Baby Name Optimization
by David Berkowitz, Tuesday, May 29,
2007
WANT PROOF
that
you can optimize anything? What about
devising a strategy to optimize search
results around the name of your unborn
offspring?
The idea came from a
snippet on Boston.com sent in by
loyal reader (and future wife) Cara
Adelglass: "According to The Wall
Street Journal, some
expectant parents are beginning to
Google prospective baby names to ensure
that their kids won't face too much
competition in securing a high search
rank.' What's the perfect baby shower
present for a soon-to-be newborn who has
already been search-engine optimized?
Buy the Web domain that matches their
name."
That's sound
strategizing. It has that echo of Jack
Welch, who insisted that General
Electric should only be in businesses
where it could take first or second
place in market share. By that line of
thought, Joe Smith is probably not your
best bet unless you're spending millions
on optimization, and celebrity names are
out of the question (alas, that rules
out Brad Pitt Berkowitz as a potential
name for my future progeny).
You don't want to stop
just at the research phase, though.
Below are ten more tips for baby name
optimization. Note that while this
column is tongue-in-cheek, these best
practices can be applied to your
business. You'd want to research
potential business and product names for
what listings come up in major search
engines, and you'd often be wise to
apply many of the baby name optimization
tactics that follow.
1) Write a press release
the day your baby's born with the baby's
name in the headline, and optimize the
entire release. As soon as the little
one takes its first breath, he or she
can even appear in the body of Google's
natural search results thanks to
universal search.
2) Buy all potential domain name
misspellings of your baby's name. If
you're blessed with ample foresight or
come from an ages-old tradition of
arranged marriages, buy versions of the
last name of any potential suitor you
have in mind. Redirect the names to your
baby's main dot-com domain.
3) Film the birth and
syndicate it to dozens of video sites.
One of those sites will have to be
around by the time of your kid's
communion or bar mitzvah, right? On your
primary domain, optimize the video by
tagging every second of it so those
clips are accessible to search engine
spiders.
4) Blog as if you're the baby. Then,
when your kid is old enough to blog, you
can hand it over to your child, or you
can go on blogging as if you're his or
her therapist.
5) Tag your baby.
6) Create a Wikipedia
entry for your baby. If it's rejected,
claim that one of the parents is
Britney Spears, Angelina Jolie,
Paris Hilton, David Arquette, Oprah,
or all of the above.
7) Googlebomb your baby's domain around
the phrase "world's cutest baby,"
"future Nobel laureate," or "Harvard
class of 2025." It reminds me of an old
joke, where a parent is asked how old
her children are and responds, "The
doctor is three and the lawyer is two."
The scary thing: some parent is reading
this column right now and starting such
a Googlebomb.
8) Digg your baby.
9) Be sure to update meta tags every so
often, as your kid's prom date would be
horrified to see "spitting up" and
"potty training" as some of his or her
most relevant keywords.
10) Every few years,
change your child's name to something
new that has less search competition.
Though beware... this will bring an
entirely new meaning to the phrase "your
baby's in the sandbox."
Of course, all of this
is in your child's best interests. When
admissions officers and employers search
for your child's name years from now,
they'll find so many results ahead of
those keg party pictures on Facebook
that the reputation management will have
paid off. Marketers often talk about
their brands as their babies; here's a
chance to treat your babies like your
brands.
