Let’s say you are doing everything right to monetize your website traffic: you’ve got your blog going; your unique selling proposition (USP) is in place; you are collecting your leads and providing them with value via autoresponder.
Have you made much money yet?
Well, what’s going on? Why are your prospects buying, BUT not from you?
Let’s reverse the situation a bit: you are a lead in my autoresponder now. You don’t really know me from any other blogger yet, my emails are starting to trickle in, and suddenly, I hit you with a product offer.
You actually like the product. You kind of thought of buying it anyway.
However, buying it from ME involves giving up some of your personal information, including your credit card. And what about the money back offer? Can you trust me to honor it if need be?
Do you see where I am going with this?
Monetizing your website traffic is all about trust. Most reasonable people will do a bit of research on you BEFORE they buy anything from you or join your team.
They turn to almighty Google and type “Your Name” in the search box to see if you are who you say you are.
Are they going to like what they see?
This is the part that can make or break your business.
Before your list buys from you or your prospect joins your business, they will search:
- Your Name
- Your Company Name
- Name of Your Product
The very fact that they are looking you up is a great thing; it shows their buying intent. They like you, they want to buy from you. Now they simply want to validate their desire to buy from you or join your business by looking you up on Google.
That’s how many entrepreneurs fail to monetize their website traffic. They fail to control what is or not being said about them in the social circles.
Bottom line: if you don’t have full control over the search results for your name especially, but also your company and product name, that means you are opening the door for your competition to take full advantage of that fact and monetize YOUR website traffic for you.
And by FULL control I mean dominating the top 10 results.
Let’s take some steps to help you do just that.
1. Register Your Name As A Domain
YourName.com is the best for obvious reasons.
The next best thing would be to register something like WhoIsYourName.com or MeetYourName.com. If not, anything with your name as a keyword in it will do.
Also, register domains for any products or company you are associated with (providing you are not breaking any company policies of course).
2. Point Your New Domain Name to Your Site
You have 2 choices here:
- Point it to your “About Me” page of your current blog (VERY easy)
- However, if you are ambitious, and as well you should be, and want to overtake Google and monetize website traffic on anything related to your company and products as well as your name, then definitely start a new blog, dedicated just to that.
For the purpose of this post, I will assume that that’s exactly what you are doing.
3. Organize categories according to information about you, your company/product
It should look something like this:
YourName.com
- About Me
- Company name: Articles about your company, videos, etc.
- Your Product: information on your product.
- Your Marketing System
4. Implement On-Page Optimization
(For a more in-depth overview of both on-page and off-page optimization, make sure to get my free SEO report at the end of the post.)
Use your name in title tags and meta description for your About me page.
Make sure you use appropriate title tags for each page; of course they should always include the keywords you want to monetize. They should be UNIQUE to every page you create.
5. Internal Deep Linking
When you mention your name in any of the posts, make sure to occasionally hyperlink it to your About Me page. Do the same for your company and product name.
6. Create Social Media Profiles
Make sure you create profiles for your REAL NAME; after all we are branding YOU and not “MakeCashToday” or some other stupid name that screams “Amateur!”.
Point the links from those profiles back to your About Me page. If possible, try to use your name as anchor text in your links.
As you add more and more content to your social profiles, continue adding links back to your blog.
Of course, you can also occasionally add links going FROM your blog to your social media profiles to ensure that they rise in search engine ranking and help you take over all ten first page spots.
7. Rinse and repeat
Do this for all the pages on your blog/site related to your company, product, system, or any other keywords related to your name you wish to control (=monetize your website traffic in other words).
Monetize Your Website Traffic Marketing Takeaway:
Now think bigger with me for a second: what if you control Google for your company name, affiliate product name, marketing system name, etc?
Remember the folks who are looking up those terms are BUYERS. That’s the MOST TARGETED traffic you can ever get!
The possibilities are endless.
You are right: you don’t have to comment or retweet, but do it anyway; I love hearing from you!
Hi Ana,
I couldn’t add anything to this article. If I were to say
anything about the How important trust is
People resist being sold to, the like to purchase. Give them tons
of value and provide solutions to their problems.
