Google's Potential and Future feat. Jason Barnard

[00:00:00] Josh Baker: Hey listeners! Welcome to the Intelligent Conversations where we believe that everyone has a form of intelligence that resides within them. We invite guests from various backgrounds to share with you what makes them unique. Our hope is that you and I can learn and grow together. Without further ado, welcome to the show.

[00:00:18] Josh Baker: Hi, everyone! Welcome back to the Intelligent Conversations podcast. Today, I have the honor to speak with Jason Barnard. Jason is a brand search engine results page guy or SERP Guy. He is also an author, a digital marketing consultant, and much more. Jason is an enthusiastic guy and has experienced as a punk folk musician, a blue dog, and even spent some time on a desert island, if you can correct me if I'm wrong there. Jason, I want to thank you for coming on. This is an absolute pleasure. I mentioned this before we got started. I'm really excited to have you on today, but I like to usually introduce my guest by asking what kind of got you into search engine results page? I have no clue what that even is, what kind of got you into that, what exposed you to that type of field?

Introduction: Boowa & Kwala Has Brought Jason into Being The Brand SERP Guy

[00:01:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Okay. Right. The thing is I forget that people don't really necessarily understand. I talk about this all day long. So, search engine results page for me is just so obvious and when I say SERP people say, "Oh, what does that mean?" and it's on the book behind me, The Fundamentals of Brand SERPs, and I assume people know what SERP is. Search engine results page is what you see on Google when you make a search on Google. So, if you search for buy red shoes, it's the result that you see on Google, and then you click on a link and you go and buy your red shoes, and you look incredibly great in them. And I specialise in the results that Google shows when people search a brand name or a person's name or a film name, which is a little bit of a niche speciality.

[00:01:59] Josh Baker: That's cool. I'm involved with a lot of business, I would say business side of things, so I understand like how Google operates, so it's an interesting company and we can talk about that as we dive into this, but I want to ask you this, what motivated you to get into that field? What was the reasoning behind it? Was there like a mentor or an experience? What kind of got you into that?

[00:02:29] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah, I'd forgotten that was the question. It wasn't, what is a SERP? The question was, how did I get into search engine results page? And the answer is this blue dog here. You mentioned that I was doing cartoons and this is the punk folk bass player. This is my life as an illustration, and it starts with my childhood as a punk in the countryside, a moose counting horse, dog playing, wolf playing a double bass, blue dog and yellow koala, a big black, evil dog and a flying falcon which is where I am now. And I got into it because of the blue dog. My ex wife and I, after being a punk folk musician, at this point, I decided I wanted to be a children's musician. So, I wrote some songs for kids and I pitched it to the record companies and they said, "We can't release that. You're a punk folk musician and people won't accept it." And my wife and I decided to create the blue dog and yellow koala and she wrote a story around the world with Boowa and Kwala in 12 songs. And she did a genius job of bringing together these 12 kind of disparate songs that I had written and recorded and created a story out of them based on a blue dog, a big blue dog, which was me and a small yellow koala, that was her, and the big blue dog takes the yellow koala around the world. And it was absolutely beautiful.

[00:03:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And what we then did was this was 1998, which shows how old I am and Google was just incorporated that year. And I made a website to show the songs and to show the story using Flash, Adobe Flash, which was Macromedia at the time and got into the web that way, and obviously to get people onto the site, I needed to learn SEO, and I was either is it lucky enough or intelligent enough to focus on Google? And I ended up with 5 million visits a month to this website for children aged up to 10 years old.

Google’s Algorithm Has Evolved Over Time From Counting Words and Links To Delivering Accurate Results For Each Search Query

[00:04:22] Josh Baker: That's incredible that the story behind that too is so cool. I love when people like what you were talking about, like create something from scratch and then go about doing that. You talked about the Google like that you had to do SEO to get into that. I want to know what goes into that? I think a lot of people, all they see is you type in I want to buy some shoes, like you said at the beginning, or I want to do this or how to start a business or whatever your question is, how does that like generate results? What's the process that happens behind the scenes there?

[00:05:03] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Google obviously doesn't share how it figures this stuff out, but if we take a little step back and we look at what's happening is Google's role or Google's aim is to get its users to the solution to their problem as efficiently as possible. Every time you search into Google, you've got a question or a problem, and you're looking for the answer or the solution.

