Ask HN: How to become the first result of a Google search for a name?

130 pointsby vojnovskiover 7 years ago

A while ago, I decided to write a simple personal landing page. I went about it as any average HN reader would, I googled what the best free way to deploy static html was. I went with Github pages + Cloudflare, as using S3 + Cloudfront did not justify mulling around with paying AWS. The ssl certificate is shared between several site, but oh well, it'll do.I reused an old domain (vv.mk), that I had previously used for a Blogger blog, spent some time playing with latencies, as my page loaded in a second and a half, and Cloudflare didn't seem to cache it. Lesson: Cloudflare does not edge-cache html, and you need a Page Rule to enable it via their interface.I learnt a bit about webfonts, and finally decided to host the fonts myself (on Github pages), rather than do a roundtrip to google, as it added about 300ms on average to page load, using a setup that would work for most recent browsers (https://google-webfonts-helper.herokuapp.com).I confirmed I had a blazingly fast site via http://www.webpagetest.org/ and https://tools.keycdn.com/, and then it was time to make Google return it when people searched for my full name.To my chagrin, this does not seem to be easy. I added my name to the title and the description HTML meta tags. I added the domain to the Google Search Console in all its versions (www, no-www, http, https), asked the Google crawler to cralw it and update its index. I added links to it to my social networks profiles where they hadn't been already added.A day after, the Google index is not updated, my site, along with the description of the content that it had up to a day ago, is buried well into the 4th Google results page. My google searches on SEO of personal websites have been completely unfruitful. The 1st Google results page is still populated with useful info (most of my social network profiles), but it seems logical that a personal website would be returned as the first result.Any tips?edit: Most of the comments suggest this is due to the lack of content. While I accept this might be a cause for the bad ranking, the lack of content is quite intentional, the page is meant to be a sort of a personal landing page with links to social networks profiles, workplaces, etc.

37 comments

ameliusover 7 years ago

Change your name into something more unique. For example,<pre><code> a975c295ddeab5b1a5323df92f61c4cc9fc88207</code></pre>

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sixhobbitsover 7 years ago

It definitely helps to have a unique name, but it's possible without. A lot of good advice in this thread, but as someone who achieved what you want, some extra points:* Don't focus on one site. Spread your content around on as many sites as possible and link each one back to your home page. This is easier than you might expect -- nearly all tech sites are looking for content creators, whether or not they explicitly advertise it.* Don't expect it to happen in a matter of days. It took me months/years to push "Gareth Dwyer" the poker player off the front page of google, and all he had was some YouTube page. It takes weeks for Google to update their indexes sometimes (even changing a big site over from no-www to www recently took several weeks to properly reflect on Google).* The URL is important. Get a .com or another 'more official' domain. This is a grey/changing area, but people still have pretty big biases based on TLDs, and this affects click-through and therefore ranking. I wouldn't click on vv.mk unless I was actually in Macedonia and expecting it.* And as others have said, put more content on your site. Even if it's only a landing page, you want people to spend a minute or so looking around. If it has a high bounce rate, it'll hurt your rankings.Good luck :)

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Mzover 7 years ago

Your site is basically empty. Current content:Welcome.Hi, I'm Viktor. More to come, in the meantime you can contact me via twitter, linkedin, or via email at <my name> at <the domain this site is on>.More links and a pgp key at Keybase.Made with ️ in Nice.Should say something more like:Welcome.Hi, I'm Viktor Vojnovski. I do (stuff you do, reasons why people would look for you online). You can also find me on twitter @vojnovski. Here is my linkedin profile. You can email me via ViktorVojnovski at <this domain name>.I can also be found on Keybase.Made with ️ in Nice, France.As others have said, it really should be ViktorVojnovski.com.Edited to reflect updated location info.Re your update. My suggested edits don't add a lot more words. But they do replace completely empty fluff ("More to come, in the meantime ...") with actual useful info. That empty fluff is apparently also a lie if there is no intent to actually add more info.

