HOW I’M TRYING TO OUTRANK AN ASSASSIN..
Like most people in the marketing industry, it’s vitally important that I rank for my own name in SERP's and stand out for all the right reasons. So what happens if you search for Dan White?
At the time of writing - you won’t find me. Sad times.
Instead you’ll probably come across Dan White; the man who assassinated San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk (the events of which were turned were turned into a film)
Unfortunately for me, Mr. White dominates the rankings for almost all searches around my name. So I’m trying to get tactical to ensure if people are looking me they get yours truly. To do this I'm trying the following:
BUYING THE RIGHT DOMAIN NAME:
The most important thing seems to be to buy a domain name of your name - and then hook it up to a website or blog which is all about you. My name isn't the most common name on the planet but it’s not rare either.
Annoyingly my exact name has already gone for both .co.uk and .com domains, so I opted to pick a website address which is as close as possible to my name. www.danieljameswhite.co.uk covers all bases as I hope it might rank for both www.danieljameswhite.com and for my full name - should anyone ever search for it.
Note: If you're thinking of doing the same thing, but aren't yet ready to start your own website or blog it might still be worth bagging your own domain name sooner rather than later. There's almost 7 billion people on the planet, and a growing percentage of them are using the internet, so get in there before all the others.
APPEARING FOR A LONGER TAIL RESULT:
If people are looking for me I'd hope that they will carry on to search for me even if they don't find me straight away. If I can’t rank my name on the first page of Google for 'Dan White' then I'm hoping I can start appearing for searches that are for 'My name + My Industry.'
Alternatively, with the magic of all things SEO you can rank for things which don’t even involve your name. Check out my SEO Consultancy and SEO Audit pages for example.
GETTING AROUND (THE INTERNET):
Any new site is going to take time to build up enough momentum to start outranking other pages in SERP's. As I want to start gaining traffic from the start I'm making sure my name is spread around the internet via my social media channels. LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook accounts can all be set up and optimised. These sites carry a huge weight in the online world, so should mean that one of my social profiles should appear in search results even if my website isn't.
DRASTIC MEASURES: CHANGING MY NAME?
I did thinking about changing my name via deed poll, although this is a bit too extreme at the moment. The other alternative would be to use a pen-name. Did you know the author George Orwell was actually called Eric Blair?
If you were to pick a unique name then appearing in the search results for it should be a doddle. The downside though is when people come across your alter ego, how do they know that, well, you're you?
If you write an awesome blog post that you want to later use as part of a portfolio, but it hasn't got your name on it then how do you prove it's yours? Identity theft is all too common, so anyone could be trying to me (now that is a scary thought).
> I think I might leave this idea alone for now unless I get seriously desperate.
This is something which is very much a work in progress, so when I get on Page 1 of Google I'll get this post updated to see if the ideas above worked.