As many as you know ranking for your name can really help your business grow.  If you have a very unique and not often used last name it’s not that hard and if you have a rare first and a rare last name it’s even easier!  However, some of us have first and last names that are so common that ranking in the top 10 can be ridicolous.

I personally rank between #1 and #2 consistently for Michael S Brown but have never ranked well for Michael Brown for a couple reasons.  First, I have never tried or never really needed to.  The second thing is that is was always extremely competitive and just didn’t bother with it.  After all there are over 85,000,000 competing pages for Michael Brown.

However, now is a good time for anyone to start at least getting their name on the front page of Google with very little work.

Before I show you the easy steps to do this let me first tell you the importance of this.  If you are doing anything that involves your name such as writing e-books, writing books, displaying yourself on video, public speaking or even running affiliate sites where you present people with your name this is important.  When people hear about you or one of your sites or products they want to learn more about you.  One of the best places for them to do this is Google itself.

Now you still might be thinking "What’s the point?"  But, the point is that your name can be up there in case the look for you.  When the person looking for you finds your site/profile listed in Google they will likely visit to learn more about you.  On this page you’ll want to have some links to your sites, products and just over all more information about yourself.

You can see my profile here.  (more info about me will be added later).  You can also see my screen shot below that.

Michael Brown – Profile

Now, let me show you below how you can take advantage of this and how you can make yours pop up on the first page…

Go to www.google.com/profiles and setup your own profile.  Make sure to include as much information about yourself as possible (especially if you have a very common name).  The more information you add the more it will help you show up on the first page.

Now believe it or not one of the biggest factors is simply adding a picture of yourself.  I went from page 8 to page 1 in just a few minutes of adding a picture of myself.  Also the same rules apply as normal ranking.  Use your name a couple time in the body and you could optionally build links to your profile if you wanted to.  Lastly

The best part is the ability to add links on the side bar and add links in the body of your profile.  When people come learn more about you they can then find your rpdocucts or what your teaching, promoting etc.  Cool eh?  There are a lot of cool things you can do with your profile and I am sure I’ll update mine alot over time.

What are your thoughts?  Are you using this yet?  Questions or comments below.