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Renaming my blog for better search engine recognition

Tweet Sweet made it to the top!
So I make it an effort to check at least every few days where my search rankings fall in Google and Yahoo. I’ve even started checking MSN, though I don’t get as much traffic generated through them. I’ve been checking Tweet Sweet (my other blog) and its location, and making every effort possible to get to the top of the term “Tweet Sweet”, which finally happened on their last crawl.

Brad McCall maintains its top ranking
I’ve maintained top ranking for a while with any search for “Brad McCall” (my portfolio site). I make it a joke with my friends who say they lost contact with me by telling them to type my name in any search engine… yeah, that was hard wasn’t it? Back in the day when I started bradmccall.com, I got listed on DMOZ which I hear is actually quite difficult to do now. DMOZ (the open directory project) still feeds into a lot of smaller home-baked search engines as well as some of the big daddies. Since it’s managed by people it’s suppose to be more accurate. At the time, there were tons of “search engine submission” services around the web, one of which I used to get my URL out there. (MyComputer.com) I look at the SEO process now, and it’s quite apparent how things have changed in how things are done. This “submission” service back then was like $50.00, and recently I got an email from i need hits that offered it for $1.97. Thus, the “submission only” service’s effectiveness in today’s SEO market.

Where’s Brad’s Blog?
But I’m off subject (what’s new with that?) My point is, Tweet Sweet and Brad McCall have both made it to the top of the search engines. So what’s my next step? (For them, it’s probably keyword optimization for specific terms) But for me, I wanted to see where this blog ranks. I didn’t spend much time thinking about about a name for this blog, I just typed “Brad’s Blog” and launched it. In this morning’s search for “Brad’s Blog” Google came up with 105,000 results, some of which I could probably never throw off the top of the heap. So I tried another phrase I’ve used many times before “Daily Brad” (a play on the prayer “give us this day our daily bread”). Looks like there was just under 32,000 searches with this term – 2 of which seemed to offer the most competion. Thus, more success in getting listed in the top 5.

So today “Brad’s Blog” became “Daily Brad”. My only concern? Now I’ve set the expectation for daily posts… goodness. I guess I better start pouring out those ideas, observations, and general stuff that keeps rambling through my brain.

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So the year was 2000 and we had just launched into a new decade (and a new millenium) without too many Y2K headaches. Remember the Y2K buzz? I remember watching the news before that New Years Night and airports around the world were nearly empty for fears that planes would start crashing into each other when the New Year started. It seems silly now, but it was big business then.

Thrust into being Self-Employed (Kinda)
This was the year I became a freelance designer full-time. It was half by choice, and half forced into it. When the company that I had helped found, Gear Media, lost a couple of its partners, (one on good terms, the other not so good) the remaining partner and I had a heart-to-heart discussion about the future of the company. We both decided that we would not keep our doors open. We had a beautiful office, a great staff, a long list of portfolio clients who’d we’ve done work for… but after some big adventures (long story) my heart was no longer in it. So that’s when I decided it was a great opportunity to go at it alone.

The Dot Com era was still heating up… and people were inventing new concepts and launching new websites all over the place. Venture Capital money was flowing like water and business plans were napkins with coffee stains. I had 6+ good years of graphic design experience under my belt, a dedicated (though small) group of freelance clients with whom I had moonlighted along the way and so I decided I would go for it.

Choosing My Brand Name
So first things first. A name. I needed a business license, a website, a brand… holy cow (a Utahnism), but what should I call myself? The names I thought of back then seem a bit silly to me now, names that were based primarily on nicknames as a child or words that I thought had a cool sound to them. But then I thought what am I selling? And then the choice was easy – Brad McCall, designer became my company name.

Creating A Logo
My logo really came as a natural extension of everything being created at once. It first started with my favorite color, and then moved with my concept with being outside the office (working outside the “cubie”, being outside the “box”) and became a simple treatment of a block of orange. I used a combination of my favorite fonts at the time – Swiss 721 and Trade Gothic Condensed. (I am still VERY fond of these fonts, so they were lasting choices for me).

My stationery identity/business system was a bit unique as well:

What made it especially unique, is I did everything on a small budget. I went to a label manufacturer and had 3,000 one color square labels printed with my logo on it. I could use regular stationery paper and envelopes for my identity and use the glossy orange sticker to give them that high-end touch. I also used the logo stickers on any folders, CD media, or other items my clients would recieve from me.

I even went so far to make my signature style to wrap gifts in white paper and put my single orange sticker on the top when giving gifts to clients and friends. The business card I designed was simple (it gang-printed with my first promo and thank you card to save money) and an odd size (square). It had my logo on the front and my URL on the back. Since I’m not a big fan of phone calls, this was a perfect solution for me. It was printed uncoated so I could write whatever contact info it needed on it for its recipient.

The final items were my promo and website, but I’ll save those for another blog. The new website design is coming soon, and I’ll post comps when they’re ready. But another note on budget – my entire start-up costs including hiring a webprogrammer, having a promo printed and mailed, creating my business identity system was less that $1,000.

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