Ep. 114- The One About Feeding Google Well & A Blue Dog (with Jason Barnard)
You never know when you might need to teach yourself a new skill. For example, how to become found by a target audience of parents looking for great educational content… or to get your band in front of potential audiences and booking agents.
Jason Barnard (aka The Brand SERP Guy) did both of these things and more.
With over 2 decades of experience in digital marketing, he got started started in the year Google was incorporated with a website for kids based on the characters Boowa & Kwala that he built up to become one of the 10,000 most visited sites in the world.
Before that, he was a professional musician with the Punk-Folk group The Barking Dogs. And before that he studied Economics and Statistical Analysis at Liverpool John Moores University.
[00:00:00] Narrator: You are listening to More Perfect Marketing, the show for business owners and entrepreneurs always on the lookout for smart marketing ideas to keep their business moving forward. And now, here’s your host, David Baer.
Introducing Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) and His Musical Background and Creative Experiences
[00:00:15] David Baer: Hello and welcome to another episode of More Perfect Marketing. Today we’re going to dive into a little bit of my background and my guest’s background because we share some things in common, probably more in common than we might think at first. Look, I have a background, as you may or probably don’t know, in the performing arts world. I was a classical music arts administrator for many years. I was a professional stage manager. And our guest today has been a professional performer in the funk. I was going to say funk pop, but that’s not it. Now we got to find out what it actually is. Punk folk, that’s what it is, isn’t it?
[00:01:03] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah.
[00:01:04] David Baer: And I was just jumping on myself to say no, you’re wrong, David. But we’re going to find out what that is, as well as his creative experience in both writing and then voicing animated characters. And as we will dive into probably further, I’ve just taught him, even though he ought to be an expert in the Queen’s English, I just taught him a new word. So, with all that said, I’m excited to welcome Jason Barnard to the show.
[00:01:36] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Absolutely delighted to be here, David. We’ve had a short conversation. I’m already enjoying it, and we haven’t even started the proper public conversation.
What Does SERP Mean and What Does Jason Barnard Do as The Brand SERP Guy?
[00:01:46] David Baer: So, I gave this quick introduction to you, but I didn’t mention anything about marketing. We should say that you work, and you have been for the last decade or so, as a marketer. You have branded yourself The Brand SERP Guy. And for folks who don’t know what SERP refers to, why don’t we start there and then let’s backtrack a little bit and learn about how you got where you are today.
[00:02:12] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Right. Brilliant. Yeah. SERP is search engine results page. I come from the world of search engine optimisation. And I have realised over the last 10 years that search engine optimisation is lovely, but it’s increasingly based on branding and marketing. And so, the trick and secret of search engine optimisation is all about packaging your branding and your marketing for Google and Bing, which is Microsoft. So, what I love about this is I became very geeky and I’m ungeeking myself.
Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Built His First Website in the Year 1998 When Google Was Incorporated
[00:02:53] David Baer: Okay. I want to dive into the ungeeking part a little bit more, but let’s talk a little bit about how you got into this in the first place. What brought you to the interest in search engines? This must have been back in 2010, 2012, or something like that when you got started.
[00:03:15] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Oh, right. No, not at all. I started in 1998, when Google was incorporated. My first ever website was literally two months after Google was incorporated as a company. And it was a site of games, songs, and activities for children. And I was a blue dog, a cartoon blue dog, and my wife was a cartoon yellow koala. And we started the website as this, what would you say, a project of love and a project of creativity. And we built our audience to the extent that we had 5 million children a month coming to the website, and we built a lot of it on the back of Google’s search algorithms.
How Did Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Began to Approach the Concept of Ranking on Search Engines?
[00:04:14] David Baer: That’s pretty awesome because this was a new concept, new technology that was getting embraced by the public. And while search engines had been around at that point for a little while, understanding how to build a site and leverage them must have been a new adventure for you. So, I’m curious to understand how you approached all of this.
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Trying to Rank for Every Related Keyword Terms on Different Search Engines and Then Finally Focusing on Google When It Came Along
[00:05:16] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): At that time, it was totally nuts. It was really, really, really, really weird. And that you had Lycos, you had HotBot, you had Magellan, you had literally ten, a dozen major search engines who weren’t Google or Microsoft. And you would create one page for each and every search phrase and every variant of it. So, we would have one for kids games without a space, kids games with a space between the words, kids game, kid game, kid game without a space, and so on and so forth. And this is for 12 maybe major search engines.
