7YK Blog

What does someone searching Google for your name or blog name find?

Earlier in the year I met a blogger at a conference who I had a pretty good conversation with. He had pitched me an idea for something that we might one day work on together. However when I got home, while I could remember his name I couldn’t remember his blog’s URL.

So I did what everyone would do and ‘Googled Him’ (by the way - I can’t believe that ‘Googled’ doesn’t come up in my spell check).

What I found when Googling him was not his blog (or not immediately) but the first three search results for his name were:

1. a rant about him written by another blogger who complained that that he’d left comment spam on his blog
2. his Flickr account which had pictures of him with scantily dressed women at an Adult Entertainment convention
3. another rant from another blogger who he’d had a fight with (ironically over the same idea he’d pitched to me)

When I finally found his blog’s URL (it was 10th for his name) I decided to search Google for the blog’s name and found a similar list of links in the top search results.

This blogger has a reputation management problem - at least when it comes to Google.

Whether there is truth in the allegations made by the other bloggers I’m not sure - but certainly the impression you get of this guy when you type his name and his blog’s name into Google is not a positive one. It’d be enough to put off potential business partners, some potential life partners and potential readers.

There is an element in the search results for your name or blog’s name that is out of your control as a blogger. It depends upon what others write about you and the ranking of their site’s in Google - however there are things that you can do to help get the results that you want to the top of the rankings.

1. Identify Which Pages You Want to Rank Highest For - Obviously you want to rank highest for your blog’s home page when someone searches for your blog’s name but there is more than one search result above the fold that people will see - so what other pages do you want to rank well for? One that I always try to boost are my ‘about pages’. Knowing which pages you’re attempting to rank higher enables you to target them in the strategies outlined below.

2. Link to Key Pages - perhaps one of the best things that you can do is to link to the pages that you want to rank well for your name. Link to them from other sites that you have control over (social media sites and your other blogs), link to them from your own site (for example here at ProBlogger I link to my ‘about page’ from every page on my blog and as a result it ranks highly for my name) and when you have control over how others link to you get them to link to those key pages (for example when you guest blog you might ask them to link to your about page).

3. Use Your Name in Links - this is something I don’t need to do (after years of building up the ranking of my blog) but link to your about page with your name. Search Engines look at the words used in the links pointing at your pages to work out what they are about. If you have a link to your about page that simply says ‘about’ or ‘about me’ then it doesn’t tell Google what the page is really about. Instead use About Darren or About Darren Rowse type links and it’ll add to the power of the links to rank for those terms.

4. Use Your Name on Highlighted Pages - a search engine won’t rank a page for a term that is not used on that page. If you want to rank for your name or blog name on a particular page you need to use that term and use it more than once. This means on an About page that you’ll want to talk about yourself in the third person or at least find some way of incorporating your name into it. Name images on the page with your name, title the page with your name, use your name in headings, make it bold etc. All of these things signal to Google that your page is about the words you’re highlighting.

5. Use Social Media Sites as Secondary Ranking Pages - if you look at the search results for ProBlogger you’ll find that my ProBlogger twitter page, my ProBlogger Stumbleupon page, my ProBlogger Mybloglog page, my facebook page all rank for the term. This means that instead of just coming in at #1 and #2 search results for a page (for your blog’s front page and your about page) you can potentially rank for all of the top results for your name. Some of these social media sites naturally rank very well in search engines as they have so many incoming links but if you link to them (like I do in my footer) you can give them an extra boost. You can also help boost the ranking of all of your pages with some interlinking between them - this particularly helps as they will all be ranking well for your keywords.

6. Manage negative pages - so what happens when a page that is negative towards you ranks highly? Sometimes it’s difficult to have much control over these pages but there are often opportunities to manage the situation. If it’s a blog post - attempt to leave a comment that balances out the post and answers the concerns in it. If it’s not you might want to try reasoning with the site owner.

7. Remember Everything Online is Permanent and ‘Builds’ Your Brand - keep in mind that everything you put on the web is permanent. Even if content is deleted it is usually recorded somewhere in an internet archive page and it can come back to bite you later. Not only is the content online permanent but it all says something about you and your brand. This doesn’t help you fix poor online reputation - but I guess should serve as a warning as you build content online (whether on your own blog or not).