[00:05:25] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And Google's job is to make sure that movement from having a problem to finding the solution to that problem is as smooth as it efficient as it possibly can be. So, they try to work out which page on the internet contains the solution to the problem they're expressing when they've made the search.

[00:05:42] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And back in the days of the blue dog, in my blue dog period, that would involve Google counting the number of times one of the words that the person had typed appeared on the page, then it would count the number of links coming into that page, and then it would put the one with the best balance of words and the best number of links at the top and so on and so forth. And if you look back to 2008, which was when I stopped doing this, Google was still basically just counting words in pages and counting the number of links coming from one site onto that page and the results weren't that brilliant. If you remember, which you might not, because you actually looked very young that you would go through the first five pages you'll keep clicking through on Google until you found something that was more or less what you were looking for. And today we expect Google to get that best result, the most efficient solution or the most efficient route to the solution, to our problem right at the top. So, the world has changed and that's where from my perspective, things have got interesting counting words and counting links is boring. This is really interesting.

[00:06:48] Josh Baker: I 100% agree. The world is changing. It's getting a lot more, I don't want to say complicated, when you mentioned Google in 2008, the funny thing is I actually don't remember a day without Google. It's really weird to me. I even talked to my parents and I'm like, what'd you guys like do before? Like pre-Google, pre-internet, like I don't know anything besides that, like I was born in, I'll date myself here, I was born in 2002. I was like, Google was already a company type thing. I was six. When you mentioned they were still counting all that numbers.

[00:07:23] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): You should have been watching the blue dog and the yellow koala. You're exactly the right age for Boowa and Kwala.

[00:07:30] Josh Baker: I probably should have been that guy. I don't know. I was into sports and all of that, so I didn't watch too many cartoons when I was young. The only thing I remember watching was, I don't know if you're familiar, Curious George. It was on TV though. So, that's the only cartoon I really would watch.

[00:07:51] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Boowa and Kwala are still there, so you can go and have a look and have a look and you'll think my 6-year-old self probably would have quite like this.

Google Has Introduced the Idea of Universal Search, a Multimedia Presentation of Potential Answers to the Users’ Search Queries

[00:07:59] Josh Baker: 100% and once this interview is done, I'm going to go check that out. I want to see what that is, and I bet I probably would love that. That would be so cool. But I want to get back to this, how did things like change? What was the approach like? I don't want to, I don't know if this is the right question I'm asking here, but how things changed from just counting the links and the words that were typed in. What are they doing today? What's changed because you mentioned that there.

[00:08:29] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): There are multiple layers going on and I'll try to explain them in a way that makes sense. Number one is we're used to just have 10 blue links, which was basically web pages you could visit to find the solution to your problem. And then, they started indexing getting in on understanding videos and images and maps, and that's called universal search. And they brought all of that together. So that then they started inserting the videos and the images and the maps into the results themselves. So, today we don't really expect to see just 10 blue links because the solution to my problem might be in a video, and I would like as an ideal, efficient solution for my problem to click on the video and go straight to the video and get that answer in the video without having to scroll through the page and try and find that.

[00:09:13] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Number one is Google has introduced this idea of universal search, which is the universal different types of results that it can bring together. So, it changed from this text-based list to a multimedia presentation of potential solutions to your problems. And if you search for a famous person, you'll see videos and images all over the place and a Knowledge Panel, which is Google's summary of what it understands about the person. You'll see that what it's trying to do is say, "Here are all the possible ways you can research this person and you just click on the one that you think is the most appropriate."

[00:09:50] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that's where I come in is I say to somebody, you want Google to present the content that you think represents you the best and you can control what Google shows because Google wants to show your audience what your audience is going to find valuable and helpful and interesting. And it's up to us as people, famous or not, to explain, to educate Google what our audience is actually interested in. And that's the crux of everything that I do every day. So, that's point number one. And then if we look at the text kind of counting and link counting is I mentioned that Google has a summary of the person, but what it's doing is building what we call a Knowledge Graph, which is basically an encyclopedia for machines that the machine can read and understand. So, it's moved from counting characters in a word, so J-A-S-O-N space B-A-R-N-A-R-D, it would just count that string of characters and say, okay, that paid Masood about Jason Barnard, because it's got that string of characters 15 times. Now it says, I understand who Jason Barnard is, and I can link all of that together. So it's not counting words, it's understanding the world like a child would.