[00:06:07] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): So, we would produce, in order to rank in all these different search engines, we would produce literally a hundred pages for each and every search term we could find. So, we ended up with 20-30,000 web pages optimised for very specific spellings of each and every keyword. And Google came along. And it was relatively easier for us because it was a little bit smarter than the other ones. And we ended up just focusing on Google. And we picked the right horse to back, if we can give a betting expression.
[00:06:51] David Baer: Yeah.
[00:06:51] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Were we lucky or were we smart? I don’t know. But we basically just said, let’s just throw all the other ones away because this is a total mind problem. It really, really freaks you out when you’re creating hundreds of thousands of pages for dozens or a dozen major search engines. But then you say, let’s just focus on Google. And it’s turned out to be the right choice, which is how I ended up in the Google’s sphere in terms of how do we make sure that Google allows us or presents us as the recommended number one top result for different search results.
Some of the Differences Between Google Versus Other Search Engines: Recognising Mistypings and Similarities of Words and the Concept of Inbound Links
[00:07:33] David Baer: So, talk a little bit about what some of the differences were that you were seeing with Google at that point versus the other search engines. Obviously, it sounded like it wasn’t as labour intensive for you to be creating lots of pages. What were you able to do to tap into Google at that time? Obviously, Google has continued to change and refine the way that they choose to rank things. But at that time, what was the difference with them?
[00:08:08] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Well, there were two major differences. Number one was that we didn’t need to create a page for every single variant. So, kids games without a space and kids games with a space would be the same page.
[00:08:22] David Baer: Because their platform is smart enough to recognise that somebody may have mistyped or intended to say something that, okay, got it.
[00:08:33] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. And they would understand mistypings and similarity between words or similarity between queries. And that immediately reduced literally by 10 the number of pages we needed to create. And then the other question is they added the concept of inbound links are a vote of authority or popularity.
Inbound Links Made the Job of Getting to the Top of Google Easier Compared to Other Search Engines
[00:08:56] David Baer: So, inbound being a link on somebody else’s site that was pointing to your site.
[00:09:02] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah.
[00:09:03] David Baer: Okay.
[00:09:04] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And they introduced that idea. And because we were educational and because it was really lovely, and honestly, I think it was a delightful, positive world, positive changing in a tiny way, obviously, but it was positive, so people linked to us. They put a link on their website saying, this is a great website.
[00:09:26] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): So, it was these recommendations through the links that made it really easy for us to get to the top of Google, whereas it was much more difficult for us to get to the top of Infoseek or HotBot because they didn’t take into account the links. They were just counting the words. And so, Google became a focus for us because we were popular and because we were appreciated and because it was smarter than the other machines.
The Journey of Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) in the Music Industry
[00:09:57] David Baer: Okay. So, we’re going to jump ahead and talk a little bit about how you moved from this business of the content to the site and your TV series and you have an album of songs and all these other things that came of it, I should say. But first, I want to talk a little bit about how you got to that in the first place. Because whether I was able to remember exactly what form of music you performed or not, you were in the music business before the web captured your attention. So, I want to just hear a bit about that background as well. And then we’ll jump ahead in time.
[00:10:47] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Right. Yeah. I’ve spent my entire life just doing things that I think are enjoyable and fun. And sometimes I made good money and sometimes I made no money. And it all started actually literally back in Liverpool. I was at a university in Liverpool. I played the Cavern Club where The Beatles played. I went to the same university as John Lennon. And I finally, I spent years trying to get myself and John Lennon, my photo next to John Lennon as alumni of John Moores University in Liverpool. And I’ve done it. So if you search for alumni of John Moores University, Jason Barnard and John Lennon are literally right next to each other.
[00:11:30] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And all of that comes from, and it’s such an astonishing turnaround in life. As I started off in Liverpool with a friend of mine who said, do you want to play in my band? And I said, yeah. And we ended up playing in the Cavern Club, which is the relationship with The Beatles. And I happened to be at the university that John Lennon had gone to. And I love that coincidence. I didn’t know it at the time where it was going to lead me, where the connections would be later in life. And Liverpool is the most wonderful city. It’s all about music and football, literally. It isn’t something I’m exaggerating. When you live in Liverpool, that’s all you do and that’s all you talk about. And it’s absolutely wonderful.
