Walt Jones? Why I’m Using My Middle Name

Art, conversation, and geekery.

Walt Jones? Why I’m Using My Middle Name

2 April 2009 Comments

Why am I now using my middle name? The answer has a lot to do with personal branding, search engine optimization (SEO), my Google CV, and the fact that there are a lot of notable Walt Jones’s out there. In fact, one of them is also a photographer and even owns the domain name, waltjones.com.

Here are a few people who share my name:

Walter Jones, the Seattle Seahawks football player.
Walt Jones, the Los Angeles lighting director and fine art photographer.
Walt Jones, Director of Theatre at Colorado State University.
Walter B. Jones, the US Congressman from North Carolina.
Walter Jones, the film actor.
And my personal favorite is the Walt Jones from Tacoma who appeared on Johnny Carson at 110 years old.

These are all high profile people by any standards. Two are prominent in IMDB, one is a regular in national political coverage, and one is well covered by ESPN. Googling Walt Jones actually turns up each of these people within the first page of results. For people who have personal contact with me, it’s not a big deal. But for people trying to find me online, it can be confusing, and even more so when a few of them are near my age and one is also a photographer who used to live here in Seattle.

So, what do you do in this situation? Becoming known by a unique name helps ensure that people will use the full, unique version of your name when they write about you. It also means people are likely to use the full name when when they search for you. In both cases, this cuts the majority of people with similar names out of the search results, or at least pushes your results to the top.

Bill DeRusha wrote a great article about this.

Kristen King Also made some good points.

Brooke

I truly believe this was a smart decision. Now, you only have to be sorted from any Walt Gordon Jones that appears in a search, which will take a lot less effort than sorting through every form of Walt Jones. Even before with just Walt Jones, it left the idea open that maybe your are a Walter but just go by Walt, or that maybe the W Jones could be you. That shouldn't be a concern anymore as it would just be silly to think a search producing your "not" full name could be you! So hopefully if there is a Walter Gordon Jones or Walt(er) G. Jones, it can be ruled out!