you need to release basic, or even regular information (due to the real-time brevity of the Twitter micro-blogging platform).

PDF Article or Documentation: When releasing brand updates and other regular content, especially if en masse, it can help to package these documents into a PDF format or another standardised format – but remember to keep the text dynamic with the appropriate links.
A PDF will be easy for your audience to save and read at their leisure and also allows for easy printing and negates formatting and other errors when they forward your information on to their friends. 

RSS Feed: RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and delivers your headlines to the subscribed audience as the stories break. Do a search on your favourite search engine for guides on how to set up an RSS feed.

5 Tips for Building up an Online Following

Communicating online is easy and generating a large contact network doesn’t have to be too difficult thanks to the convenient self promotion tools available. The internet presents more personal branding opportunities than you could possibly make use of, so here are some best practice ideas to help you build up an online following:

1). Be a Resource
One of the most important elements to generating a following is to be a helpful source of information. Interacting with your audience in a two way conversation is ideal for a healthy relationship. Rather than bombarding your audience with useless information and sales pitches, offer value in all your messages.

2). Be Active
Finding a balance between enough and too much interaction is just as important as the quality of your content. The power of social media is a great way to build up an online following, but abuse the power and you’ll soon lose contacts and attract negativity.
Understanding your reputation is an important aspect when it comes to online activity. Read more about the tools to manage your online reputation and use the tools to answer any questions directed to you and capitalise on every online opportunity – always listen to and respect your audience.

3). Spread Your Social Wings
Internet users are generally fickle, jumping between media and platforms with the changing of the times. You should always be aware of the new avenues available to reach your audience. Without increasing your web presence, there’s little hope in attracting new followers. Take a look at this post for more information, A Social Media Checklist: Where to Brand Yourself Online.

4). Online/Offline
Market yourself as a networking personality offline too. Depending on your industry, there are often many opportunities for you to interact with your audience in the real world. Keep your eyes open for seminars, Twitter ‘TweetUps’ and other real life rendezvous which are co-ordinated via social media channels.
Strengthen established bonds and extend your network. If nothing like this exists in your sector, why not host an event – even if it is purely social? Create a meeting agenda and discuss this possibility with your current audience.

5). Be Yourself
Interacting with others will mean you’ll attract new audience members naturally, but diplomacy will only get you so far. If ever you feel the need to disagree with the opinion of another online, it is okay to do so if you handle it in the right way – in fact, it can often help build up your online presence.

Brand yourself as an expert commentator, a facilitator and ambassador for your field of expertise. Read more about social media etiquette for your personal branding.

Common Personal Branding Mistakes

Using the internet to market yourself is easy, cheap and effective – but even the best online identities are not with out their flaws. Here’s a breakdown of common personal branding mistakes:

1). Inconsistency

• Many name and image variations.
• No brand identity standards.
• More than one spokesman resulting in erratic engagement style.

2). Diluting Your Personal Branding

• Straying from the point.
• Sending ambiguous messages.
• Using too many communication platforms.

3). Getting Walked Over By Competition

• Not being aware of one’s online reputation.
• Having others own your personal identity and the SERPs for your name.
• Spending more time taking cheap shots at competitors rather than progressing online.

4). Repetition and Irritating Messages

• Over eager communication, especially common over Facebook and Twitter.
• Repeating the same information in a ‘cheerleading’ style to an ever-irritated audience.
• Offering no value in communications.
• Coming across as self-serving.

5). Personal Identity Stagnation

• Not being responsive to an attentive audience.
• Letting one’s blog and social media profiles gather dust soon after creation.
• Rehashing the same themed content over and over.
• Not evolving into new territory with the crowd.

So, now that you know – avoid these personal branding mistakes at all costs when you are trying to establish an online presence. They may seem simple, but the above are all very easy mistakes to make. Maintaining a sense of professionalism is the key to success.

4 Tips for Writing Your Personal Branding Biography

When trying to market yourself online it is essential that you have a standard biography.
Creating content about yourself can be quite a daunting task. Where do you start? How much detail do you cover? Finding the perfect blend of professionalism and personality is tricky, so here are some tips to help you create better biographies.

1). Deciding on Your Character

If you’ve come as far as writing your biography for personal branding, you likely have an idea of the kind of personality you would like to portray. Keep this at the forefront of your thinking when writing your bio. If your online persona is causal and friendly, write your bio in a first person style and in third person if a more professional approach is needed.

2). Putting Pen to Paper

It’s important to make yourself sound good, but never boast or over exaggerate your life story. Have a friend write your very first draft, so you have an honest foundation on which to elaborate.

As with writing a traditional CV, try to keep it as comprehensive as possible but cut out all the unnecessary information. Highlight the major points (when talking about past work experience, for example) and offer short and snappy descriptions using the relevant keywords. Stick to the facts, display them in chronological order and in a format that’s easy to read.

3). Creating the Package

Your optimised biography and profile picture should compliment each other and while you might not want to change your biography too much, it might be a good idea to edit it for tone depending on the area of submission.
For example, your Twitter profile and LookupPage profile may have slightly different styles, but remember to keep them both in line with your overall online identity.

4). Spell and Grammar Check

Lastly, you will definitely want to perform a spelling and grammar check. It may also be a good idea to send your biography to a friend and have them take a second look at it for you.

Let us know if you have any other useful tips on creating a biography.

Joining the Discussion to Brand Yourself Online

Most search engines have groups dedicated to themed discussion. These are often extensions of the obsolete Usenet groups which originally populated the primitive internet. A great area for audience participation and discussion, these web communities are active and engaging and comment archives allow these groups to have long-term benefit on your online presence.
Some examples include Google Groups and Yahoo! Groups.

Perform some searches around your chosen keywords and phrases to see if there is any commentary relevant to you taking place in any of these groups. If so, join the discussion by introducing yourself and answering any questions and putting unsavoury publicity to rest.

Creating a Google or Yahoo! Group

Depending on your individual situation, you can use these search engine groups to join the discussion and brand yourself online. These groups are generally free, but you’ll need to have signed up with a relevant account.

• Create Your Group: Build a user base by inviting contacts via email and attract others by commenting in related groups.
• Offer Information and Promote Discussion: Provide insider information and act as a valuable resource, promoting discussion by making statements, asking for opinions and responding to direct messages.
• Create Different Threads: Keep each communication channel relevant by creating multiple threads or sub-threads to organise the information.
• Leverage Your Platform: These discussion groups are great places to provide links for users and search engine spiders – submit links to your relevant blog posts and articles, but only once you’ve created a credible community profile.

It’s useful to remember that although each of these groups does allow you the chance to present yourself to the online community, if you engage them enough they will want to investigate you further.

Here, having a professional online profile that ranks on the SERPs is crucial so that your hard work doesn’t go to waste.