Did you know that if you get arrested for anything you may find your mug shot in a Google Search of your name? How bad is that? And to make things worse, most mug shots look like hell. This happened to a friend of my son’s. He realized his mugshot was online when he was applying to a Grad School, and the head of his department told him “You should try googling yourself…”
Hopefully you won’t find anything bad when you Google your name or your business name. But the other extreme, not showing up at all, is not good either.
The remedy to both issues is the same. Set up some social media accounts and fill them out completely. If you don’t have a website, set up a one page About.me account. If it is your business that is failing to show up, make sure that you claim your Yelp listing and add it to Google Local Business. Are you a doctor or a lawyer? I really hate to look up a professional and have them hard to find. You know the drill, you get all of those sites that give you their name and maybe a phone number.
It looks really lame not to have any real listings show up in a search. It is 2012, it is time to get over yourself and get this done. As my client, Mel Stowers, a commercial real estate broker, said when he came to me to do his online makeover, “I have to get with it. I am a Leo and we like to look good!”
You don’t have to do it all at once unless you are trying to push down something negative off the front page by adding new search results. Make a list of what you can do and then go about fixing up your search results, as you have time.
But don’t bookmark this and forget to do it 
About Judi Knight