Google is a Child, a Machine Learning, Constantly Trying To Get Better at Offering the Users Solutions to Their Problems (Search Queries) as Efficiently as it Possibly Can

[00:11:07] Josh Baker: That's, I don't know, for the listeners that are tuning in, I bet they probably have mixed feelings about that. Like, I mean, essentially it's, I mean, I don't want to throw this word out there. It's essentially artificial intelligence, right?

[00:11:18] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yep. It is 100%. Absolutely. The whole thing is driven by let's say machine learning. Artificial intelligence is something a little bit different in the sense that artificial intelligence is trying to emulate the human being, machine learning is a machine trying to learn to do something a human being would do, but do it quicker, better, more efficiently. So, we're talking about machine learning rather than artificial intelligence. So, don't think this machine is actually a child and it's becoming incredibly intelligent and we've got that freaky future that everybody thinks about. You have engineers Google who give this child machine information, they give it a mathematical set of formulas for it to work with, and they say, that's what the result we want.

[00:12:02] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): They give it examples of the result they're looking for. And the machine tries to figure out the best way to get to that. Then, what Google engineers do is they analyze a big set of the results and they say, this was right, that's wrong, this is right, this is great, this is awful, this is bad, this isn't right, you've misunderstood here. And they feed it back into the child algorithm as corrective data. So, they constantly re-educate and correcting the child and the child is constantly trying to get better and better at reaching that ultimate goal, which is get the user to the solution to that problem as efficiently as you possibly can.

Share as Much Digital Footprints as You are Comfortable With Because Anything You Put Out There Will Be Found By Google

[00:12:38] Josh Baker: Ultimately that's, I'm looking at it maybe more from a business perspective, but that business itself is you're trying to solve problems in effective manner and Google is one of the biggest companies in the world, because they're one of the best at doing it. So, you mentioned, I kind of want to backtrack here, you mentioned that you are listed yourself on Google. I want to hear your thoughts on that because I remember back in the day, my parents always told me, "Hey, search yourself up on Google, just to see what's out there." And I don't know if that's still good advice, but I also now as I'm getting older, want myself to be that top result, so then people can see my work or they can see, Hey, this is the job he does, or this is his business or whatever like they can find me and essentially I could see it potentially being helpful. If someone like a business owner like myself were to type in where is an audio engineer, where do I find? And you're one of the top results. I think that would be helpful. Or honestly, they would just link you to LinkedIn and then you'd find them from there. But I want to hear your thoughts on this. What, I mean back then people said, Hey, you don't want yourself on the internet, keep all that information, but now it's almost the opposite. What do you think happened there? I'm interested to hear your thoughts there.

[00:13:59] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): There were multiple questions in that, but the first one is you need to keep the digital footprint that you are comfortable with. So, you share as much as you are comfortable with. Don't share in the idea that, oh, I must be out there, but the point we have here is that Google is so massively big, and it's got so much technology and so much capacity to search the internet, get the internet, it pulls it all into its massive kind of like that database that what you put out there will be found by Google at some point.

It is Essential to Take Control of What The Child Understands

[00:14:29] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, you can't hide. So, anything you put on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn or Crunchbase, or on your own website, or on somebody else's website or a forum, Google would pick up on it. And there you have this machine that is now looking at it and when you're writing, for example on a forum and it says, it was saying, Jason, it will think, "Oh is that the Jason Barnard I remember from Boowa and Kwala?" And if it can make that connection, it understands that it's me talking about that. So, it becomes in Google's mind, part of my digital ecosystem that it's understood. And even if I've just put my handle, if it's Jason and Barnard, it will probably figure out that Jason and Barnard handle is me even if I don't put my name on it. So, you have this kind of child that's going to be building up an understanding whether you like it or not. And my perspective is obviously we are going to go online, we can't completely hide, and one of the first things we all need to do both for ourselves as individuals and for our business is take control of what this child understands because what this child understands is what it's going to show people when they search your name. But it's also what the child will understand in terms of what you do and who your audience might be for that wider picture you talked about of ranking for finding an Audi data in your region. So, one of the most important things that I'm trying to do is say, search your name on Google and see what it has found. See what it thinks is interesting. See what it thinks is important about what you're doing and then start to work to educate it to teach it exactly what it is interesting, what is important, and what you really want to get across to your audience. So, it's about controlling your identity in Google's brain.

