Branding yourself as a web design and freelancing expert

Are you a freelance website or graphic designer that’s currently trying to brand yourself as an expert while building a loyal following through your personal name? If, so that’s awesome! Over the years I’ve done the same thing. I was an affiliate marketer from back in the mid 90s, then I started my own blog and brand back in 2007 and haven’t looked back since.

Having already experienced the process of building my own brand and knowing it’s importance, I have some useful tips for everyone out there who is trying to do the same. Hopefully I can save you some frustration and get you there a little faster.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve been in the industry for a decade or just started last week, each of these methods will help in growing your exposure, bringing in new business and solidifying your name in the search results for years to come.

How to Brand Yourself as a Web Designing Expert

Each of these methods can be applied to any industry, as the end goal is to establish yourself as an expert. The web site, graphic design and freelance space is awesome because everyone is always looking to share information and resources — which you can start using to your advantage.

Dominate Your Name in the Search Results

One of the most important and powerful ways to secure your place as an expert in any niche, is to appear at the top of the search results. However, it’s not enough to just rank at the top of the search results… you want to dominate it!

As I mentioned earlier, if you are using your personal name to brand yourself and your freelance work, you likely already have some competition in the world today — as in other people who share the same name as you. The last thing you want is for someone to Google your name online, only to find someone else!

Depending on the originality of your name, this may be easier said than done — especially if you share the name with a celebrity.

For instance… my name is “Zac Johnson” and if you Google that, you will see I pretty much own the whole first page. However, there is also a famous “Zach Johnson”, who is a world renown professional golfer who I am constantly battling with in the search results (mainly if someone misspells my name). If I wasn’t extremely well branded and worked on my rankings in the search results, he would probably appear under my name as well.

Google my name and this is what you will likely see.

So how can you do the same for your name?

Simple… let me walk you through the process.

1. Create a Web Site or Blog Around Your Name

The first thing you will want to do is create a web site or blog. If you don’t have one already, I have an extremely easy how to start a blog tutorial that is easy enough for anyone to start a site of their own in literally five minutes.

With a site of your own you can start building credibility, have all of your contact information and even a portfolio of all your work. This is also what Mirko has done with his own personal site. In short, your web site or blog is going to be your main point of reference and your main hub for dominating the first page of Google.

2. Build Out Your Social Following

Next, you are going to need to secure your name across all of the major social networks. As you can see, the first several rankings on Google are all of my social profiles on Twitter (yes, I have two listed), Facebook and LinkedIn. Join all of the major social networks and if you can’t secure the exact match for your name, get creative or something very similar. Knowem.com is a useful tool to see if you name is available across hundreds of networks.

Once you have all of your social profiles setup, link to them all from your blog or web site. You want to make it easy for people to find you on all networks and online, no matter where they find you first (whether it be your social profile or web site). Linking the properties together will also help rank social profiles and blog in Google.

The best part of this is that Google loves social networks and it’s very easy to get them to rank for your name, especially if you send a few links back to them as well.

3.) Share Your Expertise Within Your Niche

This one is a real gem! If you are already an awesome web designer and do great freelance work, you are probably great at what you do. Now it’s time to share your expertise with others, while also gaining valuable backlinks to your site in the process.

For example, I’m writing this awesome post on Designer-Daily.com. The site owner gets my awesome content, and I get to reach a whole new audience. I also get a bio section and link back to my site at the bottom. All three of these aspects will help grow my brand, bring visitors to my site and also help increase my site rankings as well.

The point I’m trying to stress here, is that you can use this same concept to find sites that have relevant content based on what your skills and expertise is, create a killer content article and contact the site owner to see if they would like to publish it for you. If you do this enough, it will not only make you stand out from the crowd, but it will also help you rank your blog at the top of the search results while also eventually boosting up your social profiles as well.

You’re Already an Expert. Now Let the World Know!

Let’s face it… we are all experts at something, and probably web design and freelance work is yours. However, there is also a whole world of competition out there as well. This means you need to put in the world to stand out from the crowd by dominating the first page of the search results and getting your name out there on other relevant sites.

Follow these simple steps I laid out for you in this post, and you will see drastic improvements in not only the search results, but also in your overall business and branding as well.

About the Author: This article was written by Zac Johnson, who is an entrepreneur and online marketer with nearly 20 years of experience. You can learn more about Zac through his blog at http://zacjohnson.com.