Forums, Branding and Public Relations
If you are an SEO Consultant that charges $80 per hour like me, have too many clients and too little time – why would you go to forums and spend 15 minutes only to answer some guy asking SEO questions on a forum, for free and giving out valuable information? Why?
And why would you start your own SEO forum in your own language and give out all the “secrets” about SEO? Why should you have a blog and write tips, guides, tutorials and strategies you easily could charge for and keep for yourself?
Why is there an “SEO school” on the site of the SEO Company?
It’s about Public Relations.
You don’t spend those 15 minutes to answer that guy, only because of him. You do it because hundreds of other readers will see it and if you are skilled and do it wisely – you will over time be seen as a Pro in the field and people will listen to you. People will recommend you.
In the forum I created there is my name in the upper right corner, an “SEO School” on the site of the SEO Company will make people to link to it, mention it and get people visiting it. Now when I get those e-mails asking for advice and so on I can simply say: Go to my forum and ask.
I am active in more than 5 forums, both english and swedish and with more than thousand posts. On all of them my real name is my username. The same is with my blog and my name is on all my different sites and on all the automatic form e-mails that are being sent from my directories, topsite and forum.
In my opinion, branding your own name is much smarter than to brand a company name if you are speaking about a business field relating to consultant services.
It is like an author – he has only his name he can brand, nothing else.
In my opinion a person is more likely to buy services from a consultant with a personal name he recognizes than “SEO Company ABC”.
My name is unique, there is no other person on the internet with this name. But still if someone Googles my name in quotation marks he sees 176,000 hits so if he wants to do some reading to check me he can spend the next months doing so … and there is nothing I don’t want people to read.
Just want to say that I have had an incredible success in my SEO career and here I give some reason for it.
Think branding.
Other SEO Pros that I have noticed are branding their names:
Aaron Wall
Rand Fishkin
John Scott
And then you have examples when some made up forum nick names becomes the identity of the person:
Oilman
WebGuerilla
Jenstar
Black Night
Jim Westergren is a company owner from Sweden who lives together with his wife and son. Some of his interests are SEO, web development, writing and
Yes indeed, but I don’t have an SEO Company so I don’t need no stinking forums…
Do not agree at all with this post, hehe. You name is not nessicary the best way to brand you business. Pretend you can either chose from seo.com or using you name, what would you do?
A short and professional corp identitiy should not be underestimated 
Familiarity breeds trust, and personal names are easier to become familar with than corporate names, IMO.
I totally agree with how smart it is to use your real name. You can´t be any more honest then that!
And yes! I recognize all people´s name in the comments of this thread mainly because they mostly use their real names….
If they would have called themselves such things as fragmaster 22, xtranice, and so on no one would remember their names..
Blogs and forum postings can be great to build one’s reputation – but there is certainly a fine line. When I first started a few years ago I was very active in forums, learning as much as I can. Lately I’ve just found myself too busy and realized that I need to keep blog/forum time in check in order to get the actual work done.
I find the idea of branding ones name very interesting but just because someone is not using aliases like “fragmaster” or the like as mentioned previously, we cannot assume a name is genuine. I know I am honest (and very proud of my name) but how can the next person trust me? How have you solved this issue?
Obviously, Jim has an advantage, being referred to in the news…We all believe what is written on the “official” newspapers, don’t we??
Anyway, thanks Jim for sharing some ideas. It is very inspiring to read! Cheers!
Hi Tomas,
thanks for the feedback. If you have your name on many places, such as on several of your web sites it makes it more genuin. In my case even my company brand JW is based on my name so there is no doubt about it.
I love this site. Good work…
I’m love this great website. Many thanks guy
you have a point. branding is a big deal. this is new to me, Thanks!
I say if your gonna use your name then you should have it branded with a “niche” what single word comes to mind when you think of Jim Westergren -> “SEO”- Jim Westergren
I think that the branding of names principle has some merit. That’s the whole idea why some law firms have the names of their original or main partners. Not a perfect example, but I can’t think of another better.
For me, I think that if I want to build up some reputation, I’d rather do it with a company or domain name. This way, if your SEO business grows, you don’t have to worry about you having to deal with many different clients, but instead you can concentrate in the projects you love the most.
I guess that there are not absolutes truths and all depend on what plans you have for your future. If you are planning to spend the rest of your life doing SEO marketing, branding your real name may be a good idea.
It doesn’t have to be like this. Even if you leave the business the company can still continue with your name as “the founder”.