In today’s world of the power of search you may or may not realize that people are searching for you, too. In a survey conducted by The Creative Group, over 50% of respondents said that they would Google or another search engine to find information about a perspective employee. With everything that you’ve ever written or anything anyone else has written about in cataloged neatly for them to find that can be a pretty intimidating idea. However, you should never be caught by surprise; you should already know everything out there that someone can find out about you through online searches because you should already be managing your online reputation. Here are some tips for doing just that.

You can sign up for Google and Yahoo email alerts that will notify you when your chosen keywords (your name and/or company name) are found online. This first step can help keep you up to date on who is writing about you or your company, whether it’s flattering or not.

To create some more positive findings and increase your name awareness you should find appropriate message boards or forums that you can participate in. You can also join different groups on Yahoo, AOL, Google, etc. By participating in these types of online activities you leave behind a footprint that shows you are involved in your particular niche and it also gives people a chance to know your thoughts and opinions on important ideas in your field.

With that said, many people have a bigger problem than a bad online reputation to consider and that is no online reputation. If someone doesn’t find any trace of you online while doing a search that also says something about you to a prospective employer so here are some tips for beefing up your online appearances.

Use the social networking sites such as Facebook or Myspace to post information about your professional qualifications. Just make sure that your profiles are professional, too. Also be sure to join other social networking sites such as Linkin.com and niche-specific sites as well. However, when you join these sites be selective with who you allow in your network as they are a bigger reflection of who you are compared to other social networking sites.

You should also consider creating your own web site or blog. Provide information about yourself and keep the page updated with links to things of interest in your field such as other blogs or informative articles. If you are creative you should include a portfolio of work samples to help people understand projects you’ve worked on before. If you aren’t as creative include highlights of your past accomplishments.

Finally, be ready to offer an explanation if something bad is said about you, whether it’s true or not. If it is true you should be honest and talk about what the circumstances where. If not, simply provide your proof that it’s not and leave it be. Badmouthing an adversary won’t help in maintaining your reputation, online or off.

Hittail.com is a service that shows you all the keywords people use to find your website in real time. The service provides a list of your top 10 performing keywords as well as offering the less popular, or Long Tail, keywords that could be used to find your site. The company’s theory is that by using these Long Tail keywords in association with your top 10 performing keywords you’ll boost your site’s organic search results.

To use Hittail.com you have to register and then use the provided JavaScript on your website. Plans run from free to $99.95 per month depending on what kind of features you are looking for. Once you embed the code into your site you can see your search hits and browse the keywords suggested by Hittail.com. As you write using these keywords the cycle begins again, with Hittail.com sending you your top keywords and potential new ones after each update on your site.

The keyword suggestion is part of the free service. Hittail.com says the terms that are suggested to you are chosen for their ability to improve your rankings as well as your conversions. They also stress the reason it’s better than a program such as AdWords is that you use the suggested keywords in your writings, which makes the keywords a permanent asset.

The Long Tail, a phrase made popular by Chris Anderson’s Wired article, refers to the many products that are less popular, but still wanted by consumers. Businesses such as Amazon.com made this kind of purchasing popular and have an extremely successful business model based on it. So, when you are optimizing your site a choice you can make is to go after the “head”, or most in demand keywords for your market, or the “Long Tail”, the more specific keywords. The problem is, how do you know which is better to pursue?

While it is impressive to think of the thousands of people that may want to buy the latest blockbuster you should keep in mind that there might be many more thousands of other movies that people want to purchase in smaller amounts. Either way, they both add up to profits. Here are some advantages and disadvantages to pursuing the long tail

One of the main benefits of chasing the Long Tail is that these keywords tend to have a much higher conversion rate. The reasoning is that people who are searching for a specific product are usually ready to buy. The more generic searchers are usually still in a research and compare phase.

Another benefit is that it is much easier to rank higher for long tail keywords. The competition can be fierce for the more general keywords and phrases in your market. However, not everyone offers the products found in the Long Tail or wants to try to rank for them. This often increases your chances at a number one ranking. An additional benefit of this is that your PPC costs will be lower because of less competition.

