How Your Google Results Affect Your Real Estate Brand

As a real estate agent, you can be certain a potential buyer or listing prospect will Google your name and business prior to even setting up the first meeting. Tens of millions of people Google prospective real estate agents, companies, business partners and new hires every single day. This means your personal search engine results are a large part of your business's success. Huge corporations pay big bucks to manage search engine optimization (SEO) to protect their brands. As a real estate agent, your name is your brand; are you taking the steps to make sure you proactively protect it?

The first step is to Google your name and company to see what turns up. Pay close attention to what is on the first few pages of Google, click your social media links if you have any and review your pages objectively. If you're lucky, your Google search results are 100% positive. But if you're like most people, there's plenty of room for improvement. Maybe your top results are your 156th place finish in a 5K ten years ago or your expired listings from five years ago. Or it's possible you'll discover comments by disgruntled former business associates or clients? Finding an embarrassing, personal social media post or photo you didn't realize would become your top online result, is also feasible.

The good news is that you can fix these results and improve an already solid online presence quickly and affordably! Here's how to get started:

• Sign up for Google Alerts: Sign up at Google.com/alerts and Socialmention.com/alerts and monitor changes to your personal Google search results. It's free!
• Leverage your domain name: Buy domains with yourname.com or .net, .biz, etc., and create sites with free platforms likeWordPress or Tumblr.
• Engage with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn: Start participating in social media if you're not already doing so. If you already are, make sure your personal pages contain content you don't mind potential clients seeing and make sure your business page contains relevant, educational and compelling content. Make sure to update frequently!
• Sign up for BrandYourself.com: The do-it-yourself platform empowers anyone to take control of their Google search results – for free. Submit online content that already exists (social media profiles, website, blog) and BrandYourself.com's software analyzes each link and offers specific steps to increase your visibility. BrandYourself.com will also send alerts when an unidentified result appears on Google's first page or when any links rise or fall significantly, so you can always stay on top of your brand.

As a real estate agent, you are your brand, so it's important to make sure people find the most accurate, relevant results possible about you online. You can control your online image and protect your brand by optimizing your personal search results – starting today.

To view the original article, visit the HomeFinder.com blog.