Will the Real Corey Smith Please Step Forward

Submitted by Corey Smith on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 10:25

Or... My quest to be number one.

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That is not an easy thing when there is a country singer named Corey Smith that owns coreysmith.com and a Corey Smith that is a defensive end for the the Detroit Lions. (So I may not bee the best lookin' one...you can blame that on my Dad).

When I started my blog just over a year ago and I Googled "Corey Smith" I don't think that I was in the top 100 pages of search results. I started keeping track of my results in November of last year and I made it to position 63 (page 7).

As I continued to publish content and people started knowing me, I raise steadily in the ranks.

December - Position 27

January - Position 26

February - Position 21

Then, I had a lunch meeting with Justin Foster who gave me some pretty cool tips on the personal branding of Corey Smith. I wanted to start repositioning myself. Partly from a pride perspective and partly because I want to have multiple opportunities for business.

From that conversation, my blog was change from the Master the Business Blog to Corey Smith's Business and Technology Blog. I signed up for social networking sites (like Blogrush, DIIGO and StumbleUpon. And I started to participate more. I have made a commitment that I would write at least five new posts per week (I hope you like them). I started writing content for other sites and publications (like BERTL and HP).

I just tried to be a great part of the conversation where ever I could.

So... the result in Google?

March - Position 12

April (2 weeks ago) - Position 8

April (1 week ago) - Position 7

Today - Position 3

At this point, I assume that I will fluctuate a lot, but I have learned some significant things through the process.

  1. SEO takes time, effort and patience
  2. A personal brand is critical to get noticed
  3. Identifying yourself, who you are and what you do is critical to a personal brand.

What I am very happy about is the subscribers to my blog has doubled in the last 45 days.

Now, to say that the only thing I am concerned about is that I have branded my name as Corey Smith is simply not true. There are other ways that I want to brand myself. I want to be known for far more. There are many things now, because of my relevance in certain areas that search helps out... but the bottom line is that a personal brand is critical to the success of anyone in business.



Corey Smith is the president of Tribute Media a web development firm providing high performing, industry specific websites. He is a businessman, writer, technology fanatic, graphic designer and web developer. His greatest passion is teaching, consulting and speaking.

You can find him on Twitter, FaceBook, FriendFeed, and LinkedIn.

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Submitted by Dan Schawbel (not verified) on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 13:33.
A lot of people have common names. The people who have unique names should thank their parents. Also, everyone should buy their ownname.com to secure their brand. Domains in this way, rank the highest in Google.

Submitted by Luke Harvey-Palmer (not verified) on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 19:13.
Corey...great to hear you speak (write) of Personal Brandng from a personal perspective., and well done on the results online! Good luck with the 5 posts a week - beng persistently consistent is vital, as is choosing your target audeince. Establish who needs to know about your brand, and devise a strategy to access them consistently...have fun and I look forward to hearing more about your journey.

Submitted by Corey Smith’s Business and Technology Blog » Speaking of Per (not verified) on Sat, 04/26/2008 - 11:13.
[...] mentioned that Justin Foster gave me some very pointed and successful tips to building my personal brand. His marketing agency, Tricycle Brand Management Team is putting on a seminar on how to brand [...]
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