Online Reputation Management: Establish Your Entity Home and Make Sure Google Understands the Webpage That Represents You Personally

[00:16:17] Josh Baker: That was a great response. I think that was, it touched on, I was blown away. That was a great response. I think again it shows maybe the importance of what you put out there and I don't know if you have time for something funny. So, when I was back in high school, I actually searched my name and there was this video that popped up and it was something I did. And I was like, I don't know. I'm not even the one recording it. What the, like how this get out type of thing. And I was like, it was something stupid that I was doing. I was like, oh, it's fine if people see it, I don't care. But I'm like what the, I don't even remember anyone recording this, anyone doing anything like that. And I'm like, and all of a sudden I see me right in a video doing something. And I'm like, this is crazy that this is on Google.

[00:17:05] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It's actually a really good point and I interrupted you and I do apologise, but I think it's a really important point to bring in. I was talking about your own digital ecosystem that you create, but you're right. Other people create things for your digital ecosystem and you can't change what people have put out there. But what you can do is educate Google to understand that isn't important, but what you're trying to get across is important and it creeps into Online Reputation Management and part of the trick, and it's the trick, that I'm trying to learn as best I possibly can is to make sure that Google understands and this is absolutely fundamental. It's looking for what I call an Entity Home, which sounds a little bit complicated, but it's basically where do you live online, which is the website or the web page that represents you personally, so that when this child sees that information, that video and it thinks, Ooh, I think that's the Josh I know.

[00:18:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And it comes to the Josh I know's website and it looks, and it sees that it's not present there, it says that probably isn't very important then. So, your way of being able to educate, and ultimately not obviously control, but heavily influence this child that is Google and learning about you is to get it to understand which is your website so that it will always come back there to double check whether or not the things around the web about you are important or not to you. Obviously if it sees something in a massive news, the New York times, and you don't talk about it on your Entity Home, it will still think it's important. So you can't control it, but certainly a very large level, the child is looking to you to tell it what's important, what's valuable, and what's helpful to your audience.

Google is Building an Encyclopedic Understanding in Order to Serve Its Users and Get Them Wherever They Want to Go Most Efficiently

[00:18:48] Josh Baker: Okay. Thank you for clearing that up. I think a lot of people, that will help answer some of their questions because just everyday people that are out there I think they're a little concerned about that. It's something that is on their mind. They're like, I don't know if I'm getting recorded in something, put something online. I remember someone told me they were like, I'd hate to grow up in your generation because everything's documented and published online, but it almost gives you some relief to say, "Hey, like you can influence it, so then it shows like the true you, what you actually want to provide to the world, what it is that makes you valuable I would say instead of something stupid, you did way back when. It's still there and I think it can serve as a learning experience, but it also can help you get that reputation like you said, and show who you are.

[00:19:42] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And one thing that is in fact important I'm starting to dig into is let's say that was posted on Facebook. It still exists on Facebook and people will still see it and potentially find it on Facebook, but you can definitely push it down and get it out the way on Google if that's what you aim to do. And ironically, just today I was doing some slides for a course, an online course that I'm publishing, about how to do this, about how to get rid of the stuff you don't want, the negative content or the less than positive content. But there's another really interesting point and this takes it mind-blowingly far is this idea of Google building a Knowledge Graph, building an understanding, an encyclopedic understanding, for a child algorithm in order for that child algorithm then to serve its users to get them wherever they want them to go most efficiently. Facebook is doing it, Twitter is doing it, Apple is doing it, Amazon is doing it, Microsoft is doing it.

[00:20:37] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): All of these big tech companies are building these child machines that understand the world that are aiming to understand you and aiming to use you to satisfy their users. So, in fact Google is a child perspective that I'm using and how to educate it applies to all of these machines, so potentially you could figure out how to educate the Facebook child, the Twitter child, the Apple child, the Microsoft child, which I'm now already doing. And the Amazon child as well. So, this Google as a child just fly so high and it's mind blowing to what extent my little niche is actually applicable to everybody everywhere online.

