If I search for your name in Google, will the results actually be about you?

The hallmark of a strong personal brand online is the ability to be found when someone searches for you on the web.

The first step to ensure you can be found is to create profiles on major social networks and directories including services like LinkedIn and Ziggs. Besides your “home base” website if you have one, these form the foundation of your online visibility. (Look forward to an in depth review of social networks and directories you might want to join in a future post).

If you’re already on a few social networks or directories, make sure every place you exist online links to every other place you exist online.

If you have a LinkedIn, Ecademy and Ziki profile, then these profiles should all link to each other.

This is important because Google counts every link to a web page as a “vote” for that page. Google results are really one big popularity contest. The pages that come up highest in searches for your name are generally the pages that have the most sites linking to it.

Because of t