There’s a growing discussion about this top AOL executive, Ted Leonsis, when an article in the Washington Post claimed that he started blogging just to dominate the SERPs and take control of what people find when searching for his name.
A lot of people chimed in — Rough Type called it defensive blogging, Doc Searls agreed, while Rex Hammock called Ted a blog-pimp. Ted Leonsis answered all these in his blog.
Personally, I don’t see any reason why it’s a bad move. Isn’t it a blogger’s ultimate SEO wet dream for his blog to rank first in the SERPs for his name? I know I do. We’ve talked about it here before on ego searching.
There are a lot of ways to actually take control of all the top 10 results in the SERPs and I’d like to point some of them here:
1) Wikipedia. If you’re important enough of a person, you could have your own page in Wikipedia. I read somewhere that Google favors Wikipedia a bit more than others in the SERPs.
2) Digg Profile. If you have a Digg and an active Digger, then your Digg profile should come up high in the SERPs.
3) Technorati Profile. If you have a blog, then you should also have a Technorati Profile.
4) Friendster Profile. Yes, it is public and you can even have a custom URL lie www.friendster.com/yournamehere.
5) LinkedIn. A lot of businessmen, netrepreneurs, and consultants who don’t have a blog might find LinkedIn as a good alternative for an online resume.
And yes, of course, you can have blogs at BlogSpot, WordPress.com and even a Google Pages site.
LinkedIn is neat.
But it doesn’t have enough publicity in the Philippines,. Is it because people prefer the fun social networks, or, the people who should be on LinkedIn aren’t there (or even on the Internet at all?)
I revisited Abe’s LinkedIn profile and added a recommendation. This prompted me to add a “job” as blogger!