Moving to Paris, Joining a Punk Folk Band, and Learning How to Play the Double Bass
[00:12:24] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And then I moved to Paris, and that’s where the antithesis between us comes. You are the classical music guy. I joined a punk folk group as a double bass player. And what was lovely about that is that I turned up, I was a singer. I was a singer in a band in Liverpool. And I turned up and met some people and they said, oh, do you want to join our band? I said, yeah, I’d love to join your band, that would be great, I’m a singer. And they said, no, we don’t need a singer. And I said, oh, I can play a bit of guitar. And they said, we don’t need a guitar player, we need a double bass player. If you want to play in our band, you have to play the double bass.
[00:13:05] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And I had never played the double bass in my life. And I went and bought a double bass, came back, and said, okay, I’ve got a double bass, now what do I do? And they said, you have to learn the double bass. In 30 days, we have a gig. And if you can get through that gig without making a total fool of yourself, you’re in the band. And that’s how I became a double bass player. And it turns out, the double bass is something I’m really good at. And I’m a bad guitarist. I’m not the best singer, but I’m a very good double bass player.
Playing Folk Music With a Punk Attitude, Performing in Concerts for 10 Years, and Making Four Albums
[00:13:41] David Baer: That’s awesome. And I wasn’t familiar with the fact that double bass is a typical instrument in that particular genre of music.
[00:13:53] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): It’s actually folk music just played with punk energy.
[00:13:59] David Baer: I got it.
[00:14:00] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): So, an example of that would be, if you know The Pogues, they’re a very famous group. That would be folk which has a punk attitude. And we were very much folk with an even bigger punk attitude. And when I hear the music we played, we played 660 concerts, something like that, in 10 years. We made four albums.
Jason Barnard’s Band, The Barking Dogs, Have a Version of Motorhead’s Song Called the Ace of Spades
[00:14:26] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And we have a version of the Ace of Spades. And if you look it up on Google, you search for The Barking Dogs and the Ace of Spades, you will find, and it’s not because I was in the band. I was just one cog in the wheel, but it is phenomenal. This is a heavy metal song from Motorhead played with a violin, a mandolin, and a double bass and a drum kit with absolutely all the energy and all the power you would expect from a heavy metal or a punk band.
[00:15:05] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And the singer, a guy called Hugo, who I absolutely love, who’s one of my best friends in the entire universe. You look at his face on the video on YouTube, and you think this guy is totally, totally on a different planet. And I absolutely loved it. And once again, it was following what we wanted to do because we wanted to do it rather than because we thought it was going to work.
Comparing the Magic of Living in Liverpool With Living in Yorkshire and Just Following What Life Has to Offer
[00:15:33] David Baer: So, I’m listening to you tell these stories, and I’m watching the enthusiasm and the bright smile on your face as you’re sharing all of this. And here’s the thing, by the way, before I share this observation, I will simply corroborate your story. I am looking at a picture of you next to John Lennon or a picture of you next to a picture of John Lennon, I should say, after running that Google search of Liverpool, John Moores University, notable alumni. And there are a lot of notable alumni from your school, so well done.
[00:16:08] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. And it was a fairly second rate university. It was a polytechnic in the UK at the time. So, I come from one of the, I think it’s out of 300 universities in the UK, it’s probably 250th. It’s one of the worst, but it’s full of really, really groovy people including John Lennon and, I hope, myself. So, I think Liverpool has a special magic. Because I was brought up in Yorkshire in Leeds, which is about 60 miles away. And I don’t think that has the same magic. They had The Sisters of Mercy, if you remember them, who were a goth band.
[00:16:50] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And then you look at Liverpool, and you look at The La’s, and you look at The Beatles, and you look at the Fine Young Cannibals, all of whom came from Liverpool. And you go, Liverpool is just such a cheerful place. I loved it. I absolutely loved it. And I loved being in a band in Paris. I moved to Paris to join this band, The Barking Dogs. And I loved being there. And it really has been my entire life, just following what I felt was the right thing to do. And the money behind it was never a motivation.
The Transition From Having a Cartoon Website for Kids to Being a Marketing Expert
[00:17:23] David Baer: So, yeah, this is where I was going with my observation is that you were also smiling and enthusiastic when we were talking about all of the technical stuff related to Google and related to the work that you’re now doing. And so, I want to jump back or forward in time if we can. Because at some point, you decided to incorporate around a business in marketing for other people, having already done this successfully for yourself. And so, I’m curious what was behind that transition.
[00:18:05] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Right. That’s an interesting question. At some point, if we can come back to why I got geeky.
[00:18:11] David Baer: Yes.
