What’s in a name? That which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet.  -William Shakespeare

We didn’t have search engines in the Elizabethan age

Westminster Abbey must be reverberating with the sound of Shakespeare chewing hard as he restlessly eats back those words in the age of internet and search engines.

So, what’s in a name, that which we call a rose?

Well, it’s easy SEO – easy search engine visibility. That is to say, easily getting on the first page of search engine results when people look up that name. A presence on the first page of search engine results is every individual and organization’s goal and dream, because not many users look past the first page.

The name Rose is the 288th most popular name in the world and there are approximately 2.14M people with that name. Which means it is that much difficult to get your name on the first page of search engine results if your name is Rose.

The lesser common your name, the easier it is for pages related to you to appear on the first page of search engine results. If a person called Rose were rather called Hibiscus or Kadupul or Campion or Youtan Poluo, it would be easier to find her via Google search.

Digital marketing, SEO, SMO are important not just for businesses, but also for individuals.  People search not only products, services, movies or health information online. People also search people online using their name as keywords.

Rose is not alone

Rose in is a large company of billions of people who have names that are very common.

For example, here’s a list of the top 10 most common names in the world. In other words the 10 names that have the highest competition for search engine visibility.

  1. David – 25,393,500 individuals, 0.35% of world population
  2. Michael – 23,283,900 individuals, 0.32% of world population
  3. John – 22,792,200 individuals, 0.31% of world population
  4. Chris – 19,329,600 individuals, 0.27% of world population
  5. Daniel – 15,406,000 individuals, 0.21% of world population
  6. Mike – 15,113,700 individuals, 0.21% of world population
  7. Robert – 14,731,300 individuals, 0.20% of world population
  8. James – 14,245,900 individuals, 0.20% of world population
  9. Mark – 14,245,900 individuals, 0.19% of world population
  10. Paul – 12,295,600 individuals, 0.17% of world population

Well, these are just the top ten most popular names, but not the only popular names in the world.  There are thousands or names that are very common. I got these stats from here and you can check out how common your name is and how many namesakes you have.

An uncommon second name can be the saving grace

Going back to Shakespeare, if you search for Shakespeare by his first name – William, which is a very popular name, you will find him as the last result on the 17th page of Google search results.

Yes.  Even the most famous writer of all time appears only on the 17th page, because his name William is that common! William is the 76th most popular name in the world with an estimated 5,719,600 individuals with that name

But that is not the case if you search Shakespeare or William Shakespeare. These bring him up all over the first two and a half pages.

Though William, the first name is a very common name, Shakespeare, the second name isn’t.

Thankfully, people don’t search by just the first name, but use both the first and the second name as keywords. Even if they are looking for one as famous as Bill Gates, they would key in Bill Gates and not just Bill.

So even if your first name is very  common, you second name can help you get better search engine exposure if it is not all that common.

A double whammy for many

Here are some examples where both the first name as well as the second name are very common.

  • David Smith
  • Michael Rodriguez
  • Anuradha Rao (yours truly)

How I ruined my easy SEO prospects

Well, I did it unwittingly, as a 10 year old.

Though Anuradha is the 3,118th most common name in the world, and I have 113,500 namesakes, I had a highly search engine optimized name by virtue of my fairly rare second name – Chepur.  I was Anuradha Rao Chepur. My second name is actually Chepur, and Rao is some sort of a title that approximately a gazillion people in my region have.

One day I was asked to fill out a form at school  that had only one slot for a second name. As I could not accommodate two second names in the single slot provided on the form, I knocked off Chepur and retained Rao.  My name thus continued as Anuradha Rao forever and that’s how I became the less search engine visible Anuradha Rao from from the highly search engine optimized Anuradha Chepur Rao.

Anuradha ‘Rao’ is not alone

I can see around that it’s not just me who has spoiled their SEO chances.  Many many many people have unwittingly knocked off their more unique second name and they are using Rao instead. I feel sorry for them as much I feel sorry for myself.

Digital presence benefits of an uncommon name

If I had rather deleted Rao and kept Chepur, then I’d be Anuradha Chepur, and by default I’d be the first result on SERPs as there does not seem to be any Anuradha Chepur in the world other than me.

