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Did you know you can control what comes up in Google searches on your name? That’s an important skill if you anticipate a prospective employer (or date) will be checking you out, or, like the new Chairman of GE, you’d rather be known more for your actual accomplishments than for your rattlesnake-killing techniques. Here’s how.

When we asked Rea Drysdale, author of the free Online Reputation Management Guide for advice for our readers, she used Ed Whitacare – as an illustration of what happens when you don’t can control your online presence.

In a search for “Ed Whitacre” on Google, Drysdale found that most of the top ten results focus on his recent appointment as chairman of GM, highlighting his lack of experience in the automotive industry with the exception of owning a Cadillac. “There are only small mentions of his enormous pension package and shareholder losses at AT&T, his former post, with far more mentions of his favorite pastime – killing rattlesnakes with a rock.”

“Is that what ‘Big Ed’ wants the world to see when they look for more information on him? Probably not,” said Drysdale. “If I could wave my magic ORM wand, his results would include a press release issued by GM on his appointment, his bio on GM.com, his Forbes.com profile, BusinessWeek.com profile, Wikipedia entry, and other favorable profiles or news.”

A lot of people don’t like what shows up when the check themselves out, but “you control your online presence,” said Drysdale. “You might not be the new chairman of GM, but if you’re pro-active with your online reputation, you won’t leave room for negative mentions or outdated information to creep to the top.”

If you have a serious reputation problem, you’ll need some expert help, said Drysdale, but for most people, the online reputation management basics are easy to master and with a little practice they can bring their most relevant search results to the top, above any negative mentions. Here’s what she recommends to get started:

Register your domain name. If yourname.com is available, you should register it today. If you share names with a celebrity, you’ve got a unique set of problems, but for most, you can register your name or a derivation of it to ensure that you have a keyword-rich domain within your control.

Register your username – the one that you want to appear next to your posts, whether it’s your actual name or a nickname. A service like KnowEm.com will register your username across more than a hundred social networks for a small fee. Whether or not you use the accounts, they’ll be protected and available for the future.

Optimize your professional profiles. Setup your LinkedIn account. Stop complaining and go do it. I’m still amazed by how few professionals take advantage of this tool. Fill in your name, work history and links at the very least and set a custom URL for your profile (use your name). Now go setup your Naymz.com account. Rinse and repeat with all relevant professional social networks and industry-specific directories or associations.

Optimize your corporate bio. If you’re an executive, business owner, board member or simply work with a company that displays bios for every employee, optimize it! Take advantage of the opportunity for another relevant search result within your control.

Link everything together. Link each profile/page to your other accounts using your name as the anchor text of your link.

If you have a serious reputation problem, you’ll need some expert help, said Drysdale, but these basic steps, plus occasional monitoring, should be sufficient to manage an online reputation.

But be patient. The search engines will need weeks to crawl everything and longer to start indexing it. Mark your calendar and in 30 days go back to Google to see what the search results look like. You should notice a significant improvement, said Drysdale, especially if you didn’t have a strong presence before.