iTechSpeak :::...

It is now a given that Google and other search engines are used more often to check out people and companies. Work that to your advantage. The Internet provides an awesome fertile platform for growing your business or career. The internet allows you to always be marketing.

Become an Internet farmer. Like growing a crop, your Internet web presence must be nurtured, watered and maintained. So you have a profile on LinkedIn, Monster, Career Builder etc.. Or your business web site is featured in a couple of Internet articles and it has some reciprocal links from other web sets. As far as search engines are concerned you're still only as good as your last home run.

Search engines work against you, if no new content is added. Your name or company name slowly gets pushed down on search engine results, unless you're continuously fertilizing the Internet with your presence.

Here's 5 ways to grow and maintain your web presence:

1. If you have a resume posted on any job boards, make Sunday night your time to feed your web presence. Open your resume in "edit" mode. Press the space bar any where in your resume. Then press the back space key. Now save Your resume. The search engine spiders will sense the change and push your resume up for higher visibility to recruiters and hiring managers. Successful Project Manager, Terry Opalka, provided this brilliant technique at a recent ETP Network event "Sunday night I would update my resume on the job boards, by pressing the space bar and saving it. By Monday my inbox would contain emails from people contacting me about my resume."
   
2. Participate in group forums that cover topics of interest. When replying to a topic thread, insert your full name, company name, web site and contact email address, in your signature. This is referred to as your tagline.
3. Maximize your reading of news articles. At the bottom of each article is usually a comment section. If you agree with the reporter or have something "positive" feedback, go for it. Add your tagline.
   
4. Add "key words" to your Linked profile, resume and web site. This seeding process should include the names of companies or clients where you previously worked. Add your skill set, services or products as key words. Add the names of high profile people related to your industry in your key words.
   
5. Start a blog or comment on blog articles, with your tagline. Search engines love blogs more than web sites. Content on blogs is updated more often. This provides exponentially better results when people are searching for you or your company. Google has a dedicated search engine just for blogs http://blogsearch.google.com .