[00:18:12] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): That would be really interesting. But right now, the thing is I was doing the blue dog and yellow koala with my ex-wife. And we got into a difficult situation. And I needed to make money to keep my family afloat. And the one thing I could do was rank on Google. I could get my websites to the top of Google. So when I was pitching for work, I said to people, if I can get a blue dog and a yellow koala to the top of Google, just think what I can do for your business. And that’s how I made a living when the blue dog and yellow koala cartoon fell apart from a business perspective.
[00:18:54] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And so, I ended up doing marketing for other people because of the blue dog and the yellow koala, which is absolutely delightful. And the reason that I focus now on what Google shows when somebody searches your brand name or your personal name on Google is because after the blue dog and yellow koala, if you search Jason Barnard, it said Jason Barnard is a blue dog. And if you want to be a professional marketing expert, that isn’t a great way to start.
The Art of Managing How Google Presents You and How You Present Yourself
[00:19:32] David Baer: Okay. Let’s jump to that other question that you wanted me to ask and then we’ll talk a little bit about why it focuses on you being a blue dog a little bit more because that is in fact, if I remember correctly, at the top of your website. Yes, it is in fact, isn’t it?
[00:19:55] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): It is, yes, indeed. Now, but there’s an immense difference between what’s at the top of my website that I present to my audience as human beings as being important, which is I think it was fun or it is fun that I was a blue dog. And if you search my name, Jason Barnard, you will see the blue dog is very much relegated to a minor role in the entire page. It’s literally 5% on Google, and yet on my own website, it’s literally the first thing you see. And that’s the art of managing how Google presents you and how you present yourself.
[00:20:36] David Baer: You’ve actually, to clarify my observation, it is at the top of your site. But as soon as I typed your name into Google, there is no mention of the blue dog anywhere on the first page of results. It’s all about…
[00:20:49] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): There is. If you look in the right hand side, down at the bottom, you will see some songs. And that’s the blue dog.
Creating the Balance of How You Want Google to Present You and Show What You Are Doing Today to Your Audience
[00:20:57] David Baer: Yes. Okay. So, Google changes the way that it delivers results all the time. And it also depends on where you’re searching from. I’m in the US, you’re in Europe right now, et cetera. But you are correct that it does in fact show for songs, but everything else here is talking about your new moniker or your current moniker, The Brand SERP Guy, and work that you’re doing in the space. So, clearly, you did some work to change how you showed up.
[00:21:30] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And that’s exactly, for me, that’s exactly the point. And you really nailed it there. When I was trying to get work as a marketer because I needed to make money to support my family, because the blue dog and yellow koala had collapsed in a big business heap, I needed to get Google to present me as a credible marketer. So, I set about making sure that Google showed me as a digital marketer with credibility.
[00:22:00] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): But then when you come to my site, I can still say I was a punk folk musician. I was a blue dog. I’m an author. I do this, I do that. I was at school with John Lennon, although I wasn’t. He was there 20 years before I was. But that whole personal presentation, once you’re interested in me as a human being, is very different to what I want Google to show my potential clients. So, that balance is incredibly interesting. And you can create the balance yourself. And that’s what I’ve been doing the last 10 years is to say, I want Google to present me this way. Once you want to get to know me, I can show you all the parts and the history and so on and so forth.
[00:22:49] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And the important thing there is the blue dog was 15 years ago. People searching for me today are interested in what I’m doing today. So, Google is showing, because I’ve educated it to do so, it’s showing what I’m doing today.
How Can You Help Educate Google According to Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)?
[00:23:04] David Baer: Okay. So, this is the work that you’ve been doing for a decade now on behalf of clients and others. And you had a phrase that you just used, because I’ve educated it to do so. And I wonder if you can talk, perhaps without giving any of your trade secrets away, a little bit about what it is that you do in order to help educate Google.
[00:23:32] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Right. Well, I actually don’t have any trade secrets.
[00:23:35] David Baer: That was the inside joke between you and me. But in fact, one of the tricky things is that when you’re selling a service, it’s often something that somebody else can do themselves, if they take the time to educate themselves over the 10,000 plus hours to become an expert and if they dedicate the amount of time that’s necessary to do all the work, right? So, there’s a lot of things that we do that are not all that secretive, but we just happen to be better at them or better educated on them. Sorry, that was an inside joke for me and perhaps you, but I had to explain it.
The secret to educating Google is simply to feed it information. It’s like a child. It wants to understand.
Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)
[00:24:13] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. No. I actually really like that explanation, because it makes me feel more comfortable with what I’m doing is that the secret to educating Google is simply to feed it information. It’s like a child. It wants to understand. And it just needs clear information and authoritative corroboration from third party sources. And that’s all I do. So, it isn’t complicated. It isn’t rocket science. Anybody can do it. You simply have to spend the time and understand where Google might be looking for information about you.
You Can Use Jason Barnard’s Kalicube Platform That Will Do the Work for You in a Shorter Time and You Can Also Read His Articles
[00:24:50] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And what we do at Kalicube is I’ve actually built a platform that will do the work for us in five minutes, when it used to take me three hours to figure out all of the information. Where is Google getting its information? How does it perceive all this information that it finds about us around the web? So, as you rightly said, I’m not doing anything you can’t do yourself.
[00:25:18] David Baer: Yeah.
[00:25:19] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): But if you want to do it yourself, you have to read all of my articles. And then you have to spend three or four days figuring it out, and you’ll probably still not fully get the power of what it is we can do at Kalicube. So at Kalicube, it’s simply saying, I’ve been doing this for 10 years. I’ve built a machine that does it automatically. You’d be a fool to spend 10,000 hours, as you said, trying to figure it out for yourself when it’s already been figured out.
What Interests Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) in the Technical Aspect of His Work?
[00:25:50] David Baer: So, what I just observed, yet again, is the joy and excitement about talking about this to the same level that I saw when you were talking about being a performer and a creator. What interests you so much in the geeky technical aspect of this kind of work?
[00:26:13] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Oh, I like that question. The thing I like about what I’m doing is I’m trying to figure out how this machine thinks. The machine is obviously Google technicians and developers creating algorithms. And a guy called John Mueller, who works for Google, said, we just think it’s an algorithm. Jason Barnard actually understands what it is you need to do to get the algorithm to dance to your tune. He didn’t say quite that, but that was the idea of it.
[00:26:47] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And I was invited to New York to talk about Knowledge Graphs. And I was saying, why are you inviting me? I’m not a geek. And they were saying, because you are the only person we have heard of who is educating these machines from the outside instead of feeding it from the inside.
Even if You Can’t Educate the Machines About the Whole World, You Can Still Educate It About Yourself
[00:27:02] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And what I love about that is saying we have these machines. And it isn’t just Google. It’s Microsoft, it’s Apple, it’s Facebook, it’s Twitter, it’s TikTok, Amazon as well. They have these machines that are trying to understand the world. Because by understanding the world, they can then present the world to their users in the most practical manner and the most useful manner that their users require. And they’re all building it on machine learning, which is basically machines figuring things out for themselves.
[00:27:42] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): So, the people who work at these companies don’t know how it works, and yet we can figure out how we can feed these machines with information and educate them about ourselves. I’m not pretentious enough to think I can educate the machine about the whole world, but I can educate it about myself. And from my little corner of the world, that’s what’s most important, both for me and my business.
By Pragmatically and Proactively Educating the Machines, You Can Teach Them Who You Are, What You Do, And Who Your Audience Is
[00:28:09] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): So, philosophically speaking, I’m simply saying these machines want to understand the world. If we let them try to understand the world themselves, they’re going to get it wrong or they’re not going to be confident or they’re not going to get the full picture. But if we set about pragmatically and proactively educating them, we can teach them who we are, what we do, and who are our audience is. And we can get them to be confident in their understanding of that.
[00:28:45] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And their understanding of who we are, what we do, and who our audience is allows them to serve their users as best they possibly can. And that gives us a massive advantage on every single algorithm on all of these different platforms. Because if they’re confident that our solutions match the problems and questions of their users, they’re always going to match us, and we’re always going to win.
What Are Some of the Projects, Businesses, and Experiments That Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Supports and Does?
[00:29:10] David Baer: Sure. So, as you talk about this, I’m thinking about some of the types of applications. And you and I have been around this internet stuff long enough to see that there’s obviously bad actors, who understand the concepts that you’ve been sharing and use them for nefarious reasons. That’s not what you are doing. You’re doing this on behalf of clients. And I wonder if you can talk a little bit about the types of clients you support. I see some really cool case studies on your Kalicube website that we can direct people to learn more about it. But what type of project or business are you most interested in supporting through the work that you do?
