Welcome back to my journey to being 1st on Google. This is the 50th 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, 49th Week update here (last week), and the ones in between on my Project page. Below are the results as of Sunday, 1-6-13 (click here to do your own search for Alan Reeves on Google):
- #10 – The About page on BlueCapra.com, no picture – see why in the strategies section (up 1 place from last week at #11)
- #23 – My profile at Brand Yourself (down 8 places from last week at #15)
- #33 – My LinkedIn profile (down 8 places from last week at #25)
- #36 – My profile page on 48 Days.net (no change from last week at #36)
- #37 – My videos on Vimeo (up 3 places from last week at #40)
A check at Google Images showed my picture at #5 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:
- #3 – My LinkedIn profile (no change from last week at #3)
- #11 – My Facebook profile (up 1 place from last week at #12)
- #14 – My Twitter handle, @AlanReeves (up 4 places from last week at #18)
- #29 – Book Worm Laser & Design on Google+ – soon to be deleted (down 3 places from last week at #26)
- #32 – My profile on Quora (up 1 place from last week at #33)
This week I’m at #3 on Bing. Overall, my top 5 results increased 3 place with 3 of the top 5 results occurring in the first 25 places. As a whole, I showed up 7 times in the top 100 search results.
I did manage to show up at #4 for images on Bing, and overall, had 5 in the top 100 images.
Strategies for 1st
This week I managed to comment on a few posts but mainly, I have tried to focus on changing a few things. First, you may notice that the site looks different. While still in process, I am migrating over to the Standard theme by 8bit. There are pros and cons to every decision we make and choosing a theme is no different. The main reason I decided on the Standard theme is how well it works on different devices.
When I launched this site, it was my first one and I chose a theme that had the graphics, design, and colors I wanted without much thought to how well the theme was written or optimized. Now, a year and a half or so later, the design part is less important than the foundation. For that reason, the Standard theme was the way to go. I will eventually migrate my business site, BookWormLaser.com over to Standard but I want to get a feel for the design (or pay someone to do the work) before I jump in.
Google+: The rise and fall of a profile
The best way to learn something is to do it. You can read, research, talk to people, etc but until you actually get your hands dirty, you never know how it will go. You will make some mistakes but hey, that is life. You figure out what you have done wrong and fix it. That basically describes how my Google+ changes came about.
Like any good IT nerd, I have a bunch of email addresses. Some I’ve had for years and years (and years…). I’m trying to simplify so some of those email addresses are giving way to newer, better ones. Same goes with my Google+ profiles.
I currently have 3 Google+ profiles; 1 personal, 2 that I am phasing out, and 1 Business page. According to Google, every person is only allowed to have 1 Google+ profile. I want to consolidate my accounts so before I do much with my personal profile, I wanted to move things around a bit. When I initially started with Google+, there was not business pages so Book Worm Laser & Design received a profile. Once the pages became available, I built a page but never removed the profile.
This year, I decided to simplify a little and as a result, my personal Google+ profile is being moved, the Business page for Book Worm Laser & Design will be getting more focus, and the Book Worm Laser & Design (really, just a personal profile that had the business name) will be retired. I hope these changes will help make things easier and, more importantly, more likely to be utilized.
There is a lot of debate as to how much your Google+ activity actually helps your search results. Considering it is a part of Google, I figure it is worth a try to help SEO. Of course, YouTube is also a part of Google and I haven’t been seeing much benefit of tagging myself in the videos I create for Book Worm Laser & Design but that was only a fringe benefit if anything.
BrandYourself the right way
In other news, I received a nice gift from my BrandYourself profile: it detected one of my links at #8 on Google as of 1/2/13.
Summary – The search for Alan Reeves
I’ve been able to make a good amount of progress these past many weeks, going from #91 on 1-25-12 to #3 on 3-11-12 and to #10 today. I have learned a lot about improving search ranking and I have made a lot of mistakes, but this is a learning process. I hope to make significant progress by next week and regain my past progress. 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.
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