I reported on my own case study over a month ago on my own blog (Fame Trumps SEO in the Battle of the David Leonhardt Rankings)…but this is something that concerns bloggers more than general webmasters, so I thought it needs to be shared here on Famous Bloggers in a bit more detail.
This is about my personal brand, and by extension your personal brand, too. We all check Google every now and then to see what it has to say about our name. It’s natural human vanity. But it’s more than just vanity for most bloggers; a blogger’s name is his brand, even when the blog carries its own brand. Nobody cares who is behind an ecommerce store; but the blogger is the blog.
I don’t share a common name with anyone truly famous; I am not a Brad Pitt or a Leslie Neilson, and you can probably tell by my photo that I am not Jennifer Lopez. But I do share a name with a well-known jazz band: the David Leonhardt Jazz Group. And I also share a name in common with one of the top American journalists of the past decade.
What they don’t have is SEO. What they don’t have is living on the Internet. What they don’t have is being constantly active in social media. I have all those things. But is that enough for me to rank well for my own name?
Well, let’s first take a look back in time. The first time I did that vanity search, much of Google’s top 10 results for “David Leonhardt” belonged to my Jazz-playing namesake. He was also lucky enough to own DavidLeonhardt.com, and that surely helped. I don’t recall the exact breakdown, only that Jazz trumped journalism and SEO (There really wasn’t anything called “social media” at the time).
Fast-forward to today. Jazz keeps playing, but not much else has changed for the band. But a lot has changed for my other namesake and I. David Leonhardt of the New York Times has been all over print media…and by extension, all over the Internet. He’s been syndicated all over, and at least once fooled even my brother: “Nice article I saw of yours in The Globe and Mail.” Oh, and let’s not forget the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. ” That’s not the real David Leonhardt. That was an imposter posing as me,” I had to explain to a confused prospective writing client.
Meanwhile, I’ve been all over social media, living on the web, commenting on blogs, tweeting and retweeting, putting my SEO skills to use and networking online. You’ve seen me before on Famous Bloggers and on all the social bookmarking websites. I’ve been guest blogging and commenting on blogs and forums. My name is in the title of my blog. I have several websites. Yeah, I’m Mister All-Over-The-Internet.
So what are the results of all this at Google? Here is what I reported just over a month ago on my own blog…
1. New York Times writer
2. New York Times writer
3. New York Times writer
4. New York Times writer
5. New York Times writer
6. Me
7. Me
8. Jazz Group
9. Me
10. New York Times writer
And as I write this…
1. New York Times writer
2. New York Times writer
3. New York Times writer
4. New York Times writer
5. New York Times writer
6. Jazz Group
7. Me
8. Me
9. Me
10. New York Times writer
Not much has changed…except that my post on fame trumping SEO (re-published on WebProNews) ranks #9 for my name
Just for fun, let’s see if Bing like SEO any better than Google.
1. New York Times writer
2. New York Times writer
3. Jazz Group
4. Me
5. New York Times writer
6. New York Times writer
7. Me
8. Me
9. Somebody else???
10. Jazz Group
Fame obviously beats out playing music while sitting on the perfect domain name, and clearly it also beats out SEO and social media activity. But at least Bing has a bit of an ear for music.
In fairness, it should be stated that Google’s four top rankings for “David Leonhardt” are all on the New York Times domain/subdomains, and that probably also helps their rankings.
Now, I know this is not in my own best interests to give you this advice, but I will tell you anyway. If you have to choose between hiring an SEO specialist like me or becoming famous, pick fame. You will get so much more traffic and make so much more money. And even if you don’t get to look like Jennifer Lopez, you might get to meet her.
Of course, if you can’t get famous, SEO is still a pretty good second choice.