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Ask HN: How to become the first result of a Google search for a name?

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Re: Ask HN: How to become the first result of a Google search for a name?

#21

Post by foopod »

Do all the things.

1. Full name as a .com helped me. Put your name in the page content too, whether it is a heading or a footer.

2. Content. Content. Content. Google needs a good reason to put your site at the top.

3. Site needs to be mobile friendly.

4. Use webmaster tools. Use Data Highlighter to show google what parts of your page are important. Make sure structured meta data is okay too.

5. Google Products, why wouldn't google prioritize sites with Google tag manager where they can learn even more about your sight and their customers.

Proof: https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=jono+shields

Re: Ask HN: How to become the first result of a Google search for a name?

#23

Post by slig »

throw_away2 wrote: post #13
rampage101 wrote: post #12

There are no simple hacks to get to the top. You need people to be searching for your name, find your link, and then spend time on the page. It helps a lot if you have posts that show up on Reddit, or other social networks. Since there is no content at all on your site there's no way anybody will stay on your page.

How does Google figure out if visitors stayed on the page? Chrome telemetry (creepy)? Google Analytics (are you required to use this to get a good ranking)?

If a user clicks on a link on a search page, stays a few seconds on the new page and then press 'back', and clicks on another link on the search, that's a pretty strong signal to Google that the first link wasn't that good.

Re: Ask HN: How to become the first result of a Google search for a name?

#24

Post by Hasz »

sirwitti wrote: post #15

The domain name itself is one of the most important factors for google. Apart from that your h1 says welcome and has an inside. If you put your name in the h1 it's gonna help your ranking. There is no content at all on this site. If you want to get up in the rankings you need to provide content that is relevant to your name. Btw the html entities you're using miss a semicolon which is invalid html. I think google lik…

Is there a significant penalty to having a domain name where the ccTLD finishes the word (youtu.be)?

Re: Ask HN: How to become the first result of a Google search for a name?

#25

Post by SXX »

As others suggested full name in domain name and title might have something to do with it, but I'll also suggested to add few external links to it even if it's just links from random internet forums you rarely usimg and such.

And yeah not that it will improve position of your page, but adding google analitics and veryfying your page in google webmaster always help with getting it indexed faster especially if page might get some visitors. And if you dont like Google you can always remove it afterwards.

Nothing of sort would work of you were John Smith, but considering your name about as unique as mine this should work.

Re: Ask HN: How to become the first result of a Google search for a name?

#26

Post by vojnovski »

gilleain wrote: post #10
vojnovski wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is quite unique. Almost all of the results in the first three Google result pages are legitimate, mostly pointing to a plethora of social networks profiles. edit: put original edit in sub-comment.

Quite unique? There is one other internet user with my first name and I once accidentally got signed up to a social network account meant for him. Your name is either unique or it isn't...

Unique as in I can't find anyone else with my name+surname on the internet. Quite, as in I can't be sure that a person with that name does not exist (short of a SHA-1/MD5 hash as suggested above, but even there one cannot be sure: https://security.googleblog.com/2017/02/announcing-first-sha...). :)

Re: Ask HN: How to become the first result of a Google search for a name?

#27

Post by vojnovski »

tobltobs wrote: post #20
kough wrote: post #11

1. Get your full name as a .com (victorvojnovski.com) 2. Put any real content on it. Maybe a blog? Helps to have links back. 3. Wait a few years. 4. Success!

> Get your full name as a .com (victorvojnovski.com) Do this NOW. Seriously.

Done. It seems it can't hurt, even if it only redirects to the .mk tld one.

Re: Ask HN: How to become the first result of a Google search for a name?

#28

Post by vojnovski »

Hasz wrote: post #24
sirwitti wrote: post #15

The domain name itself is one of the most important factors for google. Apart from that your h1 says welcome and has an inside. If you put your name in the h1 it's gonna help your ranking. There is no content at all on this site. If you want to get up in the rankings you need to provide content that is relevant to your name. Btw the html entities you're using miss a semicolon which is invalid html. I think google lik…

Is there a significant penalty to having a domain name where the ccTLD finishes the word (youtu.be)?

The Google Search Console has a International Targeting section, where it associates your site with a country, which influences "how your site appears in search results, and improves our search results for geographic queries." This can be disabled.

They have some ccTLDs which do not automatically associate your domain to a specific country as specified here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399

.be is not in the list.

Re: Ask HN: How to become the first result of a Google search for a name?

#30

Post by sixhobbits »

It definitely helps to have a unique name, but it's possible without. A lot of good advice in this thread, but as someone who achieved what you want, some extra points:

* Don't focus on one site. Spread your content around on as many sites as possible and link each one back to your home page. This is easier than you might expect -- nearly all tech sites are looking for content creators, whether or not they explicitly advertise it.

* Don't expect it to happen in a matter of days. It took me months/years to push "Gareth Dwyer" the poker player off the front page of google, and all he had was some YouTube page. It takes weeks for Google to update their indexes sometimes (even changing a big site over from no-www to www recently took several weeks to properly reflect on Google).

* The URL is important. Get a .com or another 'more official' domain. This is a grey/changing area, but people still have pretty big biases based on TLDs, and this affects click-through and therefore ranking. I wouldn't click on vv.mk unless I was actually in Macedonia and expecting it.

* And as others have said, put more content on your site. Even if it's only a landing page, you want people to spend a minute or so looking around. If it has a high bounce rate, it'll hurt your rankings.

Good luck :)

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