Jason Barnard is an entrepreneur, writer and CEO of Kalicube

Jason Barnard is an entrepreneur, writer and CEO of Kalicube, a digital marketing agency and groundbreaking software company based in France. Jason is also a digital marketer known as the “The Brand SERP Guy.” Jason’s first book, “The Fundamentals of Brand SERPs for Business,” was published in 2022.

Where Do I Come From? Why Did I Start Optimising Brand SERPs?

Hi, I’m Jason Barnard and I’m your tutor for every lesson in every course

Here’s a little bit about me, and more importantly, how I learned everything that you can learn in this course. In the mid 1980s I went to university in Liverpool and graduated in Economics with a specialisation in statistical analysis.

I then moved to Paris, worked briefly as a teacher, then made a living playing double bass with a folk punk band called The Barking Dogs. That lasted eight years, and then the band split.

And then I got into SEO. Here’s how.

I launched my first website in 1998 which is the same year Google was incorporated. So I’ve been optimizing content for Google since the very beginning, and we kind of grew up together.

That first website was UpToTen and I grew it to 5 million visits a month. Over 20% of those visits were organic from Google. That’s more than a million visits a month just from Google for a site for kids aged up to 10 years old.

Here’s how I got into Brand SERPs.

In 2013 I got curious to see if I could control what Google shows when someone searches a name. Like all good scientists. I started experimenting on myself. My personal brand SERP was a simple list of blue links and it contained references to a mixture of some of the 250 Jason Barnards around the world. Principally me, a footballer, a dentist, and a podcaster.

Step one of the experiment was to make all references to me positive and accurate. That was reasonably easy, but threw up some interesting tricks that I learned.
Step two was to really dominate page one so that I own the SERP. I had to use quite a few of the SEO tips and tricks I had learned over the previous 15 years. Plus I learned some new ones along the way.
Step three was triggering SERP features (I call them Rich Elements). I’ve triggered an optimized quite a few for my own SERP – Knowledge Panel, Twitter Boxes, Video Boxes, Image Boxes, Related Searches, Podcast Box.. and today the SERP looks sexy and convincing.

That experiment got me quite a few clients – companies who want their brand SERPs to look as positive, accurate, and convincing as mine. That corporate work has allowed me to expand my skill set and learn to trigger and optimize more Rich Elements. And it also taught me to deal with negative results such as bad articles, bad reviews, and vitriolic forums.

In 2019 I decided to make this course and teach other marketers like you to master brand SERPs.

Have fun with the courses.