Is Twitter The First Result For Your Name on Google?

How 8 characters of code can make your site more relevant than your Twitter profile

Have you googled your name lately?  If so, there’s a good chance your Twitter account or another social media account is displayed as the top result.  While this may seem like a positive thing if you’re making an effort to build a personal brand, it may not be the most desirable.  In my daily reading today, I came across a very interesting article at Marshall Kirkpatrick’s blog.  The issue is prevalent enough that merely tweeting it with a link does not do it justice.

I’m apparently not the only one who considers this to be an issue.  With regards to the same article, Whitson Gordon at Lifehacker had this to say.

Having a say in what Google says about you is extremely important these days, especially for professionals such as freelancers, for whom a Google search result of their name is a first impression for potential employers. You definitely want your blog or professional web site to show up before your non-professional social networking profiles.

It turns out that Twitter and other sites often use 8 simple characters of code that may be positively affecting the rank of your account link.  So how do you perform this magic for your own site?  Let Marshall Kirkpatrick explain.

So the long and short of this story is that if you want to make sure that Google understands your blog to be your primary beacon on the web, then you should add the words rel=”me” to a relevant link on your blog. I’ve added that tag to the link on my sidebar that goes to my feedback page, because that’s a good page for me. It’s as simple as making the link text read a href=”http://marshallk.com/feedback” rel=”me”.

While it may seem too good to be true for such a simple change to have that kind of impact on search, it certainly warrants testing.  Does your site already include this tag?  Are you aware of other simple tips to help resolve this issue.  Let us know.

Tagged as: Blogging, google, personal branding, reputation