Jason Barnard

Barnard grew up in a small village near the Yorkshire market town of Otley. His father is a retired university lecturer and his mother, Kate Westbrook, an artist and jazz singer. His sisters, Josie and Clio are a writer and a film director respectively.

He graduated from Liverpool Polytechnic (now Liverpool John Moores University), with a Second Class B.A. (Hons), in Economics and Statistical analysis. During his time in Liverpool, he was lead singer for the Liverpool blues band Stanley The Counting Horse. In 1988, he moved to Paris to pursue his musical career.

Barnard joined the Barking Dogs in 1989 as Double Bassist. Between 1989 and 1996, when the group disbanded, he played well over 600 gigs in France, England, Ireland, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Slovakia and Italy, plus over 3000 busking pitches in Paris, Milan, Zurich and Berlin.

The Barking Dogs played many festivals alongside artists such as La Mano Negra, The Pogues, Les Wampas.

Barnard played double bass, sang and composed songs for all the commercially released albums (see summary above)

In summer 1998, with his wife Véronique, Barnard created Boowa & Kwala. Initially a music CD for children, the characters came alive in a story book (narrated by Sir Tony Robinson in English and Jean Claude Dreyfus in French). The book is now out of print, but available online.

Autumn 1998, the Barnards developed the first interactive games, songs and activities using Macromedia Flash (version 3).[7]

In December 1998, boowakwala.com was launched in French and in English with several games, a song, and an advent calendar.[8]... the couple became Internet Pioneers. Between 1998 and 2008, the Barnards went on to create over 600 educational interactive games and wrote and performed over 100 songs for (and as) Boowa & Kwala. At their peak, the characters' site attracted over 5 million visits from preschool children every month.

In 2007, a 52-episode TV series[9][10] directed by Xavier Picard and produced by PMMP, UpToTen, ITV Studios and Gulli was released in French and English and screened in France, Canada (TVO), Poland, USA, New Zealand.[11][12]

Each episode contains a song, written by Barnard, released as a 53-title music album. All 52 episodes are available online.

Barnard co-wrote the scripts, and provided the voices for the characters Boowa, Dawa, Mawa, Daddy Koala and Grandpa Koala in both French and English. Veronique Barnard provided the voice for Kwala.

In 2014, Barnard formed Barcoustic with ex-Barking Dogs singer Hugo Scott. Currently with over 20 gigs to their name, the duo will be touring France, Switzerland and Germany in 2016.

Barnard is recognised as a leading expert on SEO.[13] In 2015, he was awarded a Black Belt by Searchmetrics,[14] and has spoken at conferences.[15][16][17] Expert in SEA, he is also Google Certified.[18]

2016/2017 - Lead consultant for the SaaS Kalicube.pro (a proactive ORM service for online brands) [19][20] and Kalicup.[21]

2017 - Co-author (with Marcus Tober and Daniel Furch) of the White Paper "Managing online brand experience through Search and Content Optimization" for Searchmetrics.[22]

2017 - Regular Columnist on Semrush.[23]

2018 - Introducing SEOisAEO (Answering Engine Optimization) concept [24]

2019 - By publishing How Google Search Ranking Works[25] Jason convert himself into major authority on Google Ranking Algorithm.

• Official website
• The Barking Dogs
• Boowa & Kwala website
• Around the world with Boowa & Kwala
• Jason Barnard on MusicBrainz
• Jason Barnard on WorldCat