6 ms·

The saddest part about personal websites now is that if someone googles your name, your presence on social media sites, an about page of a project or company yo

The saddest part about personal websites now is that if someone googles your name, your presence on social media sites, an about page of a project or company you worked for, or any news outlet article where your name is mentioned will rank first and ahead of any personal website. I understand if one's full name combination is too common to show every personal website, but I feel like if a unique name is googled, or there's one or two decidedly well known person(s) of that name, and that person has authored a personal site, search engines should prioritize that on the first page, if not the very first result(s). Try googling for John Carmack, Barack Obama, or (op) Mark Christian. What's the SEO required to get your personal page to be the first result on a search engine?

clan 7y ago
Not true. I can give the counter point. When you Google the name of my better half you get a "fact card" with reference to her website. The first "regular" search result is again her website. The second result is her Facebook page. As the algorithm is hidden it is hard to say why. But should I guess then I think embedded microdata is an important weight (https://schema.org https://schema.org). For the record: She has no Wikipedia page (as most notable people would have) which typically rank very high.
quickthrower2 7y ago
You don't need the SEO for your name in particular. Here is why: 1. People who know you have your url. 2. People you meet have a business card or SMS from you with the URL 3. People searching for you can find you on social media, but most social media allows you to link to the site. 4. People searching for the keywords you use in your posts will find you if they are unique enough.
- coldtea 7y ago
  Even people with the url will usually just search, not use the url. Even less so if it's on a business card (even if it's a QR code).
  - tyingq 7y ago
    I'll usually try these kinds of searches if it's someone with a common name: John Doe <profession> John Doe <name of city> John Doe <name of employer> Is that not common?
r3bl 7y ago
My full name is very common. I share it with an actor, a photographer, two designers, and one basketball player. Three of us have personal websites and one of us has a Wikipedia page. I've adopted the alias "r3bl" to counter that, so that there's something easy to remember and somewhat unique that others could type into a search engine. ".com" was of course squatted, but as far as I could tell, it was pretty unique (with one "e" emitted and one "e" replaced with a 3 like a True Hacker). Now I share that alias with two esports teams and one Silicon Valley company that could afford to buy ".com" from the squatter. I appear anywhere from #1 result to not on the first page at all, depending on your location.
- stronglikedan 7y ago
  I hope I share a name with someone who's online presence will become valuable, so I can sell them my {my.name}.com domain!
dspillett 7y ago
> What's the SEO required to get your personal page to be the first result on a search engine? Is this really an issue? Someone looking for you personally either for professional or personal reasons already knows who you are so probably already has the relevant URL: from your CV or application form/letter, on a business card, from an email footer, because you've posted links on social media where they are linked to or otherwise follow you, from your profiles on online forums, by deriving it from your email address, ... Someone looking for the sort of content you are publishing (if it isn't personal journal/diary/blog/etc. style content) will be searching for terms relevant to that and not your name, or those terms plus your name if you are well known in the field. Any SEO should be targetted at that content, not your name. Before asking "how would someone find me by searching for my name?", first consider "why would anyone feel the need to find me by searching for my name?". It is most likely not a problem you actually need to solve. > your presence on social media sites, an about page of a project, ... ... will rank first and ahead of any personal website Because those things are most likely what people are actually looking for. Remember: search engines are focused on giving the searchers what they want, not sending them to where you want them to go. Where you have control of the content (you might on a project page, you will on your social media accounts), solve that problem by having links to your personal page in a prominent place. If someone doesn't click the extra time then they really weren't wanting to find you hard enough!
- smolder 7y ago
  I would like to find peoples personal websites by searching for their names. I shouldn't have to go through LinkedIn for that. If there was a search engine that favored non-social media sites or was tweakable to find less trafficked, smaller domains, I would use it extensively. Google results are too often sabotaged.
  - craftyguy 7y ago
    > I shouldn't have to go through LinkedIn for that. Then don't. It's not that difficult to recognize a result from LinkedShit or any other 'social' 'media' site, ignore that result, and move your attention to the next one in the list.
hnarayanan 7y ago
I can provide a counter example to this. Searching for my full name (and for many years my first name) has always resulted in my personal website being the top link. It's not SEO, it's just age. I am an old man with an old school website that's happened to have been up for a long time.
- jeremyjh 7y ago
  I have a ten year old personal website that does not appear to be indexed by google at all anymore. There was an article about this that made the front page, that some old websites are being dropped from the index. If you search my name from duck duck go its the first hit.
  - Veen 7y ago
    Your website is indexed by Google. You can see whether it's indexed by running a site specific search. Put "site:" before the domain name. But that site has three pages, one of which is a blog listing with no content. It's not ranked because there's nothing worth ranking.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - jeremyjh 7y ago
      If you are searching for information about me, it is the best source online. Ideally the best sources are listed first. DDG does that, and Google doesn't list it even in the first half-dozen pages. Is it really a worse website than all the spam white-page sites?
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    Google is really terrible for searches like that.
- stevekemp 7y ago
  For the longest time searching for "Steve", in the UK, brought my website as the first result. These days with "personalised" search results it is harder to tell, but my own searches for my full-name bring me first. Even though I share that name with a few other people. (I wish I'd bought steve.com, there was a time when I was tempted but after a year or two it was too late. I ended up having https://steve.org.uk https://steve.org.uk, then later https://steve.fi https://steve.fi after I moved to Finland.)
klmr 7y ago
I was going to say that you can combat this by simply linking to your website from all these profiles but it turns out that virtually all social media sites `rel="nofollow"` homepage links. Which in itself is a pretty sleazy tactic (sure, the official reason is to combat spam).
- vxNsr 7y ago
  Before they did that there was tremendous abuse by spammers. I'm sure the reason they haven't come up with a good workaround for regular ppl is more in line with their general sleazyness
jmtd 7y ago
> Try googling for John Carmack, And what should the top match for John Carmack be, in your opinion? Where is his homepage? FWIW on Bing I got his Wikipedia article first and his twitter accoount second, which seems like sensible results in his case.
josteink 7y ago
> The saddest part about personal websites now is that if someone googles your name, your presence on social media sites, an about page of a project or company you worked for, or any news outlet article where your name is mentioned will rank first and ahead of any personal website. I have my site linked on pretty much all those social sites, and it ranks first. Have a globally unique name, not to mention a first.last domain probably doesn’t hurt either.
jjgreen 7y ago
My (not uncommon) name used to have my site in the top 3, then I was pushed to page 5-6 by the opening of a Night Market in Bangkok, I guess there are worse ways to go.
donatj 7y ago
My names not super common yet not uncommon. My personal website is the top couple results googling my own name. I think it just takes time and diligence. Actually writing things that get people to link to you.
saltminer 7y ago
I find it interesting how if I Google my name, the results are Facebook (search results for <my name>), Facebook (profile of someone else with my name), my LinkedIn, my website, and then a bunch of shady background check and voter info websites. It used to be that my GitLab was result 4 on page 1 and my website was on page 2, now they've switched places. I haven't done any SEO (or if I have, it was not intentional).
username223 7y ago
That works for me. I'm not famous enough to merit a Wikipedia page, and I don't really care if I'm on the first page of a search for my name. (Some other person with the same name does.) Most of the traffic to my personal site comes from searches, but those people are searching for what I write about, not who I am.
kaycebasques 7y ago
This bugs me too. The best I can do is make sure that all of my profiles on my social media sites prominently link back to my personal site.
ashelmire 7y ago
For me, it's LinkedIn, my work's website, then my personal site. But there's nobody else in the world with my name, so that helps. If your name is common you'd have to put in significant work, I imagine. If you share a name with someone noteworthy, you're probably sol.