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koughover 7 years ago

1. Get your full name as a .com (victorvojnovski.com) 2. Put any real content on it. Maybe a blog? Helps to have links back. 3. Wait a few years. 4. Success!

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35bge57dtjkuover 7 years ago

> Most of the comments suggest this is due to the lack of content. While I accept this might be a cause for the bad ranking, the lack of content is quite intentional, the page is meant to be...The reason for you omitting content isn't going to magically increase your pagerank.

janesvilleseoover 7 years ago

Ironically, this post will actually help you achieve what you are looking to do. As another has mentioned it is now on page 1 for me. And as another has said search results are now personalized.So how do you get it to #1 for your name. Content can help but is not 100% needed in this case. Your name is rather unique. I am in the similar situation as I have a fairly unique name too.So what I recommend is making your site a destination. Make sure all your social profiles link to the domain. Reference your name in the link where possible. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Github, etc.Lastly as someone else has mentioned, give it some time. It will move up as you build up the importance of the website.And if you want, while you could change domains to include your name, you could also just have a page (url) that has your full name in it.

cdibonaover 7 years ago

To some degree, this is a Sisyphean task: Google doesn't have one solitary index or signal anymore, it's extremely personalized. So even if you are number one for you, it's extremely likely that you won't be for much of the rest of the world.And this assumes you have a unique-ish name/site/project.

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chenshuilukeover 7 years ago

Don't worry about making your personal site the first result. Having your name spread out across multiple sites can help give searchers a more wholistic view of who are and what you have done in the past that makes you stand out.Here's what I did: I negotiated with my parents before I was born to give me a unique name.I made a github profile with lots of projects.I wrote a short crappy book for Amazon Kindle.I was involved with a local organization's student opensource initiative (like a small Google summer of code) and they have me mentioned in various articles.I made a LinkedIn profile.I made a youtube channel from when I was a kid in 2008 and have many videos.I wrote a piece of fan fiction way back when.I probably should add my name to my various personal project sites...

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hluskaover 7 years ago

Hey Viktor....I googled your domain (vv.mk) and, if I were in your shoes, I would wait for a few days and see if your website ranks. The cached version still seems to point at Blogger. I don't read Macedonian (assuming that Google Translate picked the correct language), but the cached title is still "Free your mind".If I were in your shoes, I would:1.) Assume that it will take at least a week or two to re-index your site and start ranking your new content.2.) Add some content. One of the most surefire ways to get Google to respond to content changes is to add a metric shit tonne of new content.

codebeakerover 7 years ago

Your site is all but completely devoid of content, no wonder Google isn't ranking it as relevant. Try writing some content first.

jakub_gover 7 years ago

Just to counter all the advice in this thread:my personal website was whole 2 pages of static content (landing page with not much content + 1 blog article) until very recently, and hosted under .github.io domain (bought a custom domain only recently), and it very quickly became top-3 google search under my name.However I think the problem here might be due to using .mk domain and Google thinking that it's not very international. Note that when you search on <a href="https://www.google.mk/?hl=mk" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.mk/?hl=mk</a> then it shows up on the first page.Getting .com/.net/.io and putting just a bit more unique content is probably a good way to get started. Put a 301 redirect from old domain to the new one. Put a link on LinkedIn etc. if not done yet. Then just be patient.BTW Hello from Nice - 230 fellow here.

rampage101over 7 years ago

There are no simple hacks to get to the top. You need people to be searching for your name, find your link, and then spend time on the page. It helps a lot if you have posts that show up on Reddit, or other social networks.Since there is no content at all on your site there's no way anybody will stay on your page.

