When it comes to SEO, an article written by a self-professed newbie probably isn’t the first thing you want to see.  That said, Julia Angwin writes for the Wall Street Journal, so she was able to catch the ear of some important people and put together an interesting piece.

Not long ago, Angwin decided that the first result for her name didn’t do a good job of representing her career.  So she apparently contacted both Google and Danny Sullivan to ask about getting it removed.  Sullivan said (and a Google employee confirmed), “They don’t really intervene unless there is some good legal reason to do that.”

Then Angwin spoke to Rhea Drysdale, who suggested cross-linking things like her Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles.  Also, even if you can’t pump out widely published and read articles every week like Angwin, “Ms. Drysdale recommends submitting articles to Web sites such as Squidoo.com, eHow.com or Google Knol on topics on that show off your expertise.”

Title tags and metadata came up at a later date, and by the time Angwin published her write-up, she’d seen a great deal of improvement in the search results for her name.  She also learned that she’ll have to keep at the process to make sure content created by other people doesn’t endanger everything.

Her article’s a good read and definitely worth a look.

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