It’s been a tough battle with the almighty search engine for me, but it seems like I’m finally starting to make some progress. I got an unsolicited email the other day that I was just going to delete thinking it was spam, but it turned out to be a potential client who (I’m assuming) stumbled across my website advertising my freelancing writing services. So, I went on over to Google and, well, I saw something darn near miraculous.

Let’s preface this story a bit.

MichaelKwan.com has been around since March 2006, so it’s understandable that the first few months would go by relatively unnoticed. Eventually, I made it onto the first page of results for when you use the search term “Michael Kwan” without the quotations. Great. But below the first three results, inevitably Google asks if I really meant to search for Michelle Kwan (professional figure skater, no known relation).

So, being on the first page just isn’t good enough. I want need to be in the top three. And today, that happened. I am officially the second result for “Michael Kwan”, lagging only behind some Chinese pop singer of the same name. His site at HKVP Radio is still the number one result. Grr. Not sure how this lowly freelance writer can overthrow an apparent pop idol out of Hong Kong with a cult-like following. I guess I have a better chance than if I were a graphic artist named Justin Timberlake.

The next frontier? Let’s get Beyond the Rhetoric on the first page, or better yet, as the first result for “beyond the rhetoric”. Happy holidays!