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sirwittiover 7 years ago

The domain name itself is one of the most important factors for google. Apart from that your h1 says welcome and has an <hr> inside. If you put your name in the h1 it's gonna help your ranking.There is no content at all on this site. If you want to get up in the rankings you need to provide content that is relevant to your name.Btw the html entities you're using miss a semicolon which is invalid html. I think google likes valid html better :)Hope that helps, Martin

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kelukelugamesover 7 years ago

Sort of related. In college when facebook first started, we had a page called "The Michael Lees of Berkeley" with dozens of members. One of the Michael Lees is on the no fly list which has been a hassle for the others.

elorantover 7 years ago

Since we're in the SEO land let me ask a relevant question. Say I have an e-commerce site. If I buy an expired domain from some other e-commerce site which was in the same market as mine can I have any benefit whatsoever?

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foopodover 7 years ago

Do all the things.1. Full name as a .com helped me. Put your name in the page content too, whether it is a heading or a footer.2. Content. Content. Content. Google needs a good reason to put your site at the top.3. Site needs to be mobile friendly.4. Use webmaster tools. Use Data Highlighter to show google what parts of your page are important. Make sure structured meta data is okay too.5. Google Products, why wouldn't google prioritize sites with Google tag manager where they can learn even more about your sight and their customers.Proof: <a href="https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=jono+shields" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=jono+shields</a>

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FightingTacoover 7 years ago

I've struggled with similar issues. From what I've read, it's all about getting other more established sites to link back to your page. I believe the easiest way to do this might be to start blogging or host original content in some form.

SXXover 7 years ago

As others suggested full name in domain name and title might have something to do with it, but I'll also suggested to add few external links to it even if it's just links from random internet forums you rarely usimg and such.And yeah not that it will improve position of your page, but adding google analitics and veryfying your page in google webmaster always help with getting it indexed faster especially if page might get some visitors. And if you dont like Google you can always remove it afterwards.Nothing of sort would work of you were John Smith, but considering your name about as unique as mine this should work.

tonymetover 7 years ago

just buy paid adwords for your name. the cpc will be rock-bottom (no one else is buying) and you won't pay very often. Prob $5/mo tops

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tobltobsover 7 years ago

If your target are also users from outside of the Republic of Macedonia then forget the .mk domain. Use a generic tld.

egypturnashover 7 years ago

The first link I get for "Viktor Vojnovski" is what I assume is your twitter. Which has a link to your site. Isn't that good enough? <a href="https://twitter.com/vojnovski?lang=en" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/vojnovski?lang=en</a>And your site is like link number five on the first results page for me. So that's climbing the ranks pretty fast.I have done absolutely zero SEO and my personal site (egypt.urnash.com) is the first result for every search for "egypt urnash" I've ever done on any search engine. I have also had this URL be my main presence on the internet for at least a decade, I've lost track. There's a ton of content on there with lots of links pointing to it, too. Have patience. And put some stuff on your site.

bsvalleyover 7 years ago

PART I: If you're looking to improve your Page Rank you need to understand the basics of SEO. Basically you need to increase your Domain/Page Authorities. How? By creating links to your web pages from domains that have high authorities... e.g. Reddit, Hacker News, etc. You get a huge bonus if your website is being mentioned by other big websites within the same categories. If you're selling cars and your website is mentioned on dog.com, it might boost your authority but not the quality of this reference (also known as the Spam Score).PART II: Let's say we're back in the 90's and you just purchased the domain name pizza.com, assuming your website is about pizzas... then forget PART I, you'll rank #1.

ronilanover 7 years ago

Like this: <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=ron+ilan" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=ron+ilan</a>(Best is to get a dot com domain a decade ago and add some links. Works for every name noun and adjective.)

laksjdover 7 years ago

Your full name does not appear at all in the human readable text of your website...

seanwilsonover 7 years ago

Your website needs to have high quality content and you need high quality websites linking to your website to rank better. Tweaking the speed and server setup isn't productive until you've done this.

