Rank Yourself in Google to Help Your Job Search Efforts

By Joshua Waldman from Job Searching with Social Media For Dummies

To increase your rank in Google and attract the attention of hiring managers, consider customizing your LinkedIn domain name and links, making your LinkedIn profile public, and buying your own domain name.

Customize your LinkedIn domain name. LinkedIn, a professional networking site, is considered a high-authority website by Google. (A high-authority website simply means that Google thinks its content is more valuable than other sites.) If you change your LinkedIn Public URL (domain name) to your full name, your name will start to rank in Google.

Your domain name should look like this: http://www.linkedin.com/in/yourname. To achieve this, simply go to your profile, click on Edit next to the Public Profile section, and customize the domain. Often, as you build your online reputation, this minor change will be the first win you notice in Google’s results.
Customize your LinkedIn links. With LinkedIn, you’re allowed to link to three external websites. Most people use the default settings, like Personal Website or Company Website, but it pays to get a little more unique and specific.
Make as much of your LinkedIn profile public as possible. When you edit your public profile in LinkedIn, make sure you’re including as much information as possible. Doing so ensures that Google will index more relevant information about you.
Buy your own domain name. The fastest way to get your name ranking in Google is to have a domain name that matches the search query. For example, if a hiring manager is going to search for “John T. Jones” in Google to find out more about you, then purchase www.johntjones.com to be sure that page ranks.

Then you can point that domain name to anything you want, such as an online résumé (like VisualCV or Innovate CV), your public LinkedIn profile, or an About.me page.

The easiest way to rank yourself in Google is to generate your own content. Building your own website or writing your own blog provides content that gets you ranked — but only if you use your name in the appropriate places.

Everything you publish online is public record and will be there forever. So be sure that your links, articles, and anything else you publish falls within your personal brand, is professional, and is how you want to be represented online.