SEO – Page 7

1st on Google – Week 5

February 27, 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, 2nd Week Update here, 3rd Week Update here, and 4th Week Update here. Below are the results as of Sunday, 02-26-12 (click here to do your own search):

#2 – My LinkedIn profile page (no change from last week)
#11 – The About Me page from my personal blog, BlueCapra.com, with picture (down 1 place from last week at #10)
#52 – BlueCapra.com tag page; posts tagged ‘Alan Reeves’ (Up 19 places from last week at #71)
#60 – Comment I made on AndyTraub.com 2 months ago (Up 12 places from last week at #72)
#77 – Comment I made on CoachRadio.tv around the middle of December 2011 (down 1 place from last week at #76)

This week was good for my journey to 1st on Google. I stayed at the #2 spot for my first occurrence which is promising. Since LinkedIn occupies the 1st spot, it will be tough to overcome such a large site but that is my goal and I will keep at it until I’m there. Overall, my top 5 results increased 29 places, even though my 2nd and 5th occurrences were both down 1 spot from last week. I showed up 5 times in the top 100 search results.

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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 – 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)