[00:29:57] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Right. Yeah. This is actually something that everybody needs to do as a company, a small local company, a big company, international company, or a person or even a podcast or a music group, as we were talking earlier on, The Barking Dogs. I experiment on The Barking Dogs and on the blue dog and yellow koala, Boowa and Kwala, all the time because I want to understand how Google learns. And as you say, there are the opportunities to use this for nefarious reasons. And that’s absolutely not where I’m coming from.
[00:30:32] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And I’ve talked to John Mueller from Google about this. And he has said, you have to be careful about what you share, how you share it. You can do all the experiments you want, but you have a certain responsibility, because tricking the machine can create massive problems that we don’t necessarily now understand. And I’m really truly a hundred percent in the world of saying I want to figure out how to educate Google about the facts about myself, my group, my songs, my company, my services in a factual manner and get it to become confident in that understanding. I’m not in the business of tricking the machine.
Where Can People Go on the Web to Find Out More About Kalicube and Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)?
[00:31:20] David Baer: Yeah. Well, that’s a great place to leave it, because I think it demonstrates the ethical approach you take to all of this. And for folks who are interested in finding out more about Kalicube as well as the background of its founder and CEO, where can they head on the web?
[00:31:46] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Right. Well, the absolutely delightful answer to that is that if you manage how Google understands you and how your audience interacts with you, which is what I’m all about, which is the search engine results page when you search my name, then you search my name and you get the choice of how you want to interact with me, because the results there will give you the opportunities where I am most relevant.
[00:32:14] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): So, it would start with my own personal website, if you want to know about me as a blue dog or a punk folk musician or even a digital marketer. Then number two would be Kalicube, my company, if you want to do business with me. Number three would be Twitter, if you want to tweet at me. Number four would be LinkedIn, B2B business kind of stuff. Number five would be the articles that I’ve written, if you want to read more about what it is I’m saying. Number six would be the videos that I’ve recorded that explain what I’m talking about and so on and so forth.
[00:32:45] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): So, a really well designed, what I would call Google business card will allow you, my audience, to search for my brand name or my personal name and decide how you want to interact with me. Because when it’s well designed and when it represents relevancy for you as my audience, it means that Google has truly understood who I am, what I do, and how I can serve my audience.
If You Read the Stuff and Watch the Videos That Jason Barnard Makes, Your Google Business Card Will Look Brilliant
[00:33:14] David Baer: That’s an awesome answer, number one. Number two, we will be leaving a link to, what was the word I used earlier before we hit record, your autonomous website, jasonbarnard.com. And we will also be leaving a link to the Google search that you just referred to so that people can see how accurate you were in terms of the order that things appear, thanks to the hard work that you’ve done to ensure that Google is telling your story the way that you want it to be told. Jason Barnard, this has been a great conversation. I really, really appreciate it.
[00:33:52] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Brilliant. Yeah. And that Google business card has taken me 10 years to figure out. I’ve made all the mistakes that you should not make. And if you read all the stuff that I’m writing and watch my videos, I can probably reduce that 10 years to a couple of years, and you won’t make the mistakes I’ve made. And your Google business card will look absolutely brilliant in 2024.
Ending the Podcast and Saying Goodbye to the Guest
[00:34:16] David Baer: That’s awesome. I’m looking forward to diving into the things that I need to do for my Google business card. And I thank you for sharing your story and how you approach the entire business behind being The Brand SERP Guy. So, thanks for hanging out with us.
[00:34:35] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Thank you so much, David. That was absolutely delightful.
[00:34:40] David Baer: Indeed. Folks, this has been another episode of More Perfect Marketing. Hope you enjoyed it. If you did and you know somebody who could benefit from listening, please share it with them. And if you’ve got some feedback for us, please head on over to Apple Podcasts and leave your feedback there. We certainly appreciate it. Until next time, I’m David Baer. See you back here again soon. Bye bye.
[00:35:01] Narrator: You have been listening to More Perfect Marketing. Now you can put what you’ve learned here into practice when you join the free listener community at mpmcommunity.com. That’s mpmcommunity.com. When you join today, you’ll receive David’s collection of 26 Marketing Cheat Sheets to help you master your marketing, plus additional business building training. So, don’t delay. Join us today at mpmcommunity.com. We can’t wait to welcome you.
Listen here: The One About Feeding Google Well & A Blue Dog (with Jason Barnard)
Listen on Google Podcasts: The One About Feeding Google Well & A Blue Dog (with Jason Barnard)
Published by More Perfect Marketing. September 29, 2022. Host: David Baer. Guest: Jason Barnard, Founder and CEO at Kalicube.
