The way that your personal name appears on search engine rankings is your new business card, résumé, and handshake rolled into one. While in the past, people had to run a background check to find out all about you, today anyone with even a little bit of computer savvy can easily find out all about you online with just a few clicks of a mouse. If search engine results for your personal name are not good, it could be costing you that great apartment, promotion, new job, or even a volunteer position. If your personal name results in bad Internet search results, you need to take action. Here are few concrete things you can do to start turning the situation around today:

1. Register your name on social media sites such as Linkedin, Myspace, Facebook, Naymz, Squidoo, Digg and others. Start putting together positive, professional web pages for your name. This will take a bit of time, but it is free and will help ensure that search engine results for your name are generally positive and something you can be proud of. Having pages on social media sites will also push negative search engine results lower on search engine rankings. That way, anyone searching for your name online will see positive pages you created first.
2. Buy your own name domains for com, .net, and .org. For example, if your name is Jane Doe, buy janedoe.com, janedoe.net, and janedoe.org. If someone has already registered the domain, buy the closest domain name you can to your name. Use these sites to create a few pages about yourself. Generally, these will appear at the very top of search engine rankings. That way, if less-than-savory search engine results are associated with your name, at least someone looking for your name will find you — in a positive light — first.
3. Try writing some articles about something that you know. You can volunteer these articles to blog owners, newsletter owners, or even upload them to article directories. This is a great way to ensure that search engine search results for your name lead to positive, informative pages rather than something offensive. Just make sure that when your article appears, at the end of the article you have a byline and some links to your web pages or social networking pages.
4. Start using your real name on professional forums. Make positive comments, and have a signature line that links back to your web pages and social networking sites.
5. On all your web pages, use your actual name in the title tag. This helps ensure that your pages are search engine optimized. Another trick is to use a proper alt text and a caption with any pictures of yourself that you upload. It’s another free and simple way to ensure that your name is search engine optimized.
6. If you have a very common name, make sure that you use keywords to associate a location with your name. For example, you may want to link Joe Smith with Kansas or Albany, NY. Anyone Googling your name — such as an employer — may look for you by using geographical location as well as your name.
7. Try not to worry too much. If you do notice that search engine results lead to someone else who is less than savory, find ways to differentiate yourself from that person, or explain to potential employers that if they are running a background check, you have a an alter ego online. Or, provide your own URLs on your résumé so that employers don’t have to go sneaking through the Internet to find you.
8. If your online reputation is so bad that you are losing opportunities, it’s time to call in the professionals. Sign up with a good reputation management service. Look for professionals who can help you pinpoint the reputation problems and help you resolve them quickly.

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