Google’s Aim is Pure Understanding, It is Learning Incredibly Quick and Most Importantly, Remember That This Child Has a Perfect Memory

[00:21:20] Josh Baker: Yeah. I like that. You keep referring to Google as a child. I understand this, but just to clear this up with the audience here. Is it like just a development, like it's in its early stages, it's not even to where it can be right now, is that kinda what you're getting at?

[00:21:37] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. It's a child with an understanding of the world. Let's take Wikipedia for example which has, I can't remember how many fact is in Wikipedia, let's say 50 billion. The child has 100,000 billion. It's got so much more information in its little brain than Wikipedia. Wikipedia is peanut. Next to what this child learns as it all knows, but even if the child's got 100,000 billion facts in its brain, it wants to understand absolutely everything in the world. It doesn't have an idea of notability. It has an idea of, I want to understand, so whoever you are, whatever your business is, whatever record music albums, street names, houses, buildings, places, times, events it wants to understand every single one of them. That's absolutely massive. And it's aim is pure understanding.

[00:22:30] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So from that perspective, it's a child that is learning and learning incredibly quickly and it is a child, also don't forget, with a perfect memory, it doesn't ever forget. So, you have this child that is, and as we talked earlier on about machine learning, the more the Google engineers improve their own mathematical formulas to help the child and the more they feed in this corrective data that helps the child understand where it's getting it right, where it's getting it wrong, and the more Google engineers find ways to feed the child information that is reliable, the faster and the faster the child will learn. And a guy called Fabrice Canel who's the head of Bingbot, which is Microsoft's equivalent with Google, Bing says that the intelligence of these machines is increasing exponentially and he actually runs the part of Bing. And he's saying we don't understand as human beings, just how quickly this child is getting smarter and smarter and it's exponential, which is this incredible, like hockey stick curve. And he says, I'm actually building this thing and I find it stunning and a little bit frightening.

Google is the Child, We’re the Responsible Adults: We Have a Certain Amount of Control Over What the Machine Sees, Understands, and Digests About Us and We Need to Start Doing That Now and Not Tomorrow

[00:23:39] Josh Baker: Frightening on the last part. How can it be frightening for some of the listeners here? They don't really know much, and then also how could it be scary I guess?

[00:23:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I think it's frightening simply by the speed. It's a speed that we've never seen as human beings before. It's a whole technological kind of area that we've never seen before. Looking back to the printed press, which was actually before my time in the 16th century or 17th century, that was a massive change where people didn't have to write by hand, it was printed. So, you could duplicate and people could share information. This is equivalent, but even bigger, I would argue. And the speed at which it's moving is what can potentially be frightening. How much these machines can digest and understand can be frightening and how much they can get wrong is frightening.

[00:24:25] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And from our little perspective of our little corner of the internet, the way we can deal with that fear is to think about the fact that the machine is getting smarter, we have a certain amount of control over what the machine sees, understands, and digests about us and we need to start doing that now and not tomorrow. And if we can control today while the machine is still a small child learning, that information and that understanding about us and the confidence it has in that understanding about us will be so heavily anchored in it's brain. We will have a much, much easier life later on when things do get really complicated. So, I would suggest dealing with this situation now in a responsible manner, that's important. Google is a child, we're the responsible adults. We're the ones educating it. And people who say to me, and I get this a lot, Google should just understand, why is Google getting it wrong. And the answer is because you're explaining it badly.

[00:25:25] Josh Baker: Interesting.

[00:25:26] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Explain it better. Google will get it.

Jason’s 3 Pointers To Understanding Credibility and Suitability to Google’s Search Engine Results Page

Number One: We Need to Make Sure that the Machine is Confident it Has Understood When Our Solution is the Best One

[00:25:29] Josh Baker: That's an interesting point. The analogy you used there, it's really cool that you compare it to a child and then we're the adults right now and cause eventually right. It's going to become that adult, right? And quite frankly, it's going to do things a lot better than we can. And then we're going to be the old people, that the adults are going to have to take care of anyway. Like it's that middle range that they're taking care of us and it makes our lives hopefully easier. That's ultimately what we all want. We're someone that if we can find an easier way, always we'll take it. So, I like that comparison you made there that we’re the adults right now, and we need to actually influence the child, so then when we're older, it can actually take care of us. Sorry, did you have some thoughts there?

