Personal SEO refers to the practice of using SEO tactics for optimizing search results for your personal name, and is an integral part of personal online branding.
With the rise of search engines, more and more people are using the internet to search for people they may hire, start a business with, or award a contract to.
What are the Reasons Personal SEO is important?
Several studies have shown that almost 90% of recruiters search for a job candidate’s name using Google before hiring for a position and nearly a similar percentage of businesspeople use Google before buying a product or service from someone.
Many people, including veteran online marketers, are unaware of the fact that a bad reputation over the internet is one of the leading causes of lost business opportunities.
With the help of personal SEO, you can mitigate the impact of any negative information out there about you, and ensure that the people searching for you online see only the positive things most of the time.
Most people nowadays have some online presence in the form of a website, LinkedIn profile, or social media profiles. But having an online presence is no longer enough if your profile doesn’t appear among the first few pages of Google for someone who is searching using your name as a search query.
Personal SEO allows you to optimize your website and social media profiles, and ensures that the people looking for you can find you using Google.
How Personal SEO Affects Your Personal Branding?
Personal branding is pretty much reliant on personal SEO due to the simple fact that people consider search results more trustworthy than paid ads of other forms of marketing.
Search engine algorithms have been designed to deliver the most relevant results to people’s search queries. This ensures that search results are accurate and deliver the results which people are looking for.
A personal website is of no use if people can’t find it, and personal SEO ensures that your target audience can discover you online when they search for you using your name.
Personal SEO can help you in developing a personal brand for yourself, and ensures that you are established as an expert in your industry. If you are a personal injury attorney based in Brooklyn, New York, then you can use personal SEO to lead people to your social media profiles or your personal webpage whenever they use the keywords “personal injury attorney in Brooklyn New York”.
The best thing about personal SEO is the fact that anyone can use it, even the people who don’t have a personal website. If you are an academician or are looking for a job, then you can use the same personal SEO tactics to rank your LinkedIn profile for the exact keywords which a potential recruiter may search for along with your name before offering a job to you.
The Basics of Personal SEO
Now, we will discuss some essential element of personal SEO or the main factors which will ensure that your personal website can rank higher in the SERPS for your main target keywords:
Content:
Content is one of the most important factors in any search engine optimization strategy as search engines love content and are known to punish site with little or duplicate content. So, ensure that your personal site has enough indexable content, which is also unique and original as duplicate content may get you a penalty from search engines, especially from Google.
Relevancy:
Try to be as relevant to your main keywords as possible. Search engine algorithms are designed to deliver relevant results to searchers queries. This essentially means that you cannot and must not include unrelated or irrelevant content on your personal website.
Site Structure:
Search engine crawlers scan websites for individual webpages, and then index and rank them using their algorithms. A site’s internal structure may affect this significantly and is often one of the main reasons for low rankings on the SERPs. You need to ensure that your site has no broken links and is structured well.
Keywords:
You can use several of the free online tools available to identify the right keywords for your personal SEO campaign as keywords are the backbone of any well-designed SEO strategy. You may also consider including long tail keywords or phrases as they can help you to rank well on the SERPs.
Placement:
Search engines may also rank your website based upon the placement of your name on specific pages and places on it. You can try to include your name along with any designation in the title of your website, the URL, page headings, meta, tags, and descriptions.
Blacklinks:
Backlinks from relevant sources may significantly boost your ranking on the SERPs as authoritative sites are known to pass link juice to the site which they link to.
Social Sharing:
For almost a decade, Google is using social media signals in its search results, although they are not disclosing anything about it to the public. Content or webpages, which are shared over social media, have a higher chance of ranking high on SERPs. So, make sure that your website is easily shareable on popular social media sites as this doesn’t only help your rankings but your engagement as well.
Conclusion
Hopefully, now you have a good idea what personal SEO is, and why it’s important from a branding perspective. Personal branding can be easily turbocharged with the help of personal SEO and can make you stand out from the competition without spending too much money.
The chances are that you may already be doing personal SEO without realizing it. You can use the tips mentioned above to increase your rankings in search engine results pages. Actually, most of the factors which can increase the visibility of your personal website works for any business websites too.
If you think you need Personal SEO to help boost the reputation of your business, there’s someone who can help you. Qamar Zaman, CEO of KISS PR, has been helping entrepreneurs for over a decade grow their business online through SEO. Contact him at 972-437-8942 for a free one on one consultation.