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It appears there are a few rumours that Nokia are about to cut prices on their mobile phones by up to 20% to grab hold of market share from failing Motorola, and apparently these rumours have the likes of mobile phone manufacturers LG, who are proud of themselves for recently becoming the world’s number four, and Samsung somewhat spooked.

LG told Reuters that they are “carefully watching” Espoo and will be keeping an eye on their tactical moves over the coming months. LG will also counter with “product portfolio” and “marketing strength.”
Nam Yong, chairman and CEO of LG Electronics has told reporters that unless it could turn out products which “differentiated” themselves from Nokia then price competition was “inevitable.”

This originally stems from rumours that have Nokia thinking about lowering prices and making a big re-entrance into the South Korean mobile phone market sometime later this year. Yong has vowed to try to create “competitive products” rather than do down the road of competing on “cheap prices”, LG and Samsung are aware of just how that strategy can end.

LG CEO Yong also stated that LG would continue to target the “premium market” and will only move into the low end market when LG has managed to built up a presence there.

LG Electronics recently overtook Sony Ericsson to become the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer.

Source – moconews

Ok so let’s have a think on this one, the much rumoured Motorola superphone, now just what is it called? The Motorola ZN5, the Motorola ZINE, who knows at this stage your guess, is as good as mine. Whatever you call it, (I think I’ll name this one the Motorola Maybe, as it Maybe ZN5 or Maybe the Zine, it has a certain ring to it don’t you think?).

There has been buzz around this mobile phone for quite some time with hopes that this is the one mobile to drag Motorola back from the brink of the mobile abyss. The Motorola Maybe (see said I was gonna call it that) has bounced around Moto’s labs for ages, so we can expect something totally amazing once it finally comes out right?

One would think so, but it doesn’t look that promising. Firstly is tops up with what…EDGE, totally inexcusable of Moto for a mobile in this class. Yeah it has WiFi, but wouldn’t you think that if this one is supposed to be Moto’s saviour device they’d at least spend a few notes on upgrading the chipset, and have MOTOMAGX working with HSDPA?

Ok, so it does have a 5 megapixel camera, but that’s it, not even auto-focus to help it along, the guys at Moto are amazing! There’s Bluetooth in there though along with 100MB internal memory and microSD.

Ok so I think Moto may need a hand, so have come up with a ditty for them…

The Motorola Maybe, its Moto’s new baby,
It has to pull them from the brink,
Without this Moto just might sink.
Motorola needs this one to do well,
So try to use a name that’ll make it sell.

Source – BGR

Looking for a new CDMA mobile phone and not sure which? How about taking a look at Samsung’s new offering. The new Samsung SPH-W4950 mobile phone is a slider design and supports CDMA2000 1x EV-Do Rev.A. The W4950 has a stylish and quite slim appearance while covering most of the bases of the mobile user with features like a multimedia player, and a 1.3 megapixel camera with a secondary VGA for video calling.

In addition the Samsung SPH-W4950 offers a 2.1 inch QVGA TFT display 262k colours, microSD/TransFlash memory slot, 40MB of internal memory, while its battery can bring up to four and a half hours talk time and up to one hundred and sixty-five hours standby time.

That is about all there is available on detail with the Samsung W4950 mobile phone, other than it is soon to be released in South Korea via LG Telecom who are the third largest mobile carrier in South Korea after SK Telecom and KTF. LG Telecom is of course owned by LG Corporation who just happens to be one of Samsung’s rivals worldwide.

At present there are also no pricing details on the Samsung W4950, nor is it known if the W4950 will actually see anywhere outside Korea and availability is simply listed as coming soon, so we can only expect to see this slider hit Korean stores possibly in the coming weeks.

Source – mobilewhack

On a serious note: Every day of every week we talk and breath mobile phones, updates and upgrades, firmware and firmware bugs, cool releases, new releases, leaked details and images, iPhones, Diamonds, and other technological marvels, and sometimes it doesn’t always do us any good, but then again not much harm either.

But the darker side of mobile phones can harm, as last week in London an 18 year old boy died after an argument, an argument related to a stolen mobile phone. The boy had a promising career, and played a role in the last Harry Potter movie, and now he’s dead all because of a mobile phone, certainly a darker side to the mobile phone I would say.

Another dark stain against the mobile phone is even if you are the busiest person in the land; never fire someone by text message. Common politeness begs that the busiest of bosses at least has the dignity and sense to fire an employee face to face.