Long Tail keywords also tend to increase traffic, and highly targeted traffic at that, to your web site. Since you have a lot more pages indexed and ranked by search engines for specific phrases you’ll have more visibility, which leads to more SERPs. However, this is a gradual result and shouldn’t be expected immediately with the implementation of Long Tail keywords. Additionally, more traffic means more awareness of your site, which ultimately grows your customer base and can lead to increased revenues.

However, there are some disadvantages to Long Tail keywords, too. First is the fact that each Long Tail keyword brings in significantly less traffic than the more popular ones. This means you’ll have to spend a lot of time coming up with words that are searched for often enough to make a difference to your business.

Another problem is the potential keyword combinations. Many Long Tail keywords rely on geographical or similar qualifiers, such as Denver, CO SEO. The problem here is determining which combinations will work best for your market.

Finally, you don’t want to pick words that return only one or two searches per year, so you have to monitor your Long Tail keywords to find out which ones deliver search results often enough to be profitable for your company. The effort of monitoring keywords can take up a lot of time if you aren’t well educated on what your market is looking for.

While there are many advantages and disadvantages to using Long Tail keywords, the best strategy is most likely a combination. Don’t rely solely on the Long Tail and don’t try to make due without it (unless you’re already a bigger company) for the best search results for your business.

Creating a blog has become so easy that most people have no trouble doing so. It’s easy to throw together something using wordpress or a similar tool and just start posting. However, blogs have a purpose, or at least they should. A blog is another way for smart businesspersons to market themselves and to build credibility and trust in their market. And it’s easy to update frequently, which makes it appealing to search engines. The question is how can you maximize the potential of a blog.

Start at the beginning with your blog’s name. Use keywords that are relevant and valuable in your market. If you already have a blog look at how much traffic you get each day. If the numbers aren’t high you may want to consider switching to a new name if possible. However, if you already have a decent amount of traffic there are other steps you can take to maximize your blog’s potential.

One of those steps is to use your strongest keywords and key phrases often in your writings. But, be careful not to oversaturate your site with these keywords. Use the keyword appearances often enough for the search engines to realize what your area of expertise is, but don’t make them think you are a spammy site for your particular keywords. Another thing that helps here is to pick one subject and just stick to it. Then your posts will consistently be about that topic and search engines will see you as an authority on it.

Also, you should submit your blog to the major search engines and blog indexes. Don’t forget to allow social bookmarking such as Digg, De.li.ci.ous, etc. These sites allow people to share your blogs. And remember the more consistently and often that you post the more likely people will be to keep reading your blog.

Finally, get your blog link out there. Participate in forums with links to your blog or try to link to websites and other blogs that are related. The more places a link to your blog is available, the more people will see it and that will lead to more traffic overall.

With all the ups and downs of websites’ PageRank many people are wondering how important PageRank really is. First of all, you have to understand that PageRank does not equal search engine rankings. PageRank is actually often at least a month out of date. Besides that it has little relation to the actual rank your site will show up for in an organic search. Showing up in the top numbers for search engine ranking is much more important than having a high PageRank.

Beyond that it also doesn’t matter how high your site’s PageRank is if you aren’t getting unique visits and longer visitor times on your site. If you have a PageRank of 6, but no one is coming to your site, or even worse people are coming and then leaving immediately, it does you no good. Web sites need to convert visitors, that is get a visitor to take some desired action whether it’s making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter.

Finally, depending solely on Google for traffic and your idea of your site’s status can drive you crazy, not to mention its pretty risky business. Try to focus on keeping your content new and your site relevant for your niche. Also, focus on having RSS subscribers or good word of mouth marketing or marketing campaigns to avoid a dependency on Google to bring visitors (and money) to your site.

While it is nice to see that Google’s PageRank thinks highly of your site, the reality of the situation is that you want to rank high in search engine results and you want to have a lot of visitors to your site that end up as conversions to truly have a successful web site.