The Challenge
Last week a company wide challenge was put forward… A C-level executive in the company had an unflattering news article written about him, and it was ranking #2 for his name in Google. The challenge was to push that article off the homepage.
Now I don’t get a chance to do many brand reputation gigs, so I thought this would be a fun little project. I immediately registered several domain names with different version of this name. I setup blogs on each, and registered him on just about every Web 2.0 site out there (Twitter, Facebook, Google Profiles, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Tumblr, etc). And of course I linked all the profiles back to his brand new blog.
Within 2 hours I had completely taken over this mans identity.
The Result?
Within a week his blog was on the 1st page of Google for his name. No real inbound links to speak of apart from brand new social profiles.
Step 2:
Time to start linking to his web 2.0 profiles from existing domains that I manage. Those links should help the profiles themselves rank, and in turn the blog should rank as well.
Step 3:
Start leaving blog comments. Not for the backlinks, just for on-page mentions on prominent sites.
If You Read Any of This – Read This:
Registering your own name as a domain is priceless. Priceless. PRICELESS!
If there is once piece of advice I wish everyone reading this would take away – it’s to take the last sentence to heart. Why?
Protect Yourself – Don’t let anyone else buy your identity for $10
Be found – When someone searches for you in Google, your domain will almost always rank #1
An eternal source of links – It’s your website, you’ll have it for the next 20 years, and you can link to whoever you want from it. I will likely link to this executives website from my own to help him rank better for his name. If I didn’t take time to develop authority on my own site, I wouldn’t have this option.
The only email you’ll ever need – I see a lot of people using email address like: DanCristo@gmail.com. Why would you want to promote the gmail brand along with your name? It’s sooo much better to have dan@dancristo.com or me@dancristo.com. I love the gmail functionality, so I just forward dan@dancristo.com to my gmail address and manage it from there. Nobody is the wiser.
Land that job – Every hiring manager you ever meet is going to Google your name. It’s similar in concept to the “Be Found” point above, but it warrants it’s own call out because of the huge impact this alone could have on your career
It’s your hub – You’ve got social profiles scattered across the web. Your domain name should be the hub that ties them all together.
The Future:
Do your children a huge favor and register their domain name for them as soon as you’ve picked out a name. Trust me, it’ll be the second best $10′s you ever spent (right after buying your own name).
Great post Dan. How important do you think it is to actually build out your own domain with content i.e. writing blog posts versus building a simple one page template to share basic information?
Thanks very much. I’ll answer your question in a round about way…
Over the years, DanCristo.com has seen many, many iterations. It’s been a blog, a 1-pager, a FREE SEO audit site, a video library, and now it’s turning back into a blog.
The domain changes as I feel inspired to change it. Through that process I’ve got a strangle hold on the #1 ranking in Google for my name. Even if I made this a 1-page site that wouldn’t change. But if I needed some heavy traffic to earn income, then I’d probably focus on the blogging functionality. Right now it’s just a place to casually share what’s on my mind.
What’s important is that this domain is going to jouney with me for many, many years. And because of that, it becomes extremely important that I take care of it and focus on it. Others may just want their named domain, because it protects them from identiy theft, but for me, building a personal brand is becoming an important part of my life.
Did that answer your query?
The blog isn’t coming up in my search results – were you logged in when you saw your results?
Hi Guest,
So I never actually mentioned the name of the C-level exec that I was optimizing for. Feel free to email me dan (at) dancristo.com for more details.
Works best if you have an unusual name or were early to the game – John Smith and Jane Doe aren’t going to have much luck getting their names (or any realistic variation of their names) as domains . . .
I recently read a post regarding this same topic. My problem is that my name is a lot more common then I knew. There is an actress who shares my name but I outrank her on the 1st page of Google. My profile is actually #1. Loving that… But, I couldn’t get the dot com extension when I first got online so had to go with the dot net. So for people who may share the same name, I’m thinking that really can’t be helped in that case right! I’ll keep my fingers crossed that will be the case.
Thanks for this wake up call. Not fun having someone else slam you all over the net. Great example you gave us about how easy it is for people to do just that.
Adrienne
Remember when we did the interview and we spoke about the off-page criteria…and I insisted that no inbound links are needed as long as the phrase is in the domain name? Well…ba-goosh!
I guess what Im saying is I told you so…I told you so lol
I would also love to have our own email, its an other way to bring free traffic.
where as I don’t like to have sites on names.