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Great idea, thanks.

Here's why I am worried about it. I won't give the real name but for example if the name was Stacy Bar and the client spelled it Stacey Barr, when I type "Stacey Barr" into Google it keeps saying "did you mean Stacy Bar?" and it'll list all of the Stacy Bars in the area (and there are a lot). So I feel like if people are searching for this client and they put in Stacey Barr Google will try to change it with the correct spelling and list all of the people with that name that are not the person they're trying to find. Does that make sense?

We work for a doctor who has a common name that she spells differently than the way most people spell it. So when you put it in Google Search, Google keeps trying to say "do you mean this spelling instead?" and it corrects it, but the name I'm putting in IS the correct spelling of the name. I'm worried this is going to affect how people will find her when they type in the correct spelling of her name in Google Search. Any solutions of how we can avoid this problem?

I have a question -- after you put the city pages in Webmaster Tools, what do you have to do next? Anything special other than what you would normally do in Webmaster Tools?

When looking at the crawl errors in Webmaster Tools/Search Console, where is Google pulling these URLs from? Sitemap?

Ok thanks, these are all very insightful responses. To answer your questions, these are brand names and yes people are searching the names to find the companies. And my whole theory was if we have a small budget, then we should just focus on attracting new business. However I do know that competitors ARE buying all competitor names in the industry, but I also know they have larger budgets to work with.

On a side note, my other concern is that people search for a generic keyword, click on our client's ad, then leave, and then decide to google that their brand name later and click on the ad and then convert. Is there a way to target those types of people?

While I definitely see the pros to buying your name in Adwords, should you still do this if you have a small monthly budget? I get why large companies like Tiffany's would buy their name because they have the excessive funds to do so in addition to buying keywords. Any guidance or strategy on this?

Yep, our website has that as well. This isn't my first time doing SEO, I've been doing it for years and have never come across this issue. And yes, I'm using all the tools everyone suggested. I've done all of the "investigating" you're all suggesting, which is why I'm still stumped and asking. And it's not completely true that not spending in Adwords won't affect seo -- I've seen a lift in seo from paid ads for every single client. Coincidental? Probably not completely.

Thanks all! When I said "no SEO" yes I'm sure they're doing some SEO here and there. But they don't even have title tags on their website which is bizarre to me since that's the foundation of on-site SEO. And in regards to content, we promote great, unique content all the time as well as through social channels. We have used tools like Moz, Ahref, and many others which is why I'm asking here to get some new insight we haven't thought of yet.

We have a client that we've been doing white-hat SEO for for over 3 years and they've always been number 1 in Google for all their targeted keywords. This year, their competition has been ranking above them and our client has been pushed towards the bottom of the first page. After thorough research, we discovered that this competitor is doing no SEO at all, just regular PR which our client is also doing. Our client is even spending money in Adwords and their competition isn't. Can anyone explain how a website that does zero SEO can magically be ranked at the top now and above our competitor who we're doing everything possible for?

While I definitely see the pros to buying your name in Adwords, should you still do this if you have a small monthly budget? I get why large companies like Tiffany's would buy their name because they have the excessive funds to do so in addition to buying keywords. Any guidance or strategy on this?

In my MozBar under "General Attributes" it says "index, follow" next to Meta Roberts for one of our client's websites. I've never seen "index, follow" before. I've seen it say "not found." What does index, follow mean and is that a bad thing? I know the reason should be obvious but this site has had a lot of problems and I'm wondering if this is related.

Ok thanks, these are all very insightful responses. To answer your questions, these are brand names and yes people are searching the names to find the companies. And my whole theory was if we have a small budget, then we should just focus on attracting new business. However I do know that competitors ARE buying all competitor names in the industry, but I also know they have larger budgets to work with.

On a side note, my other concern is that people search for a generic keyword, click on our client's ad, then leave, and then decide to google that their brand name later and click on the ad and then convert. Is there a way to target those types of people?