[00:26:17] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): No, I was thinking as well as the idea, and I think I probably repeat it too many times, but I don't actually think you can is that Google is looking after its users or its clients, that's how it makes money and it wants to get them to the solution to their problems as efficiently as possible, and now our role is to make sure that the machine understands and is confident it's understood when our solution is the best one.

[00:26:41] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that's the fundamental key. It's saying, if I can educate this child about who I am, what I do and who my audience is, then it's able to present me to its users when they search for something, for which I will be at actually helpful and valuable to them. And so, that understanding and the confidence it has in that understanding is fundamentally important.

Number Two: We Need to Convince the Child that We are the More Credible Solution

[00:27:02] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And then you move on to the next step, which is credibility. So, if it's understood me and my competitor, I need to convince this child that I'm a more credible solution that if the child sends the user to me for the solution, that user will be happier with the solution I have provided or more satisfied than if it sends them to my competitor. So, you have a concept of understanding credibility.

Number Three: We Need to to Make Sure That Our Content is in a Format that Suits Google and How It’s Trying to Serve Its Users

[00:27:26] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the third one is that the user is looking for a specific way to digest maybe the content and Google is trying to find the best way for Google to deliver it, so you need to make sure that your content is in a format that suits Google and how it's trying to serve its users. So, I have a triple kind of idea, which is understanding credibility and suitability to Google's search engine results page.

[00:27:55] Josh Baker: Okay, yeah. That's great three points by the way.

[00:28:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It's also simple, that's what I can't believe. I've been doing this for 25 years and it's suddenly all seems very simple to me.

Jason’s Key to Nurturing and Taking That Responsibility of Constantly Teaching the Child

[00:28:08] Josh Baker: That's cool. And I want to drop the intelligent question of the day on you here. And it's you talked about those points, those three points that you made, but what could, so my audience is primarily, I would say kids ages 18 to 24, and then I have another audience size as well, but some of these kids are making decisions. They're making choices about what they want to do with their life, how maybe they want to appear online, how they want the internet to perceive them, Google to perceive them as well. And I would ask as the intelligent question of the day, how do you take that responsibility? How do you take that responsibility to nurture that child as Google? Google is a child, how do you nurture it and take that responsibility so then once it's grown up we can have an easier life?

[00:29:02] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It's an intelligent question. It's an incredibly important question too. And the answer is incredibly simple, which is lovely. So, that's a lovely way to get through to the end of this.

Create a Place on the Web That You Control 100% Where You Can Present and Lay Out to Google Who You Are, What You Do, Who Your Audience is and What Might Be Important to Them

[00:29:12] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): The first thing you need to do is we come back to what I was talking about, the Entity Home. You need to create a place on the web that you control 100% where you can present and lay out to Google who you are, what you do, who your audience is and what might be important to them. And what's important to you, of course. And interestingly, my nephew recently asked me to set him up a website. So, we bought his domain name, which is his own name.com, or it could be his own name.person or his own name.co or his own name.whatever, or.me is another good one. And set up a simple WordPress website.

[00:29:47] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): You can do it on Wix. You can do it on Squarespace. You can go on any of these platforms and it's only one page, but it's one page where he says, this is my name, this is who I am, this is what I do. These are my social platforms, and this is the important content around me that you, Google, need to understand. And if people are searching my name, this is what you should be showing them.

[00:30:12] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And so, it's a really simple initial step today is to say, I make sure that I have one page on one website that I own 100% where I can present this information and start educating the child. And one mistake, a lot of people make is say I use my Instagram account or my Facebook account. You don't own them. They can close your account. They can put anything they want on the account. It belongs to these big tech companies. Twitter, the same thing. Elon Musk buying out Twitter. If Google looks there for facts about you, you're in trouble in my opinion. Facebook, the same thing. Instagram, the same thing.

