Personal Brand SEO Strategies for 2026 | James Dooley Panel

James Dooley: Personal branding strategies in 2026. Today I'm joined with Mike Lovatt, Paul Truscott and Luke Bastin, who are going to be talking about the importance of personal branding and what strategies you can use to improve your brand SERP.

So Mike, let's kick things off. Why is it important to have a personal brand this year?

Mike Lovatt: I think it is getting harder and harder, with the rise of AI, to cut above generic advice.

If you're selling services, whether that is in the fitness niche or the SEO niche, what makes you different? If you're a personal trainer and someone is deciding whether to hire you, they will probably Google your name or search for you on social media. If there is nothing there, or you have just posted generic advice, it is not going to do you any favours. In a world where everyone is turning to ChatGPT as their personal assistant, your personal brand is more important than ever. The barrier to entry is lower than ever for anyone to start some sort of online business. Lots of young people are doing it. Your reputation and the way you put yourself out there are more important than ever. If you just have a generic homepage or no homepage at all, no information about you online, no testimonials, no reviews, no podcast appearances, no video and nothing else, why would anyone want to hire you? There are people doing everything on every platform. You search their name and they are everywhere. You cannot avoid seeing them.

James Dooley: Personal branding. Paul Truscott, why do you think it is important?

Paul Truscott: Everything Mike just said, for sure.

Access to information is now so widespread and cheap that it is not difficult for people to find out who you are, or at least who they perceive you to be based on online content. If your personal brand is not visible, and you are the face behind the business, the first thing someone will do is Google your name. If nothing appears, or worse, bad things appear and there is nothing good there, then you are dead out of the gate. It is not simple because there is work involved, but there is nothing complicated about actually doing it. People just tend not to bother. Even founders of big companies often do not have any personal brand presence, which makes no sense to me. Maybe it just does not occur to them, but personal branding is more important now than ever.

James Dooley: What about you, Luke?

Luke Bastin: I would say a couple of things.

Brand protection is really key. There are hundreds of Web 2.0 websites where anyone can sign up for free with a handle. If you're not controlling the narrative around who you are and your personal brand, somebody else can. That can be deliberate by a bad actor, or it can happen by accident. I have seen people start building their personal brand and realise that someone else with the same name already has unfavourable search results, including serious criminal associations. When someone types your name into Google to find out who you are, and you do not control that narrative, it can plant a negative seed even if they realise it is not you. It lengthens the sales cycle. You probably lose calls, enquiries and connections from that. The other thing I would say is that I have recently been asked by clients for advice on products linked to personal brands. I did not realise until the last few months how much business gets done based on personal recommendation. Even at enterprise level, it is often, “I met this person at a conference. They seem legit. They have this SaaS product. Can you check it out?” That personal recommendation drives business. You can build a lot around a personal brand. Those are the two biggest things I have learned recently.

James Dooley: For me, I have gone all in on personal branding.

The biggest point that has not been touched on yet is the multiplier. If you're ever looking to sell a business, buyers are not just looking at the asset. They are looking at the person selling it. If they do not know who you are, they do not know enough about you. That can create downsides. They may question whether the asset is trusted, or whether it is propped up by a PBN network, shady links, shady redirects, canonicals or other tactics. Because they do not know who you are, they may presume things are happening, and you may not get the multiplier you expected. I have realised that first-hand, and that kickstarted me into building my personal brand. From there, I started to realise that whether you call it E-E-A-T signals or something else, when I attach my personal brand to a business, it always seems to perform better. Whether that is correlation or causation, or whether E-E-A-T is a thing or not, it just seems to perform better. I am promoting it, so it could be the traffic coming through to it as well. Another big benefit is staff. The number of people now reaching out to me saying, “James, I love your messaging. I love the service you provide. I want to work for you,” has increased. They are willing to work at a good rate, and I am getting A-players applying. The last one for me is investment opportunities. People who would not have known who I was now come to me saying, “James, I believe you have invested in this, this and this. Would you be interested in investing in that?” I can always say no to the staff. I can always say no to the investment. But I want the opportunity that personal branding brings. That is one of the biggest parts. You are controlling your own message and your own narrative, not somebody else. In the AI era, the big term for me is digital moat. It is the only digital moat you have around who you are, what you do and why you are brilliant. Let's move on to the strategies. Mike, you have been doing loads of this. You have been getting your name out there, appearing on podcasts and creating videos for both your business brand and personal brand. What strategies do you think are working well for building a personal brand?

