Your journey to uncover your family history can be both exciting and overwhelming. Whether you’re a complete novice or have dabbled a bit, our blog series “Top Five Things To Do With Your Ancestry DNA Results” offers crucial first steps to help you get the most out of your Ancestry DNA test results. Consider these posts a genetic genealogy starter kit. They will help you organize, understand, and expand your family history with confidence. Make sure you’ve got these basics covered first — it’ll make your future exploration more rewarding, not to mention, less painful.
1. Link your DNA to Your Ancestry Profile
The first blog post in the series focuses on the importance of linking your DNA kit to your Ancestry family tree profile. This crucial step unlocks special features on the Ancestry platform that can streamline your genealogical research. Notably, once your DNA kit is connected to your family tree, Ancestry can provide more accurate hints about how you may be related to your DNA matches, especially those who also have well-documented family trees. To read the entire post, click here.
2. Add DNA Matches to Your Family Tree
The second blog post in the series focuses on an important habit to build,… adding DNA matches that you know to your Ancestry family tree. This habit is important to form early in your research. It is especially useful as you delve deeper into genealogy and accumulate more DNA matches, when it will become increasingly difficult to keep track of your family and your growing family tree. To read the entire post, click here.
3. Encourage Relatives To DNA Test
In the third blog post, we discuss a great strategy for deepening your family history research: encouraging relatives to take DNA tests. This is especially helpful for exploring specific family branches you’re curious about. In short, every DNA test you have from a known match in a particular family branch simplifies the identification of unknown DNA matches from that family line. To read the entire post, click here.
4. Success Starts At The Top
This fourth blog post in the series shows you the best way to work through your DNA match list. Your Ancestry DNA matches are organized by how closely related you are to them, with your closest relatives sorted at the top. Approaching genealogy like a jigsaw puzzle, start researching the closest matches first, as they are the “biggest pieces” in your jigsaw puzzle. Once identified, these matches should be added to your family tree for easy reference in the future. To read the entire post, click here.
5. Get To Know Your Ethnicity Estimates
The final post in the “Top Five Things To Do With Your DNA” series focuses on how to use DNA testing to discover your ethnic background and ancestral communities. Studied together, these results can help you understand not just where your ancestors lived, but also when they may have lived there. To read the entire post, click here.
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