The “Real” Devin Downey

Is Stephen Colbert the Greatest Living American? Regardless whether it’s intentional or not, he has already added that search term to his personal identity. I remember a lot of talk in the Fast Company period of the late 90’s and early 2000’s regarding cultivating a personal brand for oneself. Greatest Living American is one heck of a personal brand! I’d certainly opt for that over Miserable Failure.

Success. Was it the title of earlier post or the title tag on the home page? Probably the combination. The #1 spot in Google for “Devin Downey” is mine for the time being. I gotta admit, it feels good.

Ok, to be fair, I only monitor Google, but so far I haven’t made a dent. Zero visibility other than the scraper site finding me the other day. I had thought that simply adding a little bit of content and keyword density for “devin downey” would work since Word Press itself is such a link monster, but that doesn’t appear to be the case after a week.

What to try next? As part of any Search 101 thought process, I think to myself that I should monkey around with the CSS and add my name to the title tag. A half hour later, I have no idea how to do how to change the title tag. So I change the title of my blog…. and hello, that is where the title tag exists - one reflects the other on this system. I’ll give this tweak a little bit of time to be picked up and see what kind of impact I can get out of the new title. Come on Google!

So I’ve got a new link of sorts in Google. Position ranking #9 for “Devin Downey” is now a scraper site that stole my content and created some nonsense entry in the SERP’s. It even showed up under a Google Alert for my name. I feel so violated.

It must be about 2 AM here in Dallas. I think this must be around the time of day that most personal websites are launched. After ten years of selling and managing web projects, ironically this is my first endeavor beyond an early myspace profile. It’s about time.