Google – Page 8

1st on Google – Week 4

February 20, 2012 by Alan R 2 Comments

Welcome back to my journey to being 1st on Google. If you missed the first few posts, you can find the first one here, 1st Week Update here, 2nd Week Update here, and 3rd Week Update here. Below are the results as of Sunday, 02-19-12 (click here to do your own search):

#2 – My LinkedIn profile page (Up 9 places from last week at #10)
#10 – The About Me page from my personal blog, BlueCapra.com, with picture (Up 15 place from last week at #25)
#71 – My review of 48 Days to the Work You Love on GoodReads.com (down 27 places from last week at #44)
#72 – Comment I made on AndyTraub.com 2 months ago (down 11 places from last week at #61)
#76 –BlueCapra.com tag page; posts tagged ‘Alan Reeves’ (down 3 places from last week at #73)

This week was mixed for my journey to 1st on Google. Within the first five search results where I appear, I jumped up 9 places to #2 and overall, I decreased a total of 17 places. Last week I increased a total of 40 places with the top spot at #10. The closer I get, the harder it will be to get there. Overall, I show up 6 times in the top 100 search results. [Read more…]

1st on Google – Week 3

February 13, 2012 by Alan R Leave a Comment

Welcome back to my journey to being 1st on Google. If you missed the first few posts, you can find the first one here, 1st Week Update here, and 2nd Week Update here. Below are the results as of Sunday, 02-12-12 (click here to do your own search):

#10 – The About Me page from my personal blog, BlueCapra.com, with picture (Up 1 place from last week at #11)
#25 – My LinkedIn profile page (Up 12 places from last week at #37)
#44 – My personal blog, BlueCapra.com, with picture (up 12 places from last week at #56)
#61 – Comment I made on AndyTraub.com 2 months ago (Up 4 places from last week at #65)
#73 – My Technorati profile (up 11 places from last week at #84)

This week was pretty good for my journey to 1st on Google. Considering the first five search results where I appear, I jumped up 1 place to #10 and overall, I increased a total of 40 places. Last week I increased a total of 223 places with the top spot at #11. The closer I get, the harder it will be to get there. Overall, I show up 6 times in the top 100 search results. [Read more…]

1st on Google – Week 2

February 6, 2012 by Alan R Leave a Comment

Welcome back to my journey to being 1st on Google. If you missed the first few posts, you can find the first one here and the 1st Week Update here. Here are the results as of Sunday, 02-05-12 (click here to do your own search):

#11 – My personal blog, BlueCapra.com (Up 35 places from last week at #46) – With my picture I may add
#37 – My LinkedIn profile page (Up 65 places from last week at #102)
#56 – Comment I made on AndyTraub.com 2 months ago (Up 51 places from last week at #107)
#65 – My profile at GoodReads.com (Up 45 places from last week at #110)
#84 – My About Me page at this site, BlueCapra.com (Up 27 places from last week at #111) – again, with my picture

This week was great for my journey to 1st on Google. Considering the first five search results where I appear, I jumped up 35 places to #11 and overall, I increased a total of 223 places. That’s great considering last week I only increased a total of 6 places (45 points up for the first occurrence, 39 points down for the next four occurrences)

The search was performed on my work laptop after I had cleared the cache, browser history, etc. On top of that, I used Google Chrome (which I don’t normally use). The search setting I used was similar to the first weeks (cleared cache, 10 search results, non-instant results, strict filtering, etc). In order to verify that the results did not change, I performed the same search on my desktop computer using Firefox about 30 minutes after the first search. The results were the same. I feel confident that the computer and browser does not affect the search results. From this point one, I will do the search on whatever computer and browser is convenient (excluding my personal laptop). [Read more…]

1st on Google – Week 1

January 30, 2012 by Alan R Leave a Comment

Welcome back to my journey to being 1st on Google. If you missed the first post, you can find it here. Here are the results as of Sunday, 01-29-12 (click here to do your own search):

#46 – My personal blog, BlueCapra.com (Up 45 places from last week – #91)
#102 – Author page on EzineArticles.com (Down 9 places from last week – #93)
#107 – Reviews on BookSneeze.com (Down 9 places from last week – #98)
#110 – Comment on AndyTraub.com (Down 11 places from last week – #99)
#111 – Profile page on 48Days.net (Down 10 places from last week – #101)

The 1st entry on Google was a search on LinkedIn.com that had 25 other Alan Reeves. I was 13th on that list. I made a huge jump in my 1st ranking, but 2-5 slipped about 10 places each.

The search was done on my desktop after I had cleared the cache, browser history, etc. On top of that, I used Internet Explorer (which I don’t normally use). This week I will try several computers at the same time side-by-side to see if there are any differences just out of curiosity.

After looking closer at my site, I did not have the author link setup properly. Here is the fix:

[Read more…]

1st on Google – My Journey to be first

January 26, 2012 by Alan R Leave a Comment

Would you like to be ranked 1st on Google? I would. Not necessarily with my business or personal blog, but when someone searched my name, Alan Reeves, I want to be ranked 1st, maybe not on all the search engines, but at least at Google. Narcissistic, maybe, but from a business and marketing standpoint, who would not want to be #1 on Google for something. But how can I do such a thing?

I am no SEO expert, but I am willing to learn. I now have a (very specific) goal and I am just curious enough to see how long it will take me. First, I need to determine where I am.

Google is great at incorporating other services into their search. When I am logged in under my GMail account, my likes, friends, and posts are taken into account when Google returns the search results. Since I am trying to show up 1st to a complete stranger, that nice feature makes it a bit more difficult to test. To get around that feature, I could either log out of my account or do my searching on a completely separate computer. I decided not to log out and do my searching on other computers and devices, including public computers when available, such as at the library. Now that I have that squared away, I need to figure out where I am starting from.

Where do I compare to that 1st spot

As of January 25, 2012, I show up #91 with my About page at my personal website, BlueCapra.com. That is a long way from the 1st spot, so I have my work cut out for me. As an interesting side note, my Google+ picture shows up beside the link to my blog. If you want to know how I did this, you can walk through the steps yourself on this post by Amit Agarwal on Digital Inspirations. I also show up at the following places (to round out the top 5):

#93 – A book review I left on BookSneeze

#98 – My author page at EzineArticles.com – I wrote an article about laser engraving glass

#99 – A comment I left at 48Days.com

#101 – my Google+ profile (displayed with picture)

My restriction

The link has to be obvious to me and not a link to a page that might contain a link to a page. For example, I did not even go to any site that said there were 25 people named Alan Reeves on whatever website. I wanted to only count the links that directed traffic to a page with my content or information.

My Google search settings on the computer where I performed this initial search is as follows

Google Instant Predictions – OFF (easier to display a longer list of results)

SafeSearch Filters – Strict

Results per page – 100

I also cleared my cache, cookies, history, whatever I could so I could get as accurate of results as I could

Search results vary from day-to-day so I will be doing an official search twice a week and sharing the results. I will share the steps I take, including links, once a week. There are a few more things I can tweak on my business site, Book Worm Laser & Design and I will share those as well. I hope my journey to ranking 1st on Google helps you with your own SEO. Stay tuned.

Click for the 1st week update

(photo by: sheelamohan)