Blog Updates

I'm aware this has basically completely dropped off. Good news:
1) My twitter is ranked naturally at #3
2) I actually got a promotion to Product Manager, which while great, is very time consuming

There's some thought as to taking this blog and merging it with my other site, where I can centrally manage content, as well as get some other people contributing.

Thought process around this is that a lot of the content that was supposed to drive my other site is actually generated from a program called Google Talk, which is a chat/IM program that allows you to archive AND search all chats you've ever had, via the Gmail interface. Since I've added more people in the last 3 months, conversations have increased as have the general content (pictures, links, recommendations, odd stories, etc.) and it's just too much to manage 2 sites.

I'm still interested in online reputation (it's a KEY and growing factor in business relations), my focus has just shifted elsewhere for now. I will keep this site up, but most of the content will be ported to the new site which will be decidedly less dry (or appropriate) but ultimately more interesting. And interesting is what drives content, and content is king!

Updates to site

I've made some updates to the site, as well as my Flickr account (some new photos, more on the way). I've mentioned StepRep a few times now. The widget on the right is a great ORM/SEO "tool" that uses queries you specify (such as the "Vincent Hayes Analyst" one) to generate a list of searchable results that's constantly updating. All you have to do is go into your StepRep "Reputation Management" profile, and approve/deny and "post to widget", and anywhere you have the widget uploaded will automatically create new relevant content. Currently all of my queries are oriented towards finding results for me, but I'm going to edit these shortly to start bringing up more content-related results :)

It's free, very easy to use, and uses your Google login.

I've been attempting to determine how their searches work, because it's not matching up with the Google results; for example, as proven, qualifying my name with 'Bridgeport' immediately brings up a lot of results (top 5!), but this tool cannot identify them for some reason - weird.

Just a quick note, updating my Flickr tonight, this is a placeholder post to track time of tags/content upload to ranking :)
I did update some of the tags on the pics I had up already.

Tried searching for my Facebook again, Google is definitely ranking it, but just cant find it in natural search (no qualifiers).

Oi. Content creation requires some time, unfortunately. I just started up Ultimate Frizbee practice a few weeks back and that's taken up a decent amount of my free-time :) I'll get some photo's up on my flickr soon. Anyways, a quick update on where I'm currently ranking:

• 3 ( was 31) - LinkedIn Directory result, not very helpful


• (was 7) - My actual LinkedIn page (with some cross-linking) continues to hold page 1


• Can't find (couldn't find at last update either) - Oddly, my facebook has completely(!) disappeared! I looked all the way through 110 results, nothing! No idea what's causing this at all.


• 5 & 72, 92 (19) - Twitter. I've been watching this sporadically since the last update, it has started to rank fairly consitstently in the top 10 - hosting links, retweeting people, and updating my Loopt (iPhone app that allows you to "tweet" but with GPS tagging) at least once a day


• 20! (56) - The blog, content updates are key. I need to update this more often.
  


• ?? (21) - ClaimID has completely disappeared, unclear what drove this
  


• 27 & 76(70) -Naymz, massive improvement. Key drivers: syncing this profile up with Twitter allows for constant, crosslinked content updates, and fleshing out the profile more, with pics


• 48 (New!) - StepRep, mentioned previously, is an interesting site, ranks well. I'll discuss it more later.
• 2 other random ones, Wikinames (68 just the top results for Google, relisted) and Spock.com (69), which annoyingly is grabbing my very old myspace page. Only benefit is that it's got an image on there from my Ju-Jitsu days.

It appears as though the primariy competitor in my NameSpace has started some SEO/ORM stuff himself, so this is going to get awful. ThankfullyI grabbed the twitter when I did!

StepRep, Loopt, and other fun things (Updated ranks!)