Ana, what plug in are you using for “More on the topic” and most popular posts
Thank you for all you do,
you’re the best
Jeff Faldalen
I have a feeling you are asking about the box that the related posts are displayed in, Jeff. If so, then it’s custom designed.
As for the plugin itself, I use WordPress Related Posts.
Great tips, Anna. All good take-aways, especially the domain name. That’s exactly what I’m hoping to accomplish with my new site.
Sounds like a great idea and glad I could help.
Ana
Hey Ana
When I first started there were a lot of Peter Fuller’s out there so I decided to brand Peter Fuller MBA to differentiate myself. Everything I did , from the blog to posting comments I tried to reinforce “Peter Fuller MBA”
As a result of that I now rank for “Peter Fuller” as well.
As for linking your personal brand with a company I am not so sure of. My personal blog “PeterFuller.org” is my blog to brand myself. I would use another blog or website to brand myself with a company.
Peter
First of all, that’s a great way to rank for the main keyword - your actual name, Peter Fuller. First you go for something a bit longer, like “Peter Fuller MBA” and that might actually cause you to rank for the actual name as well.
It’s a tactic used by many SEOs and works great.
As far as your company is concerned, it’s entirely personal choice - you do what best fits you, your business, and how much time you are willing to put into it.
The more blogs you are running, the less sleep you get…:)
Thanks for your insights, Peter!
Hi Ana,
You’re so right, it is all about trust. I have found that anyone who purchased anything from my blog was a direct result of someone who first began to know me. Once they felt comfortable and they could trust me, then they would buy.
I love how you started with this very simple (mostly forgotten though) mindset.
BTW - Great takeaway Ana. Very true!
Have a great weekend,
Jerome Ratliff
We have to go where our potential customers go, Jerome.
And if the go to Google to do more research on us, then that’s where we need to be.
Trust is definitely huge, especially these days.
Ana
Now you can reinforce your position with even more links, Oliver. Make sure that other guy does not stand a chance!
What is the domain name for your old blog?
Ana
Hey Ana.. this is a great post.
I think ranking number 1 on google for ours names is super easy, simply because of the lack of competition out there..
but for those still not in the number 1 spot - this is a great place to start
talk soon
Hector
@ Hector - One good thing about having an unusual name!
Ana -
I’ve got a lot to write currently, a bit behind the ball, so this will be brief:
You mention using your personal name. I would love to do that, actually, but my trouble is that I have 150 or so articles in directories using my real name when I first started - all going to my main money sites.
As a niche marketer, it’s not wise to do that…competition and that sort of thing. My concern would be getting all my sites revealed by a simple looking up of my “X” account in “X” article directory.
Once you find one site…it’s easy to analyze the backlinks and go from there - you’ve just uncovered a network of sites.
Your thoughts?
Definitely a tough one, James.
If it was me, I would consider it important enough of an issue to take some time and go back to those directories and change the links.
Granted, most competitors will simply not be smart enough to do that kind of research on you, but some might.
Sorry I don’t have the “magic wand” answer for you, James! Some good coffee and a couple of sleepless nights will take care of it though. 🙂
Ana
Ana, what can be done if you find some false information out there on the web that someone has posted but is completely a lie and slander? Had a company do this recently but I have been unsuccessful at getting it removed. I guess I will just try to bury it many pages deep in google.
Hi, Joy - I’ve read a few posts in the past on this problem, but unfortunately never paid close enough attention to remember. Most of the times, the answer is you can try, but success is not guaranteed. I will look out for any helpful info on this and will let you know, Joy.
Sorry to hear it happened to you.
Hi Ana,
Good post. Very clear and detailed. I liked the linking back to the About me page and the mentioning of my name in some of my posts. Sure going to implement that.
Thanks.
You are very welcome, Ngozi.
This strategy is easy to implement and the payoff in terms of credibility is huge.
Hi Ana!
Love this idea…thanks for the suggestion. I didn’t know what to do with my name-branded blog after I started my marketing blog…it’s sat there vacant and unloved for 2+ months. You really helped me to feel much more clear about it’s potential purpose!