[00:30:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, the thing about the site, let's say my site, jasonbarnard.com is it belongs to me and I can put whatever I want on there at any time, I can change it any time, and the child knows that when it comes back to this site, I am telling it my story, in my words, the way I want it to understand me and present me to my audience. And if you start that now, it's one simple page website making sure that you own the domain name and the domain name if you registered with somebody like godaddy or hava.com is $15 a year.

[00:31:22] Josh Baker: Yeah. Thank you. Everyone that's listening that's the intelligent answer today. That was a great answer. Thank you. And I think that'll help clear a lot of things up. You mentioned the social media platforms there. It's true. You don't own the content, the stuff that you put out there. I think like what you said in Instagram at any moment it can just say, Hey, we don't like what you're putting, kill the account type of thing and it's a little scary, but at the same time I like what you said, you need to take 100% control and put your own content out there and website, just a simple one page saying that this is who I am, this is if people search me up on Google, this is what I want people to know about me.

[00:32:08] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Exactly. And that's the simple, intelligent answer to the intelligent, incredibly important question you asked.

Reach Out and Find More About Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)

[00:32:16] Josh Baker: Thank you. I've had a pleasure just learning from you. Definitely a lot of people when they listen to this podcast, they think that I know all of the things that I'm asking. I actually don't know a lot. It's much. I learned just as much as they do. It's a fun dynamic, but I definitely learned stuff today. I'm sure the audience learned things today as well. But you mentioned that you have your cartoon, you have your probably one-page website if people want like examples, anything like that, what's the best way that they can find that? What's the best way that they can get ahold of you if they want to do business with you or get some advice from you? What's the best way they can do that?

[00:32:54] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Really simple answers you search my name, Jason Barnard, J A S O N space B A R N A R D. And what Google then shows you is my website, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, search engine journal, articles. And the book and my courses and my company. And basically that allows you to choose how you want to engage with me. You can go and engage with my company if you want to do business. You can visit my website if you want to understand more about me or read more about all this work that I'm doing. You can engage maybe on Twitter. And the idea there is that's my business card. It's my Google business card. Search my name, you see my Google business card that I have designed to show you or give you the options of how you want to engage with me.

[00:33:36] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): If you're running a business like you are, I would honestly recommend the book. The book is a really good introduction to this whole approach that teaches you how to get into digital marketing without knowing anything about it, without knowing anything about Google or the technical aspects of it, and yet build an amazing strong business online. It's once again, it's simple, it's accessible, it's intelligent and it's common good sense applied to great marketing. I recommend the book.

[00:34:08] Josh Baker: All right, yeah. And that can be found on Amazon, any other those platforms as well?

[00:34:14] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yes.

[00:34:14] Josh Baker: Okay. Sweet.

[00:34:16] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yes, exactly.

[00:34:17] Josh Baker: Thank you. Thank you for coming on Jason. I've really enjoyed the conversation we've had today. Like I said just a minute ago, I've learned a lot. Hopefully, maybe you learned something from me. I would hope you did, maybe not.

[00:34:30] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. What I did learn is the intelligent, incredibly important question that I generally don't answer if people don't actually bring it up, and that's definitely a question I need to now bring into every conversation is how do we start and how do we start managing our own identity in Google's brain, but in all of these machines is we start with one page that we are and where we represent ourselves in the best way we possibly can.

[00:34:56] Josh Baker: Yes. That, that right there. I could just cut it off right there and that's one of the most amazing that sums it up. I love it, but no, thank you, Jason, for coming on. It's been an absolute blast. Just thank you so much.

[00:35:12] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Thank you so much, Josh. That was absolutely brilliant!

[00:35:14] Josh Baker: So, everyone that is Jason Barnard. As you can tell, he's a very intelligent person, has great things to say. He dropped his information there, how you can find him when I asked for the information there and you guys can go find him and engage with him how you guys want to. Stay tuned till next week, we have a great guest lined up for you guys as well. See you guys next week and let's get after it.

[00:35:40] Josh Baker: Hey everyone. If you liked this episode and would like to hear more, be sure to hit that subscribe or follow button. We release a new episode every Wednesday for you guys to listen to thank you guys so much for the support that you give. We could not have done this without you guys. If you would like to be a potential guest on the show, check out intelligentconvos.com and fill out the form there. Thank you guys again, and let's get after it.

Season 2

"Google's Potential and Future" feat. Jason Barnard