Almost 2 weeks! Last time I checked in everything was getting a nasty hit in the natural search, though qualified search was doing better. A friend with some SEO experience told me that what probably happened was that Google initially ranked me and my sites well, then did a comparison to the other "Vincent Hayes"(s) and deemed me less relevant than a blues musician or artist (a fair assertion). The interesting part is the person who suddenly ranked well for Twitter, even though they only have one mention of my (probably our) name, and it's not even in his profile, nor does he update his Twitter account that often. Frequency of mine is at least once a day, especially since I've linked it to Loopt, which is on my iPhone. Annoyingly, Loopt does not have any way to access member profiles or update-data, so it's value as a content-distributer is fairly limited.
Anyways, new rankings!:

• 31 ( was 7) - LinkedIn Directory result
• 7 (was 8) - My actual LinkedIn page (with some cross-linking) continues to hold page 1
• Can't find (couldn't find at last update either) - Facebook continues to have completely disappeared, which is very odd - going to upload more photos soon (tonight?) and then upload those to Flickr as well, which hasn't ranked yet
• 19 & 119(10) - Twitter is all over the place (see previous posts), hard to determine what's driving relevancy here
• 56 & 109 (88) - This Blog! Moved up a bit, presuming regular content updates will help this
• 21 (new) - ClaimID, a good site, especially considering that it's pushed rankings very quickly
• 70 (new) -Naymz! Unfortunately it's a directory result, but I'm the only one on that site, so it's technically a direct link ;)

Some very frustrating results, looks as though Google's liking me less and less, though I'm glad for the top 10 ranking for my LinkedIn, which is arguably the most important anyways.

My boss @ work sent me the link for a online reputation management site called 'StepRep' which is actually pretty interesting. It lets you track your name or any particular query string that you want, though it limits it to five, and there is a "top stories" widget which will actually update content based on the results of the queries that you choose to promote. I'm still learning it, and will post the link to the profile (and cross-link it) as soon as I have a public profile via their site.

On a site note, I did find my myspace page, annoyingly tagged with my online gaming handle and worse, has a terrible picture of me. I linked it just for humor's sake. I haven't updated that page in forever, but it includes some more info about myself (and where I've been for the last couple of years). I don't think I'm going to update the page as it was basically my first foray into the online social media & networking arena, and I personally hated it. Facebook is much, much easier to set up and use.

Hey please check out the author's site of "Radically Transparent", a book I just finished reading - very interesting stuff regarding online reputation! More on this to come :)

ClaimID and Google (quick) update

I'm going to try and update this blog at least twice a week. The past few days have been fairly hectic (Birthday, Palm Sunday) but I've been checking my natural ranking periodically.

I took a really, really nasty hit on my Twitter, which is now back to ~70's in my natural search, and my blog is still nowhere to be found :) My LinkedIn and Facebook are starting to rank (weird) so I'm not 100% if I just got bumped, or I'm getting penalized because Googler's checked my sites and saw the mentions of SEO, Online Rep., etc. If the latter is actually true that would be a bit inefficient, as this is actually me and I'm just finally creating profiles as well as gaining some awareness of how important it is to identify yourself before someone else does so for you (probably not much of an issue for me, this early on in my life/career, but certainly for others). Since Google's mission is to be the best search out there (which includes "for people"), it's probably in their best interest to rank people who take the time to qualify and identify themselves as well as those who happen to be "hot" at that moment. Which I'm not ;) This is where the concept of owning keywords is helpful; if you cannot rank well with just your core name in natural search, owning unique qualifiers such as your location or position (professional or otherwise) can help. For example: Vincent Hayes Analyst (no quotes) I own 7 out of the top 10.
/rant

Anyways, if you have multiple profiles & sites online, this site ClaimID seems to want to help out with it. I'm signed up now here, and I've listed a few of my sites while I spend some time (later) learning about how this site actually works.

Natural Google Ranking Update

So it has been a little over a week since I did my last basic analysis into my natural rankings. In that time I've been adding more profiles where I could (though not fully filling them with content, not a lot of time recently :) ). Again, these are all without any qualifiers attached to my name:

• 21 ( was 7) - LinkedIn Directory result, probably pushed down due to other efforts
• 8 (was 33) - My actual LinkedIn page (with some cross-linking) has skyrocketed up!
• Can't find (previously 56) - Facebook has completely disappeared, replaced by another Vincent Hayes (who friended me a while back for the hell of it) I'm going to pull that down, and see if I can't get some natural ranking with this again
• 10 (101) - Twitter showed some HUGE improvements once cross-linked in my other profiles
• 88 (new) - This blog, should start moving up with content updates and some more linking

Of course any qualifiers brings up everything - such as my name + Bridgeport (6/10), + Analyst (5/10), * + SEO (3/10), *+ ORM (3/10 (top 3)) so this is getting interesting.

