The Search for Alan Reeves – 1st on Google

Welcome back to my journey to being 1st on Google.This is the 68th update for my attempt to rank first for my name, Alan Reeves. If you missed the any of the posts, you can find the first one here, 67th Week update here (last week), and the ones in between on my Project page. Below are the results as of Sunday, 5-12-13 (click here to do your own search for Alan Reeves on Google):

#15 – My Twitter handle, @AlanReeves with picture (down 9 places from last week at #4)
#17 – My About page on BlueCapra.com, with picture (down 6 places from last week at #11)
#27 – My videos on Vimeo (down 9 places from last week at #18)
#43 – My Pinterest profile (down 16 places from last week at #27)
#57 – Book Worm Laser & Design on Pinterest (up 2 places from last week at #59)

This week I’m at #15. Overall, my top 5 results decreased 44 places with 2 of the top 5 results occurring in the first 25 places. As a whole, I showed up 8 times in the top 100 search results.

A check at Google Images showed my picture at #7 and a total of 9 occurrences in the top 100 images.

Cornering the market – from Google to Bing

In addition to searching Google, I have been checking Bing results for my name, Alan Reeves (click here to do your own Bing search for Alan Reeves). Here are the top 5 Bing results:

#5 – My Facebook profile (no change from last week at #5)
#6 – My LinkedIn profile with picture (no change from last week at #6)
#18 – This site, BlueCapra.com (down 1 place from last week at #19)
#20 – My Twitter handle, @AlanReeves with picture (up 1 place from last week at #21)
#21 – My BrandYourself profile (up 7 places from last week at #28)

This week I’m at #2 on Bing. Overall, my top 5 results increased 7 places with 5 of the top 5 results occurring in the first 25 places. As a whole, I showed up 9 times in the top 100 search results.

A check at Bing Images showed my picture at #8 and a total of 4 occurrences in the top 100 images.

Strategies for 1st

This week, I was able to add a tool to the search; a premium subscription to BrandYourself (via a nice deal from AppSumo that expires in a little over 12 hours). A free account at BrandYourself allows you to concentrate or boost 3 links. A premium subscription allows you to boost unlimited links.

Since the account upgrade, I’ve added 19 more links (to a total of 22). That caused a little shuffling in the top results and a nice boost to the Bing results (5 of the top 5 results in the first 25 results). I’m hoping to see more benefit as time goes on. Just one more step closer to being 1st.

Summary – The search for Alan Reeves

I’ve been able to make good progress since the start, going from #91 on 1-25-12 to #2 on 2-26-12 and to #4 today. I have learned a lot about improving search ranking and I have made a lot of mistakes, but it’s a learning process. Stay tuned to see if next week is the week I reach the 1st spot on Google and Bing.

If you only had time to do 1 thing to help your site or name rank better in Google, what would it be? Leave me a comment and let me know.