meatsockover 7 years ago

a good way to do this is chosing a very unique username.<pre><code> - sincerely, meatsock.</code></pre>

pvtmertover 7 years ago

first of all, i think you made it over complicated. just gh-pages and cloudflare would work very well. you might need raw storage for your images and stuff use something like imgur.increase those: - number of external links in your website - number of links to your website from external resources make them available in your public profile, fb, twitter, linkedin, github etc.make your site multi paged somehow. so it will seen as resourceful (eg. you can make intro in the main page but add pages that explains how you did in some project and link them with first page)include links of websites of companies you worked forfor fonts use googlefonts or some cdn, use same stuff for external resources this will have your site linked with billion visitor domainshave proper mobile version have https properly configured with hsts ^ these are important, use page speed insights to increase thosebtw i didnt do anything much but when searched my domain comes in #3rd place, first 2 are linkedin and github. name is "mert akengin" domain is n0pe.me for reference.

nndover 7 years ago

Does Google still prefer .com TLD over others? I moved from it to a country-based TLD and have similar problems with indexing now.

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Veenover 7 years ago

Content and links. If there are lots of competing search results for the same query, one of the factors that Google uses to rank them is the number and quality of the sources of incoming links.How do you get links? You put something on the site that's worth linking to and promote it. There isn't really a shortcut here.

beavis2over 7 years ago

Change your name to something unique.

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hayksaakianover 7 years ago

I see it on the first page, so it seems like google has come around to it by now.

vojnovskiover 7 years ago

Can't seem to edit the original post any more, so here goes an update.Thanks HN! <a href="https://vv.mk/" rel="nofollow">https://vv.mk/</a> is now on the first page of a my name search on google.com.

dsfyu404edover 7 years ago

Have a unique name and commit a crime that makes the news.Probably not the kind of advice you're looking for. You should define the scope better. ;)

askvictorover 7 years ago

Maybe it would help to have your name on the webpage (other than in the title block)?

hnarayananover 7 years ago

You need at least a bit of interesting content!

dansoover 7 years ago

edit: other people have said what would be my reflexive suggestion: a domain name that is actually your name would likely get a lot of search ranking juice. Besides having a meta title of your name, you need to have an h1 tag -- and not just the html; it should look like a major headline -- with your name, as opposed to what it is now ("Welcome").Here's an easy fix:<pre><code> <h1>Welcome to Viktor Vojnovski's homepage</h1> </code></pre> ------------> but it seems logical that a personal website would be returned as the first result.Does it? If I'm an employer researching a job candidate, and the job candidate has bought their own vanity domain but left it empty of worthwhile content, would visiting that page be a better use of my time than that candidate's Twitter, LinkedIn, or public Facebook page?The fact that your page itself lists these social media URLs makes your homepage, theoretically, more useful in a broad kind of sense. But it's not obviously more useful than just directly seeing your tweets on first click.And on a quasi-technical note, think of the heuristic/algorithmic hoops Google's search engine would have to resolve in order to rank a page like yours over Twitter and LinkedIn:1. LinkedIn page is ranked first because LinkedIn is an extremely popular site.2. Random webpage that links to LinkedIn page should get quality points because it also purportedly links to the person's other social URLs, and a normal human being would find that useful.I know Google search logic and variety of signals is quite complicated and probably handles situations like these, but think of how easy it might be to game such a heuristic that gives pages quality points based on the quality of pages that they link to. That's almost exactly backwards of the original Google BackRub algorithm.Other than getting legit sites to link to you (putting the URL in your Twitter bio might help, though Twitter renders it with a nofollow tag), your easiest bet to get higher is to add content to your site. A blog with intermittent updates would be ideal, but are you really unable to write a public-facing biography for yourself?The ultimate question is: the purpose of Google and the Web are not to make things nice for any one user. Ideally, Google surfaces results that it thinks humans actually would be satisfied on clicking on. Let's imagine that someone, anyone out of the billions of Internet users on any given day, decides to search for your name.Can you put yourself in the place of that user and honestly believe you'd be satisfied with landing on your basically empty homepage? Web users don't benefit from all the meta optimizations that you've added, they are there for the content.

pknerdover 7 years ago

Make your Google Plus Profile.