When someone hears your name at a dinner, a conference or in a referral email, there is a good chance they type it into Google before replying. What they find on that first page shapes whether they get in touch. For many UK founders, consultants and independent professionals, that search returns a dormant LinkedIn profile, an old Companies House listing, a namesake in another line of work and nothing written by them.
Personal branding, as I approach it, is the practical work of fixing that. It has three parts: a small website you own, a search result for your name that you can recognise and stand behind, and a habit of publishing that you can keep up without it taking over your week. It is not about becoming an influencer.
Who this suits, and who it does not
This work fits people whose name does part of the selling. Typical situations:
- You are a founder whose investors, hires and larger customers look you up before they look up the company.
- You are a consultant, coach, adviser or freelancer, and work comes to you by personal recommendation.
- You are moving from employment into self-employment and need a professional presence that does not depend on your old employer’s website.
- You speak at events or appear in the press, and organisers keep asking for a bio and headshot you have to dig out each time.
It is the wrong service if the real need is marketing the company rather than the person: positioning, messaging and the business website come first in that case, and I would start with a written digital marketing strategy instead. It is also not the right fit if your name search already contains damaging articles or reviews. Dealing with those is reputation work, which is a separate and more careful job.
What the work covers
One sentence about what you do
Every profile, bio and page you publish should agree on who you help and with what. I start by writing that sentence with you, plus a short and a long biography, because nearly every problem with a personal brand traces back to five profiles that each describe a slightly different person.
A website on a domain you own
A personal site is the one place online you control. I usually recommend registering your name as a domain name, often a .co.uk alongside the .com if both are free, and building a few pages: a home page that says what you do, an about page, a page for speaking or press, and a place for your writing. Profiles on other platforms can change their rules or disappear; a site on your own domain does not.
Your name in Google
Search engines need help to understand that the person on your website, the person on LinkedIn and the person quoted in a trade article are the same individual. I add Person schema to your site, which is structured data naming you and pointing to your official profiles, and I make sure those profiles link back. Over time this is what can lead Google to show a knowledge panel for your name, though Google decides that and nobody can guarantee it. I also verify the site in Google Search Console so you can see which searches already bring people to you.
Profiles that agree with each other
I review the profiles that appear for your name, typically LinkedIn, any directory or professional body listing, event pages and old employer pages, and give you exact wording and photo guidance so they all tell the same story. Where an outdated page sits on a site you do not control, I draft the email asking the owner to update it.
A publishing habit you can keep
A personal brand is built mostly by what you publish. I help you choose two or three subjects you can write about from real experience, set a realistic rhythm on a simple content calendar, and agree how longer pieces on your site get reused as shorter posts elsewhere. First-hand experience is the first “E” in E-E-A-T, the framework Google’s quality rater guidelines use to judge whether content can be trusted, so this habit supports search as well as reputation.
How I run it
- Name search review. I search your name the way a stranger would, on desktop and mobile, and record every result on the first two pages and who controls it.
- Positioning call. We agree your one-sentence description, your audience and the subjects you want to be known for.
- Biographies and profiles. I write the short and long bios and the profile wording, and you approve them before anything goes live.
- Website. I plan the site’s pages, titles, structured data and an author bio template for anything you publish. Who builds the site is agreed before work starts.
- Publishing plan. We set the subjects, the rhythm and the first few pieces, using a brief so each one has a clear point.
- Check-in. After a few months I search your name again and compare it with the original record, so you can see what has changed and what has not.
Problems I see most often
- A name nobody owns online. The domain for the person’s name was never registered, or was registered years ago by someone else.
- Bios written for a previous job. The conference page, the podcast listing and the professional body directory each describe a different stage of a career.
- Sharing a name with someone better known. The fix here is consistency and a distinguishing detail, such as a middle initial or your field, used everywhere.
- A burst of posting, then silence. Six posts in a fortnight followed by nothing for a year reads worse than one considered post a month.
- Regulated professionals posting without checking the rules. Solicitors, financial advisers and healthcare practitioners in the UK have professional and advertising rules that apply to their personal posts, not only to the firm’s marketing. If your posts promote a financial product, the FCA’s rules on financial promotions apply, and testimonials and claims fall under the ASA’s CAP Code.
- A newsletter sign-up with no proper consent. If your site collects email addresses, UK GDPR and PECR apply, and the sign-up form needs clear consent and a privacy notice.
What you receive
- A written record of your name search before and after, with who controls each result.
- Your positioning sentence and short, medium and long biographies.
- Agreed wording for each profile that appears for your name.
- A plan for a personal website on your own domain, with structured data and Search Console set up once it is live.
- A publishing plan with subjects, rhythm and the first three outlines.
What it costs
The cost depends mainly on whether you need a new website or only the profile and publishing work. Each quote is written after a first call, in pounds sterling, and agreed in writing before work starts. If your site is mainly about publishing, my content SEO and strategy work covers the longer-term plan for what to write and why.
Next step
Send me your name, your current LinkedIn URL and a line on what you would like people to find when they search for you. I will search it myself and tell you on a call what I would change first. Book a free 30-minute call and we can go through it together.