Oh, go google yourself!

Before I became serious about writing, I would have never considered going to google and typing in my name.  Now, it is something I do at least weekly.  It's interesting to note that on a few of the sites I belong to, folks were not aware that so much of their information was available through search engines.  Yep, nothing is sacred anymore!  If you do anything online, from posting to a forum, to having a blog, "they" find it, catagorize it, label it and display it. 

Who are "They?"  Google, Yahoo, MSN, and all other search engines.  Now, for me, it is a good thing to have many listings under my name.  I am a writer, that means I'm getting noticed.  Some people are just surprised that they can be "googled."  Don't believe me?  Go to google.com and put your name in the search box.  Viola, I bet you are there!

If you WANT to be noticed by the search engines, keywords (until Web 2.0 is complete) are extremely important.  Not only do you want them in your tags (that you add at the bottom of your article) but you want them IN the context of your story.  Without using certain words in every sentence, try to sneak them in as often as you can.  Google, and the other "crawlers" like this!  Become search engine friendly!

To summarize, make Google (and MSN, Yahoo) your friends.  Have you seen the ads that say "Your ex just googled you, what will they find?"  There is SO much truth to that ad.  Happy Googling!