clan 7y ago

Not true. I can give the counter point. When you Google the name of my better half you get a "fact card" with reference to her website. The first "regular" search result is again her website. The second result is her Facebook page. As the algorithm is hidden it is hard to say why. But should I guess then I think embedded microdata is an important weight (https://schema.org https://schema.org). For the record: She has no Wikipedia page (as most notable people would have) which typically rank very high.

quickthrower2 7y ago

You don't need the SEO for your name in particular. Here is why: 1. People who know you have your url. 2. People you meet have a business card or SMS from you with the URL 3. People searching for you can find you on social media, but most social media allows you to link to the site. 4. People searching for the keywords you use in your posts will find you if they are unique enough.

coldtea 7y ago
Even people with the url will usually just search, not use the url. Even less so if it's on a business card (even if it's a QR code).
- tyingq 7y ago
  I'll usually try these kinds of searches if it's someone with a common name: John Doe <profession> John Doe <name of city> John Doe <name of employer> Is that not common?

r3bl 7y ago

My full name is very common. I share it with an actor, a photographer, two designers, and one basketball player. Three of us have personal websites and one of us has a Wikipedia page. I've adopted the alias "r3bl" to counter that, so that there's something easy to remember and somewhat unique that others could type into a search engine. ".com" was of course squatted, but as far as I could tell, it was pretty unique (with one "e" emitted and one "e" replaced with a 3 like a True Hacker). Now I share that alias with two esports teams and one Silicon Valley company that could afford to buy ".com" from the squatter. I appear anywhere from #1 result to not on the first page at all, depending on your location.

stronglikedan 7y ago
I hope I share a name with someone who's online presence will become valuable, so I can sell them my {my.name}.com domain!

