This artist intrigued me from the beginning but not for his style of work. He’s obviously talented anyway but he was born blind and has never been able to see and understand colors as sighted people do. Watch the video at the bottom for more information.
Here’s a few of his pieces and you can find more of his work on his website.
Being an SEO expert brings everyday challenges and some are more interesting than others. Last week, after being introduced to a potential client as the SEO Expert, I was asked if they would find me at the top of Google if they searched for my name, Ash. I didn’t hesitate in my answer with “of course you will.”
Immediately following our meeting, I did a quick search for Ash to see how my rankings were holding up after not blogging much for about 8 months. I’m usually about #25 but to my surprise I came in at #126 for the keyword “Ash.” however, if you search for Ash Buckles, I come in at #1 and #2 and 16 more of the top 20 spots are my social media profiles, which I control; read my last post for more information.
Thus the challenge becomes ranking at the top of Google for the keyword “Ash” while competing against some pretty huge organizations of the same name.
Some of these huge names include:
I’m not sure I’ll ever make it to #1, nor stay there if I do, but I’d like to think I can make it into the top 10 results of Google and maybe Yahoo. Wish me luck.
Have you been the victim of having just one or two listings on page one of the SERPs for your [personal or business] name along side your competitors or other seemingly irrelevant listings? Maybe this is just annoying, in the case of your personal name (brand), and maybe it’s costing you money because your competitors are listed alongside you tempting your prospects to visit them as well.
Either way, you can quickly and easily fix this problem with the use of social media profiles, which have great reputations and when used properly will jump to the top of the search engines knocking out your competitors.
There are hundreds of social sites out there, and I don’t recommend creating profiles with the express purpose of abandoning the profile page after obtaining link. Find the social media sites that make sense for you and build them up as a means of spreading your name/brand across different networks of people; bringing more eyeballs to you, and as a result bringing more page one results for your name/brand.
Some social sites to consider:
This list is very short compared to what is really available out there and finding as many of these sites that you can maintain in a given month (or so) will provide you with traffic, links, and friends (who know people).
Make sure you complete your profile at each site with your name, url, preferences, likes/dislikes, etc. All of this information is used to pair you up with others in the network.
Within a few days of filling out these profiles you begin to see your profile pages showing up at the top of the SERPs knocking other top 10 pages off to page 2 thereby decreasing your competition.
I can’t stress enough the importance of maintaining each of these profiles. If you create a profile strictly for a free link, you may as well stop reading and forget everything I said. Otherwise you leave your profile page open to abuse from others flaming you for trying to gets links. You will effectively upset people and kill your reputation. Besides you only need a few of these profiles to knock out your competitors from page one.
I’ve discovered another artist, Joey M. Robinson, and I’ve fallen in love with his work. I met him in Seattle while I was out to eat with my brother in Pioneer Square and spent about 30 minutes learning a little about him.
This stuff is amazing!
Check out Joey’s website for updated information.
Have you seen Twellow.com? This is the new phone book (or Google) of Twitter brought to us by WebProNews.
You can update your bio to include keywords that will place your listing within several categories so you can get the most exposure possible.
You can also lookup people based on their city/state and find new friends or professionals.
Be forewarned: it’s addicting.
*Updated: props to Jason Alba of Jibber Jobber for the link