Mike Lovatt: I think video has always been a good one.

You can churn out blog posts, but not everyone has time to read them. Everyone has a low attention span. One thing I have noticed that has worked for me is that I used to think, “Why would I spend hours teaching something for free on YouTube when nobody will hire me because I have given them the blueprint?” But people watch the video and think, “You know what you're talking about. I will hire you because I am too busy to do it myself.” I used to think sharing SEO methods would just help competitors, but they are usually busy doing something else anyway. It is the same with a personal trainer. You could say that if they share every gym movement on Instagram, nobody will hire them. But people actually think, “They know what they are doing,” and then hire them. For investment opportunities, someone might think, “I am good at making software, but I do not know SEO. This person knows SEO, so I will give them 50% of the business to do the SEO.” That software could later sell for millions. If you were a nobody and never made a video, nobody would know who you are, and those opportunities would not come to you.

James Dooley: For sure. What about yourself, Paul? Is there anything you're working on or anything you have seen others doing to build a personal brand that seems to work well?

Paul Truscott: I can only speak from my own personal experience and what I am doing to develop my personal brand at the moment.

The key for me is everything Mike said, but multimodal. Although Mike is right that people do not always want to read blogs, I would still produce them because I like to see everything corroborating one another. From Google's perspective, I would say you are trying to get a knowledge panel. When someone Googles your name, like with James, your picture appears on the right-hand side of the screen. That is the ultimate result. It tells people subliminally that Google trusts you. They may not know what a knowledge panel is, but there is instant trust there because they know it is not happening for no reason. Schema is the key to pulling all of that together. Schema also helps connect where you sit within your brand. If you have a brand outside your personal brand, you want to tie those together. If you have multiple brands, you want to tie yourself to those brands. The best way of doing that is through schema so Google can understand how everything relates. It can connect your personal brand, awards, credentials and other signals. One thing I found recently was Credly. I did not know much about it before, but it has been a revelation. Credly is a standard for accreditations. Many universities and academic institutions use it so you can get an encrypted badge that shows search engines you have that qualification. It is a strong point of truth because it cannot be faked. Mike touched on the entry bar being low, and that is true. But the entry bar to the second level of the game, which is actually being someone online, is high. That is why personal branding is so important. If you can get over that bar, get yourself a knowledge panel and become known online as a personal brand, you completely differentiate yourself from everyone else. Schema is the glue that binds all of that together. If people do not understand schema, they need to learn a bit about it because there are not really tools that will do all of this properly for you. That is also good in a way because you do not want everybody being able to do it.

James Dooley: What about you, Luke?

Luke Bastin: The biggest personal branding lesson I picked up came from designers when I was working in-house in SEO about seven or eight years ago.

It is the concept of bite, snack and meal. In terms of developing your personal brand, you need to think about three different types of messaging within the overall personal branding funnel. Bite content is short-form, high-level content that hits the main points of who you are, what you do, who you help and your purpose. Snack content is a slightly more amplified version of that. This conversation is probably snack content. Meal content is a much fuller version, such as a sales page, personal website or even a learning management system. You need those three tiers so people can interact with you and find out about you at the level and time they want. I find that really helpful.

James Dooley: Back to you, Mike, with regards to strategies. Are there any platforms you're using?

It could be Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, podcasts, Instagram, Pinterest or guest posting. What platforms do you feel help most with personal branding online?

