Client question: What should I do?

[AdamMetrix]

I have a client who ranks #1 for all her branded keywords. Other than those keywords, she doesn't really have an objective with SEO other than to get her name out there.

There are articles in some high end online magazines(think Forbes, Times, etc.) that mention her, and she wants those articles to show up when people do a branded keyword search for those magazines. She also wants those articles to show up when people Google her.

Usually when I do SEO for a client, they have a site and they want that site to show up for a variety of targeted keywords. Has anyone run into people wanting to 1) SEO other sites to get them in the top 10 on their branded keywords and 2) get listed under other peoples branded keywords? Is this even possible? My gut says no but I feel obliged to look into it.

Do I just build links to the articles with her keywords and hope for the best? I have no idea what to do with this client.

[ZephSnapp]

Hi Adam,

What an interesting question!  While this is not really my speciality, I feel obligated to add my .02 cents.  Parts of what the client wants is unrealistic.  Mainly that her article would rank when someone searches the magazine name.

HOWEVER, there are ways to get her articles to show up when people search her, or the specific topics that she covers in her writing.  What you need is to get the magazines to give her the rel=author tag in the online version of these articles.  The expert on this particular subject is AJ Kohn from Blind Five Year Old.  Here are links to a couple his blog posts addressing this topic:

http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/how-to-implement-rel-author

http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/author-rank

If your client is a well respected author, these sites shouldn't have an issue implementing the Author tag, but you never know.  It is certainly something she should request before writing in the future.

This also sounds like a great question for AJ, and since I'm going to MozCon, I'll be glad to ask him!

[AdamMetrix]

Hi, thanks for your answer!

A little clarification though, the articles weren't written by her. They are articles in the magazines about her / that mention her name. She wants when people to search for her on Google that they see these magazines are talking about her.

*Updated the original question to be more clear, sorry about that

[ak1lz]

I would work on sharing those articles, that is the only thing possible you could do. Hoping that Google will connect the dots of those articles content with her name.

It may work, it may not.

Good luck!

[ZephSnapp]

Oops, that's what I get for speedreading!  Rel=author won't do anything for you in that case.  Hopefully someone else will have more info, but at that point I'd consider adding that info to her page descriptions so that people know that she's been in those publications.

My suggestion would be to come up with an alternative list of keywords related to what she does and convince her that working on these will be much more feasible than ranking her page for a term like Forbes.  Now that I think about it, just show her this:

http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty/results.html?commit=Run+Report&date=2012-07-02&engine_id=96&keywords=forbes&utf8=%E2%9C%93

Good luck ranking for that!

[randfish]

This is very similar to a lot of reputation management campaign work. There's a small section of the blog devoted to this: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/19 with some great posts like http://www.seomoz.org/blog/our-online-reputation-management-playbook and http://www.seomoz.org/blog/reputation-management-seo-6-advanced-tactics

Hope those help!

[ZephSnapp]

I just read those articles to expand my knowledge base.  Adam go check them out...it looks like the address what you are talking about.

Rand, thanks for stopping by the Q & A, it's always nice to get some input from the Grand Pooba

[AdamMetrix]

Thanks! I'll check those out.