Are you in the mood for playing 20 questions? No worry if you don’t have time to answer!
Ok…so I have a question on how you recommend I approach branding a name that is shared with a celebrity. There is an actress who shares my name and she completely dominates Google. I show up at the very bottom of page one with my twitter id and on page 2 with my name-branded blog.
I tried to be as consistent as possible with my social media accounts, but she beat me to the punch on “our” name. I had to choose stephensheather for twitter, and I’ve got heather marshall stephens on facebook, and heather stephens video on youtube, etc.
I have owned the domains: heathercstephens,com and heather-stephens,com and I just acquired heatherstephens,com for a pretty penny. Does it matter
which one I brand? Would heatherstephens.com give me a better shot of competing with a celebrity or did I just waste a whole bunch of money?
Also, do you recommend we link our company websites to this name-branded blog, or leave our company information for our “work with …” opt in list?
I’d love to know what you recommend!
Heather
I did not even realize you had that problem, Heather! Whoever heard of Heather Stephens the celebrity?
First, this is just my opinion, but she most likely occupies the first page simply by default, not because she is doing any SEO to make that happen. 🙂
So you have a clear advantage here.
I would definitely go with HeatherStephens.com. I want to ask you some questions about it, but just read this post: https://trafficgenerationcafe.online/search-engine-ranking-secret-aged-domain/ and you’ll probably guess my questions.
You can definitely add your company pages to your branding blog and market the heck out of it as well. Don’t keep your opp for the “back door”.
Let me know your thoughts.
Ana
Good point, Roy.
That’s something that is entirely out of my area of expertise, so I am glad you mentioned it.
Ana
Ana, I find that everyone immediately thinks of Twitter and Facebook for social networking. One of the more underrated sites is LinkedIn but that has proven to be the most valuable resource for connections that have turned into business. It’s a great site to become active in especially if you are blogging to business-minded people.
To be quite honest, Sherryl, I’ve been ignoring LinkedIn. However, I like your point abobut it and will make a better effort in the future.
Thanks for the heads up!
Ana
Hey Ana,
This was great advice! You’re always bring a lot of value. I started doing this the week before and this validates that i’m going in the right direction.
Sherman
Sounds like we are on the same page, Sherman.
Hi Ana,
Gtreat tip about the link to your about me page, I have always linked back to my Facebook account but thinking about it that a bit daft to get them back to my blog! Should just send them to another part of my blog. Thanks for the great tips.
Tristram Lodge
Any time, Tristram, glad I gave you an idea.
Ana
Hey Ana,
I know exactly what people find when they google my name 🙂
Great tip about linking to the “about me” page. So important to keep it up to date.
Thanks for sharing your insights.
All the best,
Mavis Nong
Sounds like you’ve got it under control, Mavis; I would not expect anything less from you.
Ana
Ana, just discovered your site and I can see I will be constant visitor.
I must confess I don’t Google people when I buy from them, but I do know people who do. It’s good to turn the tables sometimes, I don’t think we spend nearly enough time looking at stuff from a customer viewpoint.
Love your point, Lesley. We need to make sure you cover all the basis as far as our customers are concerned.
I appreciate your patronage!
Ana
Ana, you have a point with registering your name domain, etc. I wonder if I ever renewed mine….. egh. Informative post 🙂
Better check! On the bright side, your name is so unique, it might still be available, Moon. 🙂
Thanks for coming by and RTing the post!
Good advice. Particularly on the internal deep linking to the “about me” page
Easy to do, should be done, Steve.
Good advice about linking to an About Me page or a new, About Me sort of blog. It’s a very good strategy for individuals who have started a blog already under a different brand name.
Thanks, Tia.
It’s surprising to me how many bloggers put in so much work into SEOing for different keywords, yet forget the most important one - branding their name. Hopefully, more of them might be inspired to change that after reading this blog post.
Ana
another awesome read with ton’s of value. What more can I say but rock on girl.
Thanks, Kareem; will do.