BrandYourself: A cool, novice tool for ‘owning your name’ in cyberspace

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED ON EXAMINER

Have you ever “Googled” yourself only to find websites that have nothing to do with you? Mugshots of criminals? Reviews about businesses not even in the same state as you?

Would you like to dominate the first few pages of Google with your search results? Aside from in-depth SEO-work by a professional, there is a basic tool available to novice users everywhere.

A few months ago, I discovered a site called BrandYourself.com. Apparently, I was a little over a year behind this knowledge, because this site has been around since the earlier parts of 2012 from what I am understanding.

The site was created in efforts to keep “same” people together in search results, separating successful business people from arrest records of convicts that include mugshots, both of which share the same name and possibly same city of residence.

BrandYourself.com has the common goal of helping you rise within the search rankings using your name as personal leverage. It keeps your websites, portfolios, social network profiles and more attached to this central hub.

This hub acts as a link wheel and builds the connection between a user on Facebook to the handle on Twitter that everyone is following, while linking to professional and personal web spaces and biographies.

As an active user since my discovery of this site, I have been a little impressed. I use a basic accountm because this is one of my areas of expertise and a paid account would be a waste of money to me. However, it would be a good investment for someone who does not have this knowledge.

While the site, itself, does not rank high in search engines (even with a PageRank score of 6), it does indeed boost the PageRank of your sites through authoritative linking and through acting as a central hub. It also keeps you up to date on tips and tricks of basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategies if you subscribe to their newsletter.

BrandYourself.com is very good at communicating with users almost immediately. One of my URLs were not listed on the BrandYourself profile I created with them. When it appeared in the top results, I was emailed by BrandYourself to tattle-tale on the “Unidentified Link.” It gave me tips on how to battle the site and regain territory. It also told me how many people viewed my page by telling on them as soon as they visited the page!

While I do not have a premium account, I am impressed overall. To be honest, there are more efficient and effective ways of doing this. But, as I have stated earlier: For someone to have no experience in the field of SEO or Internet Marketing, this is an awesome tool for them to use and to find ownership in the most valuable keyword they will ever own — their name!