That was the slogan of Crook Paint & Body Shop when I was growing up in Augusta. Pretty solid branding because I haven’t lived in Augusta since 1984 and I can still remember their tag line.

I actually thought of their slogan this morning when I did a search for Cheryl Smith, after reading about Google page rankings. To my surprise, I made it in the top 5 for my name. Now, for some an ego search renders top 5 results easily, but when you’re name is Cheryl Smith, that’s a bit more challenging. I mean, a dead actress ranks higher than me (yet I suspect that has more to do with a certain film genre rather than with the visibility of my business).

I’m not an Search Engine Optimization expert nor have I employed the services of companies like HubSpot, who offer serious SEO optimization. Admittedly, I have a lot to learn.

Part of knowing where my strengths are and aren’t is knowing when I’m not strong in a particular area, others are. Sometimes I can employ their services, other times people offer up assistance freely. And I’m listening to people like Chris Brogan, who often reminds me to put good content on my site and Liz Strauss who inspires me to write with passion.

So now I’m curious.

What are you doing to increase your SEO results? What free/inexpensive tools are you using? How have you/would you overcome a name deficit?

Note: I just did a little research and learned that Crook closed their business more than a decade ago. I hope it didn’t have anything to do with their name. :-)

Creative Commons photo from Flickr by PittCaleb.