Mike Lovatt: I feel like when you go after guest posts, a lot of the time it takes a lot of outreach effort unless you already know the person.

Publishing on your own channels is often the best way. That could be podcasts, YouTube or Shorts. I have never been big on Instagram myself because I always thought, for SEO and online business, it was not that useful. But when I looked into it, I saw huge people blowing up in the SEO and digital marketing world on TikTok and Instagram with short-form video. It is surprising how well it works. I think too many people stress about trying to perfect everything and make it look studio quality. They see Joe Rogan doing a podcast and think theirs has to look the same. But it can be a fairly raw conversation. Some of the best YouTube videos I have watched in SEO were literally recordings of Zoom meetings where people just bashed ideas around. That can be better than an overly polished scripted video. Sometimes persistence on social media and regularly publishing is what matters. I read the other day that around 90% of YouTube channels post one video and then are too scared to post again because they do not get the views they wanted. But the people who keep going are the ones who win. Luke mentioned in an earlier episode that in SEO or online business, your videos might only get a few views, but one of those views could turn into a £5,000 per month contract. People might say the video only had 20 views, but the right person might see it, realise you know what you're talking about and hire you. Sometimes it is not about doing it in the perfect format or on the perfect platform. It is just about getting yourself out there consistently.

James Dooley: What about yourself, Paul? Are you going all in on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, or all of it?

Paul Truscott: I think all of it, to be honest.

We are in such a multimodal world now, and people consume content from so many sources, so it is important to be everywhere if it makes sense. There may be platforms where there is an incongruence issue depending on what you do. Maybe a lawyer would not feel right on TikTok, or maybe they would. It depends. If there is a credibility gap between what you do and the platform, it may make sense to avoid it. Otherwise, from an exposure perspective, just be everywhere. You should also get as many seed platforms and seed sites as possible. Crunchbase is one example. If you're in the tech space, there are around 800 sites where you can create a useful profile. That may be less relevant outside tech, but YouTube, social profiles and Wikidata can all help. If you're notable enough, a Wikidata page is useful because it can help Google recognise you. You need to think about two things. One is being noticed by the public. The other is being noticed by search engines and making sure they see you as credible. Awards are important too. If you have awards or credentials, make sure they are visible. I mentioned Credly before, but there are other ways as well. If you went to a university, cite that university and what you did there. Cite associations with people too. You can do this in schema. If you know famous people, reference them in your schema and put pictures of you with them on your pages. All of that is important, so do it in as many places as possible, as long as it makes sense.

James Dooley: What about you, Luke?

Luke Bastin: I tend to look at platforms in two different ways.

You have platforms where the prospects you are trying to reach spend time online. You want to be seen there. That can vary a lot from niche to niche, depending on what you are trying to do. I think of those as revenue-generating platforms. Then you have other platforms where you're not necessarily trying to reach people who may do business with you, but they are good for reinforcing the first type. They could be syndication networks, or RSS. We have not touched on RSS today, but it is a great way of getting more eyeballs and more traffic on the same content you already have. I would look at it by analogy as on-page and off-page. Your on-page platforms are where you want people to see you and get in touch. Your off-page platforms are there to amplify those main platforms.

James Dooley: For sure. For me, getting the entity hub is key. Having a homepage for your name, such as jamesdooley.com, glues everything together with schema.

I also like having an email address linked to your personal domain, such as [email protected] . It looks professional when you're sending things out. I could not send a big investment slide deck from a Gmail or Yahoo address. It has to be done professionally. That way, everything connects back to who I am, what I do and how it is all linked together. Video is also key because it is raw. It is you on camera, and people can understand more about you. Sharing content across podcast circuits is also important. We all agree on the importance of personal branding. It also forms part of online reputation management. You can control the message so that if someone writes anything negative about you, you can push that down to page two or three, while page one shows positive reviews, awards and trusted profiles. From an ORM standpoint, personal branding is key. Guys, it has been an absolute pleasure, and I will see you all again.