It’s time for a little Shakespeare, and blog post with a little extra specific SEO value. For those of you that don’t know what SEO is, it’s an acronym for “Search Engine Optimization.” A search engine is something like Google or Bing, where you type in a query and, SHAZAM, it gives you an answer.
For example, you could type in “Can I eat my cat?” or “Can I eat my pet named Steve?” and see what sage advice Google has for you.
Search engine optimization is when you want people to find your website using these types of search queries, so you use strategies make it more likely to appear when someone types in, “Can I eat my cat?” Or in my case, I would want you to find me if you typed in something like, “science fiction authors in Baltimore” or “Ariele Sieling” or “Land of Szornyek.”
But most recently, I came across a conundrum. What if someone tried to find me, but didn’t know how to spell my name?
After all, my first name “Ariele” is a less common spelling, and my last name “Sieling” (which is pronounced like ceiling, the thing over your head), is also a rather uncommon spelling. What would come up?
So I tried it. I went to Google and typed in “Arial Seeling.” That’s logical, right? It’s a phonetic spelling of my name, at least. Here’s what I got:
Needless to say (though I’m saying it anyway)—this isn’t me.
I’ll be honest with you, The Little Mermaid is one of my least favorite Disney movies (mostly due to the fact that people constantly asked me, “were you named after the little mermaid?” over and over and over and over again growing up—and the answer is no, I was born before the movie came out by a good 18 months), so this isn’t my favorite result.
I even tried clicking the link that says, “Search instead for Arial Seeling” but the results were equally disappointing:
Also not me. Not even close. Though it’s possible I’m distantly related to a Heinrich Seeling? Possibly?
So I tried another: Arielle Ceiling.
This result was pretty great.
CEILING FANS. It’s one of my favorite puns. Get it? Sieling fans? hahahaha
As in people who are fans of people who are named Sieling? Yup.
Hilarious, perhaps (still laughing at Sieling fan/ceiling fan pun), but also not me.
Luckily, the closest variation to my name (and most common misspelling), Ariel Seiling, actually does pull up my website.
(That’s not my Facebook, though.)
So the problem is: how are people going to find me on the internet if they can’t spell my name?
So I came up with an idea.
Keywords.
Yes, keywords.
Keywords are those pesky phrases that you type into Google when you’re trying to learn something or find something. For example, “can I eat my cat” is a keyword phrase. “Can I eat my pet named Steve” is also a keyword phrase. In my case, my name (“Ariele Sieling”) is a keyword phrase.
So I asked myself, “What if I just wrote a blog post that included all of the possible misspellings of my name? That way, if someone does spell my name wrong, hopefully they’ll find this blog post, which should guide them to the rest of my website.”
So that is literally what I am doing right now. This blog post is specifically designed to help people find me. And hopefully be mildly entertaining at the same time.
Below, I am going to list out some of the interesting variations of my name that I’ve seen. Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do if someone can’t remember my name at all. But if they remember it wrong, maybe this will help.
I’ll start with my first name:
Ariel
Arielle
Arial
Areyel
Arel
Erin (I don’t know, don’t ask me, but people call me Erin all the time)
Arian
And now my last name:
Seeling
Seiling
Ceiling
Cieling
Siling (Sometimes people pronounce it with a hard “i” too)
Sileing
The correct spelling is as follows: Ariele Sieling.
Now hopefully Google can do the math and incorporate all of those spellings into its all-powerful algorithm, in all of their various combinations.
And there you have it. I’m still me, no matter how you spell my name. I just hope you are able to find me, even if it takes a while.
Good luck.