Very excited about the 2/10 in natural search!

Google Spidered the Blog!

That was fast (6 days); VincentHayes.Blogspot.com just got spidered (only able to tell using a site restricted query). I'll update in a bit regarding natural ranking.

Skype for iPhone

As a recent iPhone convert, my only complaint (past the terrible texting) is that the cheapest plan available for the iPhone is fairly restrictive (~$80/month, can only call after 9, texts are counted both ways (receive/send = 2). Remarkably it's still cheaper than a Blackberry. Thankfully Skype is finally coming out with an app for the iPhone, and since I'm normally within range of a WiFi network, this is great news! I'll write up how well it works, hopefully this will allow me to bypass another~$20/month charge by allowing me to make calls during the day without issue.

Quick update - added a Flickr account, working on a Naymz account now. Naymz is a very well ranked site that is definitely a centralized repository of all sites you want associated with you.

Also, just a quick n00b trick that came up today. If you want to do a keyword search but want to exclude the keyword/site that you're trying to research, use a site restricted query. Example:

I wanted to know about Naymz.com and what people were saying about it, but they own the top10 results:
GoogleSearch: Naymz OR Naymz.com -site:naymz.com

Removes results from sites with the root URL of "Naymz.com". Of course they were clever, and have other site listings that still ranked ;)

Remove the "-" part, and you can restrict all results to come only from the site you specify, which is very helpful if you're trying to locate specific information such as contact info, or any reference on the site to a particular topic.

Google Rank-tracking

So I've spent some time creating a parser for Google results in Excel which will allow me to track top 10, top 20, etc. results for a given keyword or set of keywords, and identify if there are any URLs that can be promoted with some solid cross/back-linking. Basically I can just screen scrape Google, Paste-special values the data into a designated column, and have it identify the URL, rank, & snippet. Just FYI the blue hyperlink that's above each result (usually something like "Vincent Hayes's Facebook" or "Man Bites Dog") is actually the title tag, up to ~ 70 characters (after which Google just trims it with a "..." ). Though primarily for business purposes, I'm going to track rankings once a week just to see where I am and what keywords I'm associated with.
Currently for just my core name, no qualifiers, I'm not ranking well at all:

• 7 - LinkedIn Directory result, I just happen to be on the first page (past the link)
• 33 - LinkedIn (again), but this is my actual Public page
• 56 - Facebook, it's a (deliberately) private profile - I might make this public after some conscientious edits, as Facebook does have a wealth of information including backlinks
• 101 - Twitter

Any qualifiers/keywords attached, and I suddenly come right to the top (* = Vincent Hayes, no quotes):

• * Twitter - #1
• * Facebook - not so good, no results within reason (<50)
• * Bridgeport - Top 4, 3 twitter and Facebook as #1 (I was sick recently and tweeted about it: result? Google spidered my page right on that day and now ranks those results), Twitter result as #13 as well
• * LinkedIn OR Linked In - zero results in the top 10 other than the aforementioned directory listing
• * - LinkedIn is immediately #1 and #2, both direct links to my profile
• * analyst - #1 LinkedIn, #2 Twitter

Outside of work I'm going to create a grid examining keywords versus my name & rank, and see where I am. My initial gut reaction is that any kind of geocoded keyword (like the town I live in) is considered by Google to be a stronger qualifier than something like "analyst" or "LinkedIn". It's obviously important to keep consistent across all of my profiles :)

Looking into Spoke, Naymz, and started a Flikr (no content yet).

More later!

/Post

First Post, New Blog

My first post on my first public blog with my name attached to it. I'm working on my SEO and ORM skills (I am fairly new to this), and was looking for a good outlet for my trials (and their results), as well as an outlet for some more serious discussions on content that I come across regularly.

Test

Test post, there is an odd option regarding the timestamp and delayed posting

:edit: Post worked. It's going to be interesting to see how quickly this gets spidered by Google.