Getting My Name to the Top of Google (Search Engine Reputation Management)

This is a guest post by my good friend CPA Share. I just saw that he’s recently cranked it up with his blog and been posting a lot, so definitely check it out. Most of you probably know that Harrison is 16 years old and making a lot more money than most of you probably are. Every time I talk to him he’s at some different spot around the world. Anyways, here’s his post…

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I asked Paul to write a guest post– and given that I’m in the writing mood on topics such as affiliate marketing networks and local online advertising, I thought we could talk about SERM (Search Engine Reputation Management). This is just a fancy way of ranking for your own name (or that of others) by buying that domain name. And if you don’t own your own name, you should snap up at least the dot com version, whether or not you plan to develop it, since it’s a pre-emptive measure for folks who might do it later. For example, you might be:

  • a rep at United Airlines Mileage Plus who accidentally marked a customer as fraud, but then tried to bamboozle your way out, digging yourself deeper. Don’t allow an unhappy customer to buy your name. You might even buy your name just because there are so many others with your same name.
  • a boulder massage therapist who happens to give me free massages in exchange for some promotion of her massage therapy business.
  • someone convicted on a major crime: not going to tell you who, but we’ll just say this guy had some pretty bad pages dominating all of the first 30 listings– with cnn.com talking about the biggest bust ever done by the Feds, and his name all over it.
  • If your name is not common, then ranking first for your name is a piece of cake. Just do a canned WordPress install. But if you’re “John Smith”, then you have a bit of work to do. Maybe someone has your name bought and won’t sell it for a reasonable price. They buy a name like first-last.com or FirstLastBlog.com. Then create a bunch of profiles at places like LinkedIn, Facebook, and various online directories to get it to reinforce. And for good measure, put up a small PPC campaign on Google and Yahoo– bidding on your name with exact match on the search network only with perhaps a 20 cent max CPC and a $1 daily limit.

    If there are bad things about you in the press and you want to push those results down, you may have to create a few sites. One neat trick I’ve used is to post video snippets at places like youtube and propeller with that person’s name in the title and tags. In once instance, I grabbed 4 of the top 10 search results within 24 hours through video alone, for a client who had some pretty bad stuff on Google’s first page. Then by posting on free press release, plus some more blog content, cleared the remaining results– so that we owned all 10 first page rankings. One other affiliate colleague had some business partners who got drunk at a party, got banned, and that behavior was posted on a major forum. We used the video tricks here and got it cleaned out in a few weeks– which is longer than you’d normally expect. Like I was saying before, sometimes it takes only 24 hours or just a few minutes, if you’re lucky.

    Anyway, hope you enjoyed this tidbit. There are folks out there who are real pro’s at this– I’m merely sharing my own experience and what’s worked for me. If you have questions you’d like to ask me or want to read more of my articles, just drop me a line at my blog.


25 Comments

  1. September 4, 2008

    Wow and all this from a 16 year old? I need to check out and see if anyone has already gotten mine.

  2. Brian
    September 4, 2008

    What’s up with the smear campaign against Marla Milus? Looks like Harrison’s himself a nice shady client. Real professional…

  3. pissed off
    September 4, 2008

    Your cpa share link set off avg virus alet 14 times. I had to pull the plug. Is that how he is getting rich?

  4. Gagan
    September 4, 2008

    getting advice form a 16 year old affiliate marketer…think not…yes i’m discriminating him for his age. i don’t care how much he makes. he makes this money because its easy but i bet his business isn’t as stable or as mature as a 28 year mature affiliate marketer. anyhooo enough bashing..i wanted to get that out…

  5. September 4, 2008

    he is 16 so i guess his stories should also relate to his age group!

  6. September 4, 2008

    And you got it all out but he is making more than you….no body is above learning! Where is Mark Zukerberg of facebook? was he a teenager? but now one rich dude! lol

  7. September 4, 2008

    How do they relate to my age group?

  8. September 5, 2008

    Forget about his age, just because most of you probably suck at what he is doing don’t blame him on his age. Envy is everywhere I guess…

  9. Frank
    September 5, 2008

    Back to your kindergarten!

  10. Greg
    September 5, 2008

    in this industry being young is good…I don’t see many 40 year olds making much

  11. September 5, 2008

    Nice. I’ve been following that kid’s blog and he seems pretty sharp.

  12. September 5, 2008

    Envy is everywhere
    great quote

  13. September 5, 2008

    Actually his business is probably better run than a lot of adults. Lower overhead too I’d bet.

    It’s ok to say you’re discriminating but it’s another to say that you’re not and then go ahead and do it right after.

    That’s like saying you’re not racist but then making a hateful comment about another race. It doesn’t make sense.

  14. September 5, 2008

    There are some but they keep it quite and low. Most 40+ year olds I know are making $30-50k per day and nobody even knows their name.

  15. Donk
    September 5, 2008

    How much bank is this little kid making?

  16. September 6, 2008

    Probably more than you Donk

  17. September 10, 2008

    The worst thing that comes up when you search for my name is that I missed a few Student Council meetings in College.

    I really don’t understand why anyone dealing with websites would not own their own name …

  18. September 19, 2008

    Wikipedia profile works too (just join some wiki projects / groups for internal links). Forum profiles, wordpress.com blog with your name tagged would be other places.

    Google + domain trust = ridiculous.

  19. September 23, 2008

    i had the same goal a while back, explained in this post: internetbusinessdaily.net/1-spot-for-matthew-berman/

    i am now #1 or #2 usually…took me months and months of work. how much work did it take you?

  20. Adams Morgan
    October 4, 2008

    Anyone who believes this kid is a fool. His Father is Steven Gevirtz. A successful multi-millionaire investor and businessman. http://streamline-capital.com/principals.html

    He is also linked to Katana Capital Advisors LLC and Katana Fund LLC. http://www.secinfo.com/d118ez.5s.htm

    It is no wonder that young Herrison here is doing so well with his multi-millionaire father behind him. His father is the primary account holder on the Black Card Amex, and his Harrison is just an Authorized User, but you’d never know since this is all a gimmick to drive interviews and business.

    If you look into his companies it’s all VERY shady. Harrison has also done ringtone advertising and other shady things to make money. It’s no “accident’ shoemoney is involved either, everyone pats their own back. They are sending the message “if a 16 year old can do it, anyone can”. This is MLM (multi level marketing) at work, the more salesmen these guys bring in the more money they make and it’s no coincidence that his father is a hugely successful business man. Harrison is nothing more than a prop for business.

    Harrison’s companies also employ the help of Dennis Yu, if you search him out he is a “London School of Finance” graduate and internet marketing expert. Google his name and you’ll find his history is impressive and full of success.

    If I had a multi-millionaire father and a successful internet marketer to help me along with my business, I’d succeed too.

    This is all just a big scam and Harrison is just a normal 16 year old.. with a multi-millionaire, successful father and college educated, successful internet marketer behind him.

  21. In fact ranking for your FistnameLastname high in google / Yahoo! / Msn only matters if you make them a brand.

    But as many affiliate I know we build one website per product we promote add 10-20 articles and use several ways to promote those 20 pages / site.

    To Your Success!

  22. June 26, 2009

    This i crazy i have to say.

  23. December 16, 2009

    Look, you should probably get over yourself. If a person knows more than you about a topic, it shouldn’t matter what their age is.

  24. August 12, 2010

    Thanks.It is really good because in Turkey,it is very difficult to rise top of google

  25. January 19, 2011

    And you got it all out but he is making more than you….no body is above learning! Where is CHRISXPERT of facebook? was he a teenager? but now one rich dude! lol

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