Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – The Short Version

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The eBranding Me team is very excited to work with Phyllis and Yael of Miller Mosaic Power Marketing to bring our readers weekly posts chronicling the social media campaign of fictional character Amy H. to secure gainful employment post-graduation from the University of Pennsylvania.

The ebook, titled “WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP: How to Use Social Media to Get Your Dream Job,” will feature advice from a chapter posted every Tuesday on the eBranding Me blog.

You can find all of the posts, organized for your convenience, here. Make sure you complete the weekly assignments along with Amy H. to successfully build your online personal brand. Subscribe via email and/or RSS.

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The fifth post of this series, entitled “Things to Know About Having Your Own Blog,” was published yesterday. The post briefly explains the importance of optimizing a personal blog for search engines. The following information is a brief description of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for a typical Generation Y student and how he or she can use certain strategies and tools to mange an online reputation.

What is SEO?

Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and many others act as portholes for Internet users to find relevant content online. Search Engine Optimization is when a website owner attempts to make his/her site more attractive to the search results by using a variety of white hat (legal) or black hat (illegal) ways. SEO is part of Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

It is vital for Generation Y students to be aware of SEO techniques. The ever-increasing use of search engines by college admissions officers and entry-level job recruiters increases the importance of your “Google Resume.” A staggering 80% of Human Resource Departments are now Googling potential job candidates. And of those individuals researched online, 30% of hiring decisions have been affected by their findings.

While there are many tools to sift through online content, Google is used for well over 50% of inquiries. Furthermore, it is common knowledge that Google’s search engine algorithm is the most complex – using well over 200 different factors to determine the displayed results. In turn, over 60% of users find what they’re looking for on the first page of search results because of the determined efforts of the Google algorithms to return accurate results.

Why should YOU worry about someone else’s Google search results?

“Whether you’re a college student yet to make your way in the corporate world or a high-flying executive of a Fortune 500 company, what you say and how you act online affects your personal reputation in career-enhancing or –detracting ways.”
- “Radically Transparent” by Andy Beal & Dr. Judy Strauss

The first 10 links that Google Search Engine returns for an inquiry in your name tells a story. However, the popularity of your name can hinder your results. For an example, there are a significantly more number of Andrew Stuarts than there are Harrison Conrads.

Having a less popular name may make it easier for an individual to successfully appear as a search result on Google’s first page. However, the lack of competing information will also allow for negative content to appear more easily.

While having a common name may make it harder to appear as an organic search result for an individual’s name, you can purchase a domain name with a location or industry included to improve the chances of an employer finding the correct online profile for you. For example, JohnSmith.com may not be available, but JohnSmithNYC.com might be.

DEFINITION: Organic Search Result
Organic search engine results are the listings representing the algorithm’s normally indexed pages. The pages are presented in a list according to how relevant the server feels they are to your inquiry. It is necessary to understand the difference between “organic” results from a “Pay-Per-Click” (PPC) advertisement. Some online search engines will cleverly disguise paid advertisements above and/or to the right of the organic results.

If you remember reading in the Miller Mosaic Power Marketing Series post titled “Things to Know About Having Your Own Blog,” Yael and Phyllis recommend acquiring a domain name that avoids committing yourself to a specific career in case you “eventually [go] in a different direction, [you have] established [an] online presence with [your] name and not an interest in a specific career.

eBranding Me suggests finding your niche blogging topic and including it in the blog’s title. To illustrate our point, take our mission statement:

“eBranding Me informs Generation Y about online privacy and social responsibility through on-site seminars and a supporting website. We also act as a resource for educators, providing curriculum to inform students how to create a positive online presence and avoid the dangers of damaging their reputation online.”

We do not advertise ourselves as just another reputation management tool or a community of personal branding experts. We are YOUR peers – who, only just recently, experienced the same life challenges that face you today – offering our advice to you. That is how we differentiate ourselves from the crowd. How will you?

What steps should YOU take now?

• Title
  • As previously stated, as an individual it is nearly impossible to compete with a large organization over popular keywords. The title of each post on your personal blog should be as descriptive as possible. Remember to brainstorm some keywords that readers who may be interested in reading your content are prone to use during their Internet searches.
  • It is commonly recommended to use numbers in the title of posts to increase traffic. Some reasoning behind this theory is to show potential readers that the content included in the post is well thought out, useful/valuable and can be easily scanned.
  • The titles of stagnant pages on a personal blog are just as, if not more, important than individual posts. Instead of titling the “About” page simply “About Me,” eBranding Me suggests you include your name “About John Smith.” This will allow for search engines to index your full name once again. Furthermore, a search query would show the result’s full title (up to 60 characters) and allow the viewer to understand the contents of the webpage without the need to click through.
  • Blogging platforms allow users to adjust many settings. A very important feature to enable and properly adjust is the “Permalink” option. Some Content Management Systems (CMS) automatically set this feature to label posts “Numerically.” This will result in a post’s URL to appear as such: www.eBranding.Me/archives/123/. However, this is very unfriendly to search engine spiders (see section #4). Make sure you enable a Permalink setting that uses the post’s title in the URL.
    
• Meta Tags
  • If you were to describe yourself using 10 adjectives, what would they be? These are your keywords. Some popular ones for Generation Y students include: motivated, organized, diligent, go-getter, intelligent, passionate, outgoing, team player, etc.
  • WordPress blogging platform allows users to install plugins. The most user-friendly SEO plugin, All in One SEO Pack, allows individuals to adjust the format of their search engine results, meta tags and much more.
  • Lastly, before hitting “Post,” make sure to always compose an “Excerpt” for the page/post. This information will appear on search results describing the linked page’s content to viewers.
    
• Content
  • Content is the key to SEO success. It is vital for a post titled “Personal Branding” to use both words within the text. An easy way to make sure of this is to restate the title of a post within the text.
  • Don’t forget to use the keywords you brainstormed earlier in each post as well. Meta tags saved in the All in One SEO Pack plugin should be repeated on every page and blog entry.
  • One factor algorithms are known to include is that of frequency. The number of times a keyword appears on a page, compared to all other words, determines the ranking as a result for an inquiry.
    
• Spiders
  • All search engines use spiders (also known as robots, bots, and web crawlers) to index web pages and online content. These automated programs typically catalog new pages within 2-14 days.
    
• Links
  • The Internet is a web of links. Google uses a unique PageRank algorithm. The complex formula “Google is able to quickly understand the most relevant result for a search query by analyzing the linking structure of the neighborhood of pages for that keyword” (Radically Transparent). It is not enough to simply match your site’s content with the titles of posts and meta tag keywords. Google will not be convinced that your site is valuable until other respected sites attest to your knowledge.
  • Build links by networking both on and offline. Join as many social networks as you feel comfortable. Make sure to use a universal profile picture, complete your profile using keywords and build links between profiles. Keep an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of the various social media sites you have joined.
  • Email signatures are a great place to highlight all of your online activity. A great tool to create a visually appealing signature for use on Firefox and Google Chrome web browsers is WiseStamp.

Build a stronger “Personal Brand”

eBranding Me hopes to motivate Generation Y students to become more active online and comfortable with the various social media tools available. Use the aforementioned SEO tools to begin managing your Google Search Results.

Here are some other resources that may be of value:

-        eBranding Me: Take Control of Your Google Search Results [HowTo]
-        Google Profiles
-        Google Search Help [Basics]
-        Google Search Help [Advance]

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