Optimizing for a person with two variations of their first name.
-
Hello, I am wondering if there is best practices or ideas when doing SEO work for someone's personal name and that name has two variations. So for instance, if someone's formal first name is "James" but they go by "Jim" or "Richard" and "Rick." I thought it might be easy as choosing one and going for it, but this person has a lot of info about them indexed and google and for the most part it is two completely different set of SERP's depending on which variation of the named is searched.
-
Thanks Alex. Super helpful.
-
Nicknames are often put in quotation marks so you could just write James "Jim" Jones when introducing the person (title tag and h tag) and maybe the first occurrence of their name in the text. The most important thing is that and content reads naturally - if you wrote James "Jim" Jones whenever you referred to the person in a few paragraphs of text I doubt it would read naturally.
Depending on who they are, Google might even recognise them as the same person whatever version of the name is used.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
A problem when our brand name is searched
We have an issue in that when someone enters our new brand name "68 degrees creative" into google.com.au, the following results show: http://postimg.org/image/8x2id4ta9/ The second result is the Linked In page for Hiroshi. This is a person that was part of our old business but is no longer part of the new business (68 degrees creative). And therefore, his LinkedIn profile should not be appearing for this search as he has nothing to do with the new brand. In his LinkedIn profile, he has made no mention of our organisation 68 degrees creative. He also does not feature on our website: www.68degrees.com.au. We can therefore only conclude that the reason he is appearing for the search "68 degrees creative" is that Google has somehow connected him with the new organisation due to previous online ties and relationships which Google has determined by virtue of that associated him with the new organisation. We are ultimately unsure what their algorithm is in establishing this. Is there any way in which we can change this? We don't want his LinkedIn profile appearing when our company name is searched when he has not part of the company. Any help here would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
Branding | | Gavo0 -
In the Google search results, the company name (with the drop down arrow) next to the result URL is incorrect. The company being displayed here is a company we acquired many years back. How do I adjust/fix this?
When I search any term for my organization, we are getting good results BUT the company name, next to the results URL is of an orgnization we acquired many years back and not the name of our company. The URL is correct page JUST the company name next to this URL is incorrect on the Google search results page. How do I go about changing so the company name next to the URL ?
Branding | | DigitalNTT0 -
Facebook name change error
I keep getting "The Page name you entered does not meet our guidelines. Please review our Page name policies." My name change is well within policy. The page has about 400 fans. I am literally changing a minor aspect. Getting rid of a plural word. Any work around since facebook's site is not working for this?
Branding | | Atomicx0 -
Should I remove spaces from my brand name?
I'm looking for some second opinions on this one. In talking with another SEO, he is of the opinion that if my company name is two words like Crazy Man, I should write some news release that have my brand combined as Crazyman because it is a variant of the brand name. He claims that Google does not look at my brand as Crazy Man, but as one word and in Google's mind Crazyman as one word is my brand. What do you all think?
Branding | | kadesmith1 -
Issue with the company's brand name in SERPs
Any suggestions on how to solve this without the need to be ranked for something not related?
Branding | | GardenPet0 -
Branded Domain Names - Keep or Sell?
Hey guys! My company is sitting on a number of branded domains to ensure we have control over the URL in case we ever want to do anything with them and/or to protect brand integrity. However, we are sitting on a total of 24 domains, which seems somewhat excessive. What are you thoughts about .info and .net domains? Or keeping branded domains in general? Is there a good rule of thumb to follow? We have a few up for renewal soon, so it'd be terrific to get your thoughts! Thanks much, Clarissa
Branding | | okatieo0 -
Do Dashes in Domain names hurt SEO ranking?
I have found conflicting reports online whether or not dashes in domain names hurt/help ranking. Example yourbrandonline.com vs your-brand-online.com? I found Rand's write up on how to select a domain and he suggests staying away from hyphens but mainly because its hard to remember or people my enter it in wrong. Here's his comment. "Reject Hyphens and Numbers
Branding | | JoshKimber
Both hyphens and numbers make it hard to give your domain name verbally and falls down on being easy to remember or type. I'd suggest not using spelled-out or roman numerals in domains, as both can be confusing and mistaken for the other." Aside from people possibly struggling to get there directly because of the domain name, are they OK to use? Or, are domains with hyphens considered spammy? Thanks in advance.1 -
Is it a bad idea to have a catchy brand name url redirect to an exact match domain
A friend wanted to setup a website where people would share and vote on "widget" ideas where the winning idea got build for free. They bought cute the domain name widg.et and branded their site as widg.et. However, for SEO, they are having widg.et forward to www.sharewidgets.com. Then, to complicate things further, they changed their business model to remove the voting feature and now the site is just set to show off the widgets they've made and let people order new custom widgets. They might add the voting feature back later. "Widget" and "widgets" in this case has an SEOmoz difficulty of 72% and 71%, so quite high and none of the two word or long tail phrases have much traffic. What do you think they should do: Remove all domain forwarding and use widg.et as their only domain as it's less confusing and better for branding Get another domain that includes their keyword widget for the SEO exact match benefit Keep it as is, even though "sharewidgets" is no longer quite as applicable Many Thanks!
Branding | | skincareseo0