One Person - Different Name Variations - SEO

[Rocket.Fuel]

There is a client we have, John Smith, and he owns www.johnsmith.com. John Smith is also known as John A. Smith, Johnny Smith, and Jonathan Smith. He wants to show up in the top 3 for all his variations, but the catch is he doesn't want his variations anywhere on his www.johnsmith.com

Does anyone have any tips or ideas on how we could do that better?

Thank you

[Eblan]

Probably creating backlinks with those name variations in the anchor tags might help.

But why spend time and resources trying to make his site show up if people Google his name and/or name variations and not focus on making the site show up when people Google keywords related to the content/services/info John Smith offers?

[Unity]

First explain that without using the variations on the website it will be challenging but you are going to try some work-rounds that may or may not work.

You can add the variations to alt tags, title attributes in navigation, in the footer, try title tags and meta descriptions (not on the actual page but will come up in SERPs) and build external links with the variations as the anchor text.

You could also investigate schema mark up and if you can add the variations in there somehow and also look at Google+ and linkedIn which you can link back to the website.

You could try get an About Us page and make the content fun and engaging and also add the variations in there "john smith, also known as X and X, ....'

Good luck!