Do you want your information to come up first in a Google search? Take a look at Google profiles. With the new Google Buzz service, making a Google profile and using it as a virtual hub for all of you social networking links is easier than ever. Once you publish a Google profile, you profile link will come up whenever someone searches for you name, making it simple for others to find you and have links to your accounts on all of the other social networking sites. It works sort of like a one stop shop for all of you accounts.
To create a profile, just go to Google Profiles and set it up using your Google account (if you don't already have one, you will need to first set up a Gmail account). After that, connection all of your accounts is simple. Use these 5 tips to make your profile stand out.
Use your full name and add common misspellings- Keep in mind that your objective is to be easily found on Google, so be sure to use your full name and adjust your privacy setting to allow other to search for your name. There is also a place where you can add frequent misspellings of you name so that you can still be found, even if your name is difficult to spell or commonly confused.
Upload a professional picture- If you upload a head shot, it will display as a thumbnail in the search results. This will help business contacts who know what you look like and your name be sure that the search result is you rather than someone else with the same name.
Make your bio complete- In the precious history section, be sure to be as thorough as possible. The people who are looking for you may only know small parts of your history, so be sure to cover all the bases. Include your high school, college name, past employers and anything else you think might be a defining piece of information for someone who is looking for you. When it comes to the bio, keep it brief and try to use important keywords that someone would use in their search.
Spend some time on the “What I Do” part- In this section, you want to keep it brief, but rather than thinking of it as a list of what you do, think of it as your sales pitch. This is what is going to show up in the search results beside your picture, so you want it to count.
Use lots of links- On your profile, you can add as many links as you like, so include every site that you have. Many of these links will be displayed in the search result blurb, so you will want to include any blogs you have, your Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook etc. in addition to your own personal sites or sites that you contribute to. Think of this as sort of your directory listing for finding you on the web.
Using Google profiles is a great way to get your name and what you do on the first page of a Google search. It helps increase your contacts and allows people who are searching for you to be able to add you to all of their social networking accounts without having to look for you on each site individually. Another benefit is that if you are concerned about what a potential client or employer would find out about you via a Google search, having a profile on Google will typically provide enough information that they won't bother looking at page 2 of the search results.
So, have you set up a Google Profile? Let me know in the comments what your experiences are.
By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer, along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.
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