Search Engine Marketing Specialist Dan Cristo

If you’re in the search marketing industry, and you’re looking for work, there’s one thing that you MUST DO before you start sending out your resume, and that is… Rank for your own name on Google.

Every hiring manager who knows what they’re doing is going to do a Google search for their job candidates name before the interview. If you’re looking to get a job doing anything with SEO, you better make sure you can at least rank for your own name. Why do you think www.dancristo.com exists?

Since this is a blog about advanced SEM techniques, I’m not going to insult you by explaining how to rank for your own name. I will however stress the importance of it, and give a few ideas of the types of web sites that might work well for this type of thing.

Ideas for building a web site to rank for your name:

1. SEO/SEM blog - this seems pretty obvious
2. Online Resume
3. Online Portfolio - especially useful if you enjoy web development work
4. Personal Site/blog
5. Small tutorial site about SEO
6. Single page site containing testimonials of clients.

Tip - Try to register your own name as your domain name. If somebody already has it, you can probably register a .ME version of domain. (kind of like .com, .net, .me) You might also consider registering a more general domain like www.nySEMconsultant.com, then setting up a sub-domain: steve.nySEMconsultant.com.

A major advantage of using your own name for your site is your personalized email address. Now on your resume you can use dan@dancristo.com as the contact email, instead of the unprofessional cr8zy4SEO@yahoo.com.

Another great reason why you want to rank #1 for your name is: reputation management. Let’s say a convicted killer, who happened to have the same name as you, was released from prison recently and there’s a news story about it ranking #1. That could leave a serious impression on a hiring manager who’s doing quick background checks for the job you want.

Might not be a bad idea to optimize a nice image of you to rank #1 for your name in Google/Yahoo images. YouTube video of yourself with a short blurb about “What’s new in the SEO industry” would add a lot of credibility if it found it’s way into Google’s Universal search results.

One Last Thought:
Your goal here is to rank well for your name. Hopefully you’ll have a unique name and it shouldn’t take more than registering a domain and putting up a well optimized homepage. However, you should also consider optimizing your site for more valuable keywords than just your name. I choose, “Search Engine Marketing Specialist” as my target keywords, because this seems like a term a hiring manager might search for. There are a lot of variations of this: SEM Specialist, SEM Consultant, Search Marketing Specialist, Internet Marketing Specialist, SEM Expert, Search Marketing Authority, etc. (You can also use the keyword, “optimization” in place of “marketing” as well)

Good luck, and please feel free to share success stories, and helpful tips.

I love how I just stuffed this post with keywords. lol

Tags: Resume Building, search engine marketing tips, sem/seo job help

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