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!