Would You Change Your Name for a Better SEO Rank?

Inbound links based on your personal brand/celebrity/expertise, either from bios in guest posts or references to you based on your subject knowledge, can be a big factor in determining organic search rank. Tonight this got me thinking…

Sitting out on my balcony, observing the Vancouver dumpster divers and other such finery of downtown living, I thought to myself:

Self: What if I legally changed my name to Mr. Landing Pages?

Then every time I get to leave my signature on a “do follow” site, I’d be giving my business (Unbounce does landing pages in case you hadn’t got that yet) a boost in organic search.

Something to think about.

Notice how the category for this post is “Landing Pages” – giving my future name brand exposure already.

Other (in)famous name changes

This post has a classic example – perfect for brand building purposes.

Trout Fishing in America

A California teen changed his name to this, after reading a Richard Brautigan novella.

Having just checked out “Trout fishing in America” – he’s not on page 1 of Google. Although, there does appear to be a band named Trout fishing in America. How awesome is that?!

Golden Palace: The kings of the PR stunt

Show me the money. That’s what it comes down to. Over the last couple of years, several people have auctioned or rented their physical real estate (body parts) for advertising purposes. And it’s very viral.

It might actually be fun to have one of the world’s most ridiculous names for a while. Incidentally, I just checked with the BC government and it looks like it could set me back about $850 to make it official. Perhaps the time and money would be better spent on eLance.com or oDesk.com to hire someone to do link building for me.

I’m in as long as we get to page 1 of Google for “Landing Pages”…

— Oli Gardner (aka Mr. Landing Pages)