The following answers are provided by members of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.
1. Register Your Domain Name
“Register your domain name, then start blogging. You don’t have to write every day or even every week. Just keep updating it with fresh content bi-weekly or monthly. Use plenty of images and fill out the alt text. Pretty soon, you should be ranking for your name.”
Ismael Wrixen, FE International
2. Create a Personal PR Strategy
“Investing just a few hours a month in exploring PR opportunities through HARO, local press or guest blogging can pay off in dividends for your personal search rankings. By authoring or getting media coverage from larger publications with an already established ranking in Google, you better your chances of filling up page one with content that you want.”
Ross Beyeler, Growth Spark
3. Consider a Wikipedia page
“It’s not too difficult to learn how Wikipedia works, and if you don’t have time to do that, it’s fairly inexpensive to pay a consultant to develop a page for you. I have found that my page consistently ranks at the top of search results, and it offers an immediate positive impression, as well as helpful branding information for potential customers who are searching my name.”
Alexandra Levit, PeopleResults
4. Use Online Tools to Link Your Blog and Social Media
“Two key steps: Make sure you have active accounts on leading social media networks, and publish and publicize high-quality content that attracts links and shares. If you’re publishing on a blog, be sure to share to your social media accounts and use Schema.org, Open Graph on Facebook and Twitter Cards to link the blog to your social media presence.”
Vik Patel, Future Hosting
5. Be Consistent and Patient
“Once you’ve established a presence in the digital spaces that make sense for you, create a link structure between these different platforms to share authority. Most importantly, stay consistent in updating all of them with strategic activity in regular intervals over time. Consistency is key in growing a readership and proving to Google your properties should be ranked as highly as possible.”
Ryan Wilson, FiveFifty
6. Create a Fan Page on Facebook
“If there are people who share your name, but don’t reflect your professionalism, create a Facebook fan page to “bump” them out of the search engine results. You can also use your fan page to post articles and links that best reflect your successes and personal interests. Also, those who search for your full name will most likely find your fan page within the first 10 search results.”
7. Refresh Your Website Content
“Add new landing pages and refresh existing website content so you can change your rank in the search results. Create micro-sites or a blog if you don’t have these already to give your name more attention that can also help in the rankings.”
Drew Hendricks, Buttercup
8. Create Multiple Social Media Profiles
“Social media profiles like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook all rank high in the search results for your name because of the authority each have. Even if you have no interest in using a platform like Instagram, complete the profile anyway, as it gives you another position on page one of the search results. Use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest to dominate the first page.”
Jonathan Long, Sexy Smile Kit
9. Name Your Profile Images Correctly
“Create social media accounts for yourself and upload an image. Make sure that the image file is named using your full name. Create profiles on sites like AngelList, Crunchbase and Meetup. Always use your full name, and upload an image to profiles.”
Abhilash Patel, Recovery Brands