dspillett 7y ago

> What's the SEO required to get your personal page to be the first result on a search engine? Is this really an issue? Someone looking for you personally either for professional or personal reasons already knows who you are so probably already has the relevant URL: from your CV or application form/letter, on a business card, from an email footer, because you've posted links on social media where they are linked to or otherwise follow you, from your profiles on online forums, by deriving it from your email address, ... Someone looking for the sort of content you are publishing (if it isn't personal journal/diary/blog/etc. style content) will be searching for terms relevant to that and not your name, or those terms plus your name if you are well known in the field. Any SEO should be targetted at that content, not your name. Before asking "how would someone find me by searching for my name?", first consider "why would anyone feel the need to find me by searching for my name?". It is most likely not a problem you actually need to solve. > your presence on social media sites, an about page of a project, ... ... will rank first and ahead of any personal website Because those things are most likely what people are actually looking for. Remember: search engines are focused on giving the searchers what they want, not sending them to where you want them to go. Where you have control of the content (you might on a project page, you will on your social media accounts), solve that problem by having links to your personal page in a prominent place. If someone doesn't click the extra time then they really weren't wanting to find you hard enough!

smolder 7y ago
I would like to find peoples personal websites by searching for their names. I shouldn't have to go through LinkedIn for that. If there was a search engine that favored non-social media sites or was tweakable to find less trafficked, smaller domains, I would use it extensively. Google results are too often sabotaged.
- craftyguy 7y ago
  > I shouldn't have to go through LinkedIn for that. Then don't. It's not that difficult to recognize a result from LinkedShit or any other 'social' 'media' site, ignore that result, and move your attention to the next one in the list.

hnarayanan 7y ago

I can provide a counter example to this. Searching for my full name (and for many years my first name) has always resulted in my personal website being the top link. It's not SEO, it's just age. I am an old man with an old school website that's happened to have been up for a long time.

jeremyjh 7y ago
I have a ten year old personal website that does not appear to be indexed by google at all anymore. There was an article about this that made the front page, that some old websites are being dropped from the index. If you search my name from duck duck go its the first hit.
- Veen 7y ago
  Your website is indexed by Google. You can see whether it's indexed by running a site specific search. Put "site:" before the domain name. But that site has three pages, one of which is a blog listing with no content. It's not ranked because there's nothing worth ranking.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - jeremyjh 7y ago
    If you are searching for information about me, it is the best source online. Ideally the best sources are listed first. DDG does that, and Google doesn't list it even in the first half-dozen pages. Is it really a worse website than all the spam white-page sites?
- JohnFen 7y ago
  Google is really terrible for searches like that.
stevekemp 7y ago
For the longest time searching for "Steve", in the UK, brought my website as the first result. These days with "personalised" search results it is harder to tell, but my own searches for my full-name bring me first. Even though I share that name with a few other people. (I wish I'd bought steve.com, there was a time when I was tempted but after a year or two it was too late. I ended up having https://steve.org.uk https://steve.org.uk, then later https://steve.fi https://steve.fi after I moved to Finland.)

klmr 7y ago

I was going to say that you can combat this by simply linking to your website from all these profiles but it turns out that virtually all social media sites `rel="nofollow"` homepage links. Which in itself is a pretty sleazy tactic (sure, the official reason is to combat spam).

vxNsr 7y ago
Before they did that there was tremendous abuse by spammers. I'm sure the reason they haven't come up with a good workaround for regular ppl is more in line with their general sleazyness

jmtd 7y ago

> Try googling for John Carmack, And what should the top match for John Carmack be, in your opinion? Where is his homepage? FWIW on Bing I got his Wikipedia article first and his twitter accoount second, which seems like sensible results in his case.

josteink 7y ago

> The saddest part about personal websites now is that if someone googles your name, your presence on social media sites, an about page of a project or company you worked for, or any news outlet article where your name is mentioned will rank first and ahead of any personal website. I have my site linked on pretty much all those social sites, and it ranks first. Have a globally unique name, not to mention a first.last domain probably doesn’t hurt either.

jjgreen 7y ago

My (not uncommon) name used to have my site in the top 3, then I was pushed to page 5-6 by the opening of a Night Market in Bangkok, I guess there are worse ways to go.

donatj 7y ago

My names not super common yet not uncommon. My personal website is the top couple results googling my own name. I think it just takes time and diligence. Actually writing things that get people to link to you.

saltminer 7y ago

I find it interesting how if I Google my name, the results are Facebook (search results for <my name>), Facebook (profile of someone else with my name), my LinkedIn, my website, and then a bunch of shady background check and voter info websites. It used to be that my GitLab was result 4 on page 1 and my website was on page 2, now they've switched places. I haven't done any SEO (or if I have, it was not intentional).

username223 7y ago

That works for me. I'm not famous enough to merit a Wikipedia page, and I don't really care if I'm on the first page of a search for my name. (Some other person with the same name does.) Most of the traffic to my personal site comes from searches, but those people are searching for what I write about, not who I am.

kaycebasques 7y ago

This bugs me too. The best I can do is make sure that all of my profiles on my social media sites prominently link back to my personal site.

ashelmire 7y ago

For me, it's LinkedIn, my work's website, then my personal site. But there's nobody else in the world with my name, so that helps. If your name is common you'd have to put in significant work, I imagine. If you share a name with someone noteworthy, you're probably sol.