Google gives your own personal profile web page.

“I know everything about you. I googled you!”

Some find such a statement very frightening. After all, you have no way of controlling what the Web says about you, right?

In one way this is right. If someone has put up something negative about you, it may stay there forever.

That does not mean that you have no way of getting more favorable presentations of yourself higher up in the rankings, though.

If you publish a personal web site or a blog and follow our search engine marketing advice, you should manage to rank first for your own name in Google. The main exceptions to this rule are for celebreties and people with very common names (like John Smith).

Google gives you your own home page

But what if you do not have your own web site? Then what do you do?

If you get yourself a Google account you may set up a Personal Profile, which is in essence a personal home page that includes links to the web pages you want searchers to see.

This page must follow the same rules as all web pages to rank high in search results, so do not expect to see it at the top of search results for your name. But your Google profile may appear at the bottom of the first search results page next to your profile picture.

Get a Google account

To set up a profile you need a Google account. A Gmail account will do, and it is free.

Filling in the profile form is relatively easy. Google will even try to identify your accounts at some of the social networks and suggest relevant links to add to your public profile page.

This means that you can guide searchers from your Google Profile Page to your profiles on social networks, being that LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. You may also add links to other pages that present you and your life.

Your profile won’t display any private information unless you have explicitly added it.

Using the profile for search engine optimization

Note that as the profile page is treated as any other page, it may also pass along link juice to other pages, i.e. a link from this page may boost the rankings of the pages it is linking to. There is one caveat, though: Your profile page needs to have some links to it for this to happen.

I have tested Google Profiles and it took me no longer than 10 minutes to set up this presentation of Per Koch

Google would, of course, love to have you on board as a registered Goolge user, as it might entice you into using many of the other Google services available.

Planet Ocean put it this way in their latest Search Engine News newsletter:

“They know the urge to see yourself listed is enough to cause significant numbers of persons to fill in their profiles, include their likes and locations. From there it’s just another simple step to upload photos to Picasaweb, start using Gmail, Google calendar, Documents, and so forth. Smart, these guys!

Obviously, the possibilities for displaying targeted advertising are immense! And, for anyone who’s noticing this looks a little like the beginning of a Google “Facebook,” all we can say is: Yep!”

Set up or access your profile here!
Google about Profiles.

photo credit: *Solar ikon*