When someone gets a referral, sees your business card or comes across your profile, the next step is almost always to search your name. That search is different from competing for a generic word like "designer" or "dentist": the person already knows who they are looking for. They just want to confirm that you exist, that you are legitimate and how to reach you.
The problem is that what shows up often does not help: an old profile, someone with the same name, an outdated phone number or no official site at all. The good part is that this is one of the easier scenarios to fix in SEO, because it is more about removing ambiguity than about competing.
A caveat: nobody controls exactly what Google shows. What you can do is send clear, consistent signals.
Run the test before changing anything
Open a private window and search your name. Then search your name together with your profession and your city. Write down:
- whether your site shows up, and in what position;
- which profiles show up, and whether they are all still yours and up to date;
- whether another person or company has the same name;
- whether any detail (phone, address, job title) is wrong.
It is worth doing the same by asking an AI assistant "who is [your name]". The answer shows what public sources say about you today.
Your own domain as the official source
Social media profiles belong to the platform. The only place that is truly yours is a website on your own domain, and it should be the official source that every other profile points to.
In the projects I build, the domain, hosting and repository stay in the client's name, not mine. That matters here too: your identity in search should not depend on a vendor.
The home page needs to say, in text, who you are, what you do and where you work. The page title (the <title> tag) should contain your name the way you want to be found. It sounds obvious, but it is common to see sites whose home page is just a tagline over an image.
Real pages for the main sections
About, Services, Projects, Blog and Contact work better as their own pages, each with its own URL, than as anchors on a single page. That gives Google a structure to understand the site and, eventually, to show extra links below the main result — sitelinks.
Sitelinks cannot be forced; Google decides when to show them. What it recommends is the basics done well: informative titles, a logical structure, internal links with short and clear anchor text, and little repeated content across pages.
Same name, same details, everywhere
Consistency is the strongest signal you control. Use the same name, spelled the same way, on your site, LinkedIn, Instagram, GitHub, your Google Business Profile (if you have one) and any directory where you appear. Same photo or logo, same short description, and always a link to your site.
If someone shares your name, pick a differentiator — profession, city, middle name — and always use it. Abandoned profiles should be updated or closed, so they do not compete with the current ones.
Structured data: Person, Organization and sameAs
In the site's code, a JSON-LD block can formally describe who is behind it. For a personal brand, the type is Person; for a company, Organization (or a subtype such as LocalBusiness). The properties that matter most here are the name, the site URL, an image or logo, a short description and sameAs.
sameAs is the list of links to your official profiles on other sites. It is the way to say "the person on this LinkedIn and this Instagram is the same person as on this site". Google lists this property as recommended in its Organization documentation.
It is also worth marking up the home page with WebSite and the site name, one of the signals Google uses to decide which name to show in the result.
This site is an example: the home page declares a Person as the main entity, with sameAs pointing to my Instagram and LinkedIn profiles, and a WebSite with the same name. Everything in the schema is also written on the page — marking up what visitors cannot see goes against Google's guidelines.
Search Console: see what Google sees
Google Search Console is free, and it is where you stop guessing. After verifying your domain:
- submit your sitemap;
- use URL Inspection on the home page to confirm it is indexed;
- in the Performance report, filter the queries that contain your name and see which pages appear and how many people click.
Changes do not show up right away: Google has to recrawl the pages, on a schedule you do not control. Fix things, check again after a few weeks and adjust whatever is still off.
Knowledge panel: nice if it comes, do not promise it
Some people and companies get a knowledge panel, the box next to the results. If yours shows up, you can claim it and suggest corrections. But not every panel can be claimed, and there is no guaranteed way to make one appear. I would be wary of anyone selling it as a sure result.
For businesses with an address or a service area, the equivalent path is the Google Business Profile, which I explain in local SEO for Monte Alto and the region. If your site is a portfolio, this post on professional portfolios complements it. And the same clarity about who you are helps AI assistants cite you correctly, as I explain in AEO for websites.
If what shows up today when people search your name is not right and you want help sorting it out, you can find me on the contact page.