Let’s get one thing clear from the start. I am not a Greek English Lexicon. Although, judging from my web logs and analytics, many accidentally think I am.
The fact that I share a name (at least in search index terms) with a book, led me to consider how much people searching for you online matters and how much you need to protect your search position against ‘contamination’ from other sources.
Obviously, this hinges massively on your name. I’m afraid Mr. Bradley Pitt of East Cheam has had it. But for those of us with a sufficiently obscure name to have a chance, can we dominate our own search space?
So, the goal is, can you secure the whole first page of Google hits for a search on your name? And, what should this be called? @clarocada has suggested “Google Self Engineered TopTenMysation“. I currently have 8 of the 10. The other two go to a far more eminent, but perhaps less SEO aware, Professor in the US ( a big hello to you sir ). It helps that my book and photos are splattered widely all over the place.
I lose out big-style to many other Liddell’s when you ignore Christian names. I may have been able to take Eric in a fight (especially on a Sunday), but I think I might lose out to Chuck. I do still scrape onto the first page though.
Obviously, if you have a name similar to a more famous person, there must be some benefit in out-SEO’ing them, however difficult that may be.
Try it. How well are you doing? Do you own your own personal Google brand? John Smith need not apply.
Apologies to all those arriving her looking for some help with their Greek.
I don’t give a stuff about my personal “search space”. Au contraire, I’m very pleased that (excluding the Boston nerologist) it’s my alter-ego software architect living in Ipswich whose details are returned on most common searches of my name.
It’s only stoopid twitter that’s causing me to appear anywhere in the Top 60 google results. I shall have to do something about that…
It’s funny you should post this because I do this sort of search all the time. I’ve got quite a unique surname so it’s something I’m obviously quite interested in. It’s been amusingly suggested that my family may have actually been “leggett” but following a birth or during some sort of name registration when asked my ancestor said (in a west country accent) “leggett..errrr”.
For “phil leggetter” and “philip leggetter” I do get the top 10 although Google thinks you may be having spelling issues and are actually searching for a Taxidermist! I’m guessing this is because he shares the same first name and is a popular chap?
For “leggetter” I get 4/10 and I’m confident that it wouldn’t take that much effort to dominate with this obscure name and my SEO (leggetter | Phil Leggetter [does blogger auto-insert rel=”nofollow”?) talents 🙂
I’ve been happy for a low web profile to date really, so not surprised that a search on my name only yields me as the 11th hit (facebook). A few years ago, I was the #1 hit (my Picsel bio) for quite a few months, despite others, more famous than me, sharing my moniker.
However, entertainingly, my alter-ego manicmorff achieves 100% (50/50) hits, but you’d kinda expect that.