A Translator’s Musings
Oleg Kuzin, a fellow member of the Halton Peel Communications Association, and certified translator has recently begun blogging. His blog, Translator’s Musings, shares his insights into the world of cross-language and cross-cultural communications.
One thing that Oleg shared over the HPCA mail list is that since beginning his blog, a Google search on his name now ranks him in the top 10. What’s more, he’s discovered 13 different sites that mention and link to him (… you can make that 14 now Oleg).
Another member replied “it sounds good but… someone first has to know your name and know you exist to come across your listings. You have to become well known in a first place. Isn’t it catch 22?”
There are some benefits of coming up as number one on Google under your own name. I don’t know about the rest of you, but more and more I’m choosing to do a quick Google on someone before I hire. There’s something a bit impressive about being among the top ‘Rob Clark’ entries out of 20,000,000 possible results. But then I don’t expect many to Google Rob Clark aside from prospective clients, family or long out of touch friends. Likewise, I don’t expect many are searching for Oleg save for the same.
But then, being first as a search under Oleg isn’t the real win for Oleg. What’s moved Oleg to being the first are all these people linking to him. Each of these 14 sites linking to him have an audience. And these audiences have now been introduced to Oleg and his work. What’s more, they’ve been introduced in a way that helps to assert Oleg as the skilled expert that he is. This is not the blind referal from a driectory or a nameless and unaccountable ad. This is true word of mouth from other communicators, professionals and experts.
But even that’s not the real win for Oleg.
The win for Oleg is that these links all refer to him and his profession in the same breath. Right now, these links are enough so that the search engines, when queried about Oleg Kuzin, naturally assume that we must want Oleg Kuzin, the certified translator who all these people are linking to. Given enough links, and the search engines will begin to suspect that when you search for a ‘certified translator’, you surely must mean ‘Oleg Kuzin‘.
July 24th, 2006 at 9:44 pm
Thank you for the kind words, Rob. I had not seen your blog before. I just Googled myself again todau and your article came up first - just like you said.