My Name Plus a Murder Equals SEO Nightmare

When I was born they thought I was a boy so I was supposed to be named Nicolas Levi, but I was a girl. My name came from my Nana's favorite soap opera doctor and my mom's best friend.

When I started playing music I just went with my married name "Casey Kearney."

First of all I had no clue that literally EVERYONE pronounces it differently and typically wrong and NO ONE can spell it!

If that wasn't headache enough turns out "Casey Kearney" is also the name of a girl in the UK who was murdered by Hannah Bonner.

A young girl. Murdered in a park. By someone named Hannah.

Yes, its true.

Yes, I have a sister named Hannah, whaatt?? ....she is the sweet sister though!

So here I am starting out trying to book gigs and play music and what do you get when you google my name ....page after page of news articles, pictures, and stories about the murder, funeral, and court case.

People would say we tried to look you up, but we couldn't find you. There were just pictures of a red headed girl and a murder.... Yes, thanks I am very aware of this poor girl.

It really is a tragic story.

So I start researching what in the world I needed to do to help my SEO. (Search Engine Optimization)

I contacted multiple companies that were experts and all of them were like "Wow that is a unique situation, this will be a very difficult, expensive task" they said.

"Your easiest option is to change your name." ...umm okkkkk anything else I can do??

"Basically you have to work really hard to become more popular than the murder."

Seriously?! It was covered by every news source and was an extremely popular story.

Neither option sounded great or possible.

This company was going to be $3k a month with a 3 month minimum to use their expertise on the SEO project. Hard pass.

Eventually I was talking to a friend and his son had a friend of a friends co-worker that ran a side hustle working SEO stuff.

I started communicating via email with Wade and the dude was smart. He was able to help me. Now if you google "Casey Kearney" the murder is still there, but our names share the space.

These tips are basic and simple and I know Wade was able to do more complex magic to fix my issues, but here are a few tips I learned in my SEO mess....

1. Post content on a regular basis and on multiple platforms.

2. On your website make sure your alt text and photo descriptions are all tagged properly.

3. Do some research on how to use key words. Picture little Google bugs crawling around the web all the time looking for words that link things together so they can bring up what you are looking for when you search for something. I don't do this very well thankfully Wade helps with that.

4. Confession: I don't blog because I love to write - not even close! I blog to stay connected to my people and to keep my website and content active. It let's Google know it is not dormant if its updated regularly.

5. Video is dominant to everything on socials, but text, articles, tags, and outside site mentions is most helpful when it comes to SEO...remember the Google crawlers read words, they don't see pics and video.

I am no expert on this complicated subject, but I did have to learn a few things throughout this process. I can become a nerd really quick when it comes time to learn new things!

Do you have more tips or expertise on this subject?! I'd love to hear from you.

Was there a murder or crazy story attatched to your name or business?! I'd love to hear about that too ...

Shoot me an email!