The reason I bring this up is Tony Cecere, who was fired via SMS, how rude to put it mildly. What’s more he was asked to return his company car the same way. The day after receiving the SMS Tony Cecere committed suicide. Apparently Tony was suffering from a mental affection; however his widow believes it was the SMS that made him act that way. Tony’s family will receive $300,000 in damages from the Union, as sentenced in court, a help yes, but it won’t replace Tony.

Harsh reality directly connected with the mobile world, not the mobile world’s fault, but a connection none the less. After all no matter how technologically advanced it is still only a mobile phone, and certainly not worth losing any life over.

Source – mobilewhack

Yeah it’s number one in the first quarter of 2008, the best selling mobile game on Verizon Wireless mobile phones, Hands-On Mobile’s Guitar Hero III. Guitar Hero III was initially a Verizon Wireless exclusive release, the music game quickly fell in tune with fans across the globe, and has amassed nearly one million downloads across all wireless service providers.

Every day in excess of 250,000 songs are played by mobile subscriber across America, while the most played songs include “Black Magic Woman” re-record, “Mississippi Queen” re-record, and “Slow Ride” re-record.

Additionally, Hands-On Mobile also announced their Guitar Hero III Mobile June Song Pack; this is a feature that allows Guitar Hero III subscribers the opportunity to download three new songs every month.

On June 1st more new songs become available to wireless users and will include “Rock and Roll All Nite” re-record, “Talk Dirty to Me” re-record, and “Stricken” original-recording. The June Song Pack downloads allow players to access in excess of 150 unique note charts across three levels of difficulty being easy, medium and expert, and in excess of 50 songs within the first year of the games release.

Vice president of digital media programming for Verizon, Ryan Hughes said: “Verizon Wireless customers have shown a tremendous appetite for mobile games - the category is an important part of our strategy to increase data revenue, and marquee titles such as Guitar Hero III help create demand and engage our customers in mobile gameplay.”

So there you go mobile gamers’ new releases just waiting for you to access and download, no wonder Guitar Hero III hit the blockbuster list, have fun.

Source – slashphone

Remember the unannounced Nokia 7310? You can actually find that in some phone retail shop in Taiwan and China. This Nokia 7310 is tagged with a SuperNova branding. It is using the S40 user interface and comes with 2 megapixel camera, music player, bluetooth and support EDGE/GPRS data connection. Other features include a FM radio, 20MB of built-in memory and a microSD slot that support up to 4GB memory card. The Nokia 7310 SuperNova is available in pink and blue colors and priced around $230. More pictures after the break.

Nokia 7310s SuperNova specs:
• Network: GSM Triband (900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz)
• Dimension: 106.5 x 45.4 x 11.95mm
• Weight: 80.17 grams
• Display: 2-inch QVGA TFT Screen, 16M colors
• S40 UI
• EDGE / GPRS
• 20MB built in memory
• microSD card slot
• Able to play MP3/AAC/AAC+/WMA/eAAC+
• Java
• Bluetooth
• micro USB
• RDS FM Radio
• 3.5 mm audio jack

[via Slashphone]

Tags: mobile phone, cell phone, handset, handphone, phone, communication, nokia 7310, nokia 7310 supernova

The SPK-796 is a wireless Bluetooth speaker complies with Bluetooth 2.0 protocol, supporting handsfree, A2DP+AVRCP profile. It is compatible with any Bluetooth enabled music devices such as mobile phones, laptop, PMP etc. It also has a built-in microphone with DSP to make itself a handsfree for phone and an Aux line in for portable music players. You can bring your device wirelessly anywhere at the range of 10 meter. The built in powerful polymer battery provides you up to 4 hours music playing time or 6 hours talk time. The SPK-796 Bluetooth Speaker is available for $65.21.

Tags: bluetooth, bluetooth speaker, spk-796

I-O Data has released a minute small microSD/microSDHC card reader, codenamed USB2-SDMC. It can be hooked on your phone or PDA for easy uploading or downloading files to your computer.

[via Akihabaranews]

Tags: card reader, microSD card, USB2-SDMC

Yesterday we got the promotional video for Sony Ericsson P5 aka Paris and today we got another promotional video, that is for the Sony Ericsson G702 aka Bei Bei. It just got the FCC approval last week. Probably will be released on the June 17th. Video after the break.

[via Slashphone]

Tags: mobile phone, cell phone, handset, handphone, phone, communication, Sony Ericsson, G702