Not only search engine visibility, but it would be very easy for me to get a dotcom domain (anuradhachepur.com) and custom URLs for social media, if I were Anuradha Chepur:

  • twitter.com/anuradhachepur
  • facebook.com/anuradhachepur

Digital presence challenges with a common first and second name

With Anuradha Rao, I have to face a few challenges with my online presence:

  • I have to work hard to increase my online visibility, as there are hundreds or thousands of Anuradha Raos in the world.
  • It’s very expensive or  impossible for me to get a dotcom domain (anuradharao.com). Such commonly needed domains are in high demand and they are either already taken or auctioned and sold to the highest bidder.
  • I have to add weird numbers to my social media URLs, such as anuradharao2 or worse still anuradharao23875890396, etc., because anuradharao is already taken by one of my namesakes..
  • Or I have to use a combination of numbers plus some unnecessary pain-in-the-neck punctuation such as anuradha.rao2.

The challenges that I highlighted above are those faced not just by me, but all the Anuradha Raos, all the John Smiths, all the James Stuarts, all the Jyoti Patels, all the Srinivas Prasads, all the Deepak Kumars, all the Mary Williams, all the Katy Johnsons, all the Paul Jacksons  and all those people in the world who have a very common first name combined with a very common second name.

Additional responsibility for parents

Expecting parents as well as parents of young children might want to start working on their child’s digital presence and SEO prospects already.

  1. Instead of or apart from considering numerology, astrology, x-logy, y-logy, z-logy for choosing baby names, you may want to consider search engine ranking and digital presence optimization.  Choose lesser common names, specially if your second name is very common. In fact, conduct a google search for the names you’ve shortlisted to assess how common or uncommon each one is and then zero down on one that’s least common.
  2. You may have given your child a rare name. But by the time the child is old enough to go and create their online presence, the name would have become common. One of  your child’s namesakes would have already taken the user ids and the URLs. So preemptively create an email account for your child with the child’s name as user ID –  yourchild’sname@gmail.com.
  3. Likewise, create social media profiles for your baby, so you can acquire the custom URL.  40% millennial moms are creating social media profiles for their kids to share pictures and updates. Be just a caretaker and a trustee for your child’s online accounts. Respect your child’s privacy/individuality and post minimally just to keep the accounts active, until you can handover their accounts to them when they are old enough. Don’t post anything that might embarrass them later. Disable connection requests as you don’t want to add connections the child might not want.
  4. Reserve a dotcom domain asap – www.yourchild’sname.com before it’s taken. You don’t need to actually build a website right away, leave it to them to do that when they are older.  Just buy a domain and keep renewing it on a timely basis so it does not expire and get resold. Some domain resellers offer decent discounts if you book for longer periods.

Social media channels can provide additional options

This brings us to the question whether social media channels like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc. should provide options for parents to create child pages with limited features and other protective restrictions.  There can also be an option to completely hide the child account from any public viewing as deemed fit by the parent.

The child account can be marked by a child icon to indicate it is a child account. The parent’s name can be shown to let people know who the caretaker of that account is. That way people will know that they should not send connection requests. Channels will also know and child accounts won’t get suspended or removed due to lack of activity.

When the child attains the legal age to operate the accounts by themselves, their profiles can be delinked from the parent’s profiles and automatically upgraded to the full-fledged versions.

Don’t lose heart

Going back to those of us who have a very common first + a very common second name combinations,  it’s not that we are doomed or we are as hard to find online as a needle in a haystack is.  But we do need to work a bit on our online presence. Here are some ways you can get around it to improve your search engine visibility.

  • Increase your digital footprint.  Have profiles on various social media and be active on them.
  • Blog. That’s a neat way to propagate yourself on the internet
  • Many people acquire a dotcom domain but just park it and don’t ever use it to host a website. Try to negotiate with the owner to see if they can be talked into selling it to you. You may not necessarily be able to find out who the owner is. Domain resellers (like GoDaddy, etc.) will help you track them down and negotiate on your behalf for a fee. It may cost you a lot of wait time and a lot of money to strike a deal with the owner.
  • If negotiations fail, then acquire a .net or .org or .me or .info domain, they are good enough.
  • Don’t park your domain, set up a website for yourself to strengthen your digital presence.
  • Content market yourself. If you post quality content on your website/social media and do that on a regular basis, it does not matter whether you have that coveted dotcom domain or not. Regular posting lets you SEO yourself with your profession and location related keywords in addition to your name.
  • Set permissions to “public” for some of your Facebook posts and at least some of your LinkedIn profile, so they can appear in Google search results.

Easy SEO is not a given with popular names as it is with rare names. There is heavy competition, but you can enhance your search engine presence with good content coupled with perseverance.

Ultimately content matters

Going back to those who have a rare name and are easy to find online. You are lucky that it is easier for people to find you online than find their socks in their shoe rack. This does not however mean that you should get complacent and start thinking that you don’t need to do anything else.  In fact, you need to work on your content all the more. You should have good content and information around yourself  to tell people that the person they have so easily found online is not just a rare name, but indeed a rare find.