This post is in response to a question Cheri posed in the comments on another entry about how one would get themselves onto the first page of results for a Google search. I'd say the best thing to do is to have a blog under your own name, update it frequently, link to other folks, and get those folks to link to you.

It's not really something you can game all that well... some companies will advertise services to improve your search results, but they end up using tricky gimmicks that Google negates the next time they update their search algorithms.

Google works on links + frequency of updates, basically (as best as people can figure out--Google's actual search methods are a bit of a black box).

The more sites and people who link to you, the more you are considered to have authority from Google's standpoint. If people are linking to you, they must think you have something to say, right? The more those people who are linking to you are themselves linked to by other people, the greater their links are worth. So if you accrue authority on the web through being linked, the people you link to will reap the benefits from you imparting a bit of your authority to them.

The more frequently a site is updated, the more often Google "crawls" the site to add new content to it's index. The more regularly updated the site, the higher it will go in the Google index (sites that haven't been changed since 1997 don't get much play).

So a blog is ideal because it's meant to be updated frequently and it's meant to be a place for links and connections to other sites.

Also, having a unique name like, oh, say, Graham Lampa, is quite a bit "better" than John Smith. I put "better" in quotes, because it can also be detrimental if there are things associated with you on the web (kegstand pictures, etc.) that you would rather not have associated with your personal identity.

So that's what I would consider the prevailing notion of how one gets on the first page of Google's search results for, say, your name. Also, I would add that the system that this blog is running on—UThink—is actually uniquely situated in Google search results. Blogs on UThink tend to rank very highly because of the base URL of the site: blog.lib.umn.edu. The edu denotes an educational institution (usually higher ed), which Google gives more credibility. Also, the real kicker is the lib part, which denotes the content is produced by a library system (UThink is run by the U's libraries), something that Google really seems to love.

So I would suggest to any of you who are interested in getting your name out there and associated with you in a positive, professional way to start your own blog on UThink on a subject of interest to you (in which you have some pre-existing authority or expertise), write about it regularly, get in contact with other bloggers writing on the same subject, link to them, and try to get them (ask them) to link to you.

That's about all there is to it!