Barbara J Carter

I just made a happy discovery. I’m #1 on Google!

That is, if you search on Google.com for “Barbara Carter“, the first result is my web site.

To be sure, these things fluctuate. I’ve never been #1 on Google before, and it might no longer be true tomorrow. But today I’m celebrating!

I never thought I’d make it to the top. When I began my web site, it didn’t even come up on the first page of search results. Actually, I think it came up on the 3rd!

The worst insult of all was that some other Barbara Carter had already snagged the “BarbaraCarter.com” URL for herself. And, obviously, was coming up top in any search. Drat!

This forced me to really think about how to set up my web site, what to call it, and how to optimize it for people trying to find me. The first thing I had to do was register a different URL, which I did by using my middle initial.

The all-important “J” in Barbara J Carter!

I began to use that “J” in everything. I had always signed my name with it, but now it became my identifier, the thing that sets me apart from all the other Barbara Carters. Believe me, there are a LOT of Barbara Carters out there. So, everywhere my name appeared, I made sure the “J” was included.

Slowly, over the years, I incorporated more and more SEO (search engine optimization) methods to enhance my standing on Google. I even took a class on SEO. Some of the usual SEO techniques involve using keywords, text links, alt tags, and incoming links. An art web site is especially hard to optimize because art is fundamentally about images, while search engines just look at words. It’s slow going, but apparently all that slow steady work has finally paid off!

Or maybe it’s just because the other Barbara Carter’s web site is down.

Last week I crowed to a good friend about two paintings I’d just finished.

This friend knows me a little too well. His immediate response was “did you sign them?”

Uh, no.

Signing a painting is, for me, an irrevocable step. It is the point where I say “This painting is absolutely complete. There is not another brushstroke that will improve it.”

That’s a very hard statement for me to make!

I know I’m not alone in this difficulty. Many artists have trouble knowing when their paintings are finished. It’s easy to tweak this and go back over that. “Maybe just one more stroke… well, maybe two…” At some point you just have to say “enough.”

Leonardo da Vinci said “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”

I find signing to be quite challenging. Most of the time I paint with big brushes and large luscious gobs of paint. Signing, on the other hand, requires very fluid paint (I use a special liquid paint just for signing) and a very steady hand. I use a tiny brush called a “liner” for signing. I’ll save up several finished paintings and sign them all at one go, for efficiency. I have to carefully mix a color for my signature for each painting so it will show up against the multi-colored background, yet not interfere with the overall painting. Signing is a tricky business! Which is just another reason to put it off, unfortunately.

But yes, I did finally sign those paintings. After adding a few more brushstrokes…