Testing your
Google juice
Do you regularly Google yourself? Searching for your name and other information using the top search engines is an important part of checking your web presence and part of ongoing image-building, as mezzo/blogger Jennifer Rivera discovered recently. In 'googled', a recent post on her excellent blog, Trying to Remain Opera-tional, describes, entering even just a couple of keyword combos yielded telling results. Give it a shot yourself, checking Google, Yahoo!, Bing and Ask, and any others that come to mind...
1) Start with just your name. If your name isn't entirely unique, try entering it in quotes, like "Jane Q. Doesky". This will force the search engine to look only for that specific combination. But be sure to try different aliases, e.g. with and without the middle initial.
2) Combine your name with likely keywords, such as 'singer', 'opera', 'tenor' or 'vocalist', depending on the focus of your career and the words you most often use when describing yourself in online profiles, concert programs and press releases.
3) Don't worry so much about the numberof sites that list you: this assessment is more about quality than quantity. Take note of the sites that show up on the first page or two, and more important, which don't appear.
4) Is your website not yet showing in the top five? Make some notes on what steps you've already taken to optimize your site ranking, if any. If you haven't done much, make sure your site is attractive, up-to-date and error-free, and then speak with your webmaster or take your own steps to submit the site to the major search engines. To learn the basics about SEO (search engine optimization) and page ranking, check out one of the many tutorials online: one good one lives at www.Tizag.com
5) Don't have a website yet? How is your public supposed to find out more than your name and voice part? You can build a simple, good-looking website using tools are major websites such as Yahoo!, Web.com, Intuitor any of the multitude of other hosts available.
6) Even better, hire a pro. Even a simple website will look and function better when you take advantage of experience and expertise. For example, take a look at what our Lister buddy, Sharmila Guha, has done for mezzo Farah Kidwai: http://farahkidwai.com/ (More on Sharmila's services in a later issue!)
Of course, you could just give up entirely, like this guy.
(But
we'd miss you!) |
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