The following highlighted text is quoted from: http://www.fullsail.edu/

“Over the past 30 years, Full Sail University has built a reputation as one of the premier schools in the world. Throughout the entertainment, media, and arts industry, Full Sail graduates have made their names working on award-winning films and albums, acclaimed video games and design projects, live productions, working inside major media companies, and more. Utilizing an innovative approach to education that is both immersive and project-based, Full Sail’s degree programs are designed to reflect the real-world needs of the entertainment, media, and arts industry, while encouraging students to explore their own creativity and artistic passion.”

In an effort to diversify our learning experience we each chose a different degree program. I enrolled in the Web Design and Development, Bachelor of Science Degree program, while Jared remains focused on marketing and enrolled in the Internet Marketing, Bachelor of Science Degree program. We are both loving the experience so far, and in keeping with Mark Zuckerberg’s concept of “the more we share the better off we are…”, we have decided to start new Blogs documenting our assignments and experiences while attending Full Sail University.

We invite you to explore the minds of two of today’s young entrepreneurs by visiting their Blogs at:
Steven Milanese, Web Designer and Internet Architect @ http://StevenMilanese.com
Jared Lawandales, Internet Marketer @ http://JaredLawandales.com

Down By The River, LLC. as an organization is in no way affiliated with, or endorsed by Full Sail University.

Web design is the harmonious mating of elegant graphic design and advanced web coding. Here at the office we commonly pose this question to clients during our consultation process in order to get them thinking in terms of function. “You could have the most beautiful piece of art and if no one knows that it exists, what good is it?” In today’s fodder of sites on the web, it is essential for any brand to optimize their site with dynamic content and search capability in mind. Through the use of continually improving open source software and advanced technologies like PHP, HTML 5, XHTML and CSS 3.0, we are able to provide the functionality of the future in conjunction with our premium graphic designs. These technologies allow for world-class eye-popping content to be delivered in a search friendly format, as well as advanced tracking, geo-targeting, social network integration and content management that allow you to interact like never before with your potential consumers.

Why Invest in Web Design?

Reaching out to and interacting with your potential client base is gaining increasing importance because more and more consumers are turning to the web for advice, product reviews, professional insight and much more! In fact, you will generally find that brands, able to effectively communicate with potential web consumers, tend to be the most successful. Your web real estate, or your domain name and website, represent what used to be a brick and mortar establishment. Much like a traditional retail store, today’s online brands need to focus on clean design, ease of use, intuitive layouts and customer service as much, if not more than in the past. These design concepts bundled with some unique social networking capabilities make it easier than ever to communicate with your clients. Would you ignore the customer standing in your brick and mortar establishment or have a dirty and disorganized store? I hope not. With increasing online sales, more consumers are using these new methods to evaluate online buying decisions against their same, old school traditional buying values. Meeting these online needs for your potential consumers will help positively influence their buying decision.

Why is Tracking Important to Me?

Marketing is an integral part of any business, as such it is an integral part of your web business as well. When trying to evaluate the effectiveness of any marketing campaign, your key point of interest is your Return on Investment, or ROI. Determining the ROI on an Internet marketing campaign can be difficult, especially when managing multiple campaigns, without proper tracking. You never actually see these customers so how can you possibly know they were there? The ability to determine where your visitors are coming from, what they are doing while they’re there, and where they go when they leave is important to evaluating the success of any business. In the digital world this can be accomplished through the use of advanced tracking methods that look at things like raw server logs, integrated site tracking, router packet tracking, as well as outside resources. With an easy to manage interface to evaluate all this data you can be well on your way to marketing your success!

Today’s market is flooded with SEO service companies making incredibly bold claims like, “First page results for any keyword of your choice GUARANTEED!”. Of course this is a promise that short of millions of dollars in infrastructure and paid for marketing investments, is simply not possible.

Quoted from: “Google Webmaster Tools Help: [Search Engine Optimization (SEO)]“

No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.
Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.

It is reasonable to assume that if anyone were to start selling “Number One Placements” for keyword results, it would be Google themselves. After all they and they alone control the formulas that determine those placements.

Let’s take a look at GoDaddy for the purpose of a working example in terms of organic search results. While GoDaddy’s placement may be excellent when it comes to top level keywords like “Web Hosting”, a more specific or second layer keyword search of say, “cloud server hosting” produces a completely different and not so positive result. Here is an example of an excellent opportunity that smaller competing companies could capitalize on. One of the weaknesses associated with large scale SEO deployments is that they focus on saturating the web with top level keywords based on statistical value. Often completely overlooking the opportunities presented by the second tier of keywords for that specific industry.

As I’m writing this article I can feel my sales department cringing at the thought of us educating the competition. There is in my opinion a greater responsibility to inform the consumer in an effort to prevent them from falling victim to these con artists. Our market is flooded with these con artists boasting false claims based on out dated Web 1.0 principals. Designing sites with deprecated HTML values and extensive META descriptions does not guarantee top placement on Google. Even Web 2.0 strategies are beginning to fail the proverbial acid test of today’s market. This is another prime example of why it is so important to choose a professional web designer when developing a website to promote your service, message or products.

Fact is that in many cases developing a website poorly the first time can be rather detrimental to a business. Take for example the website below: (Note: We removed anything identifying to protect their identity.) The clutter of the site is overwhelming and the color selection is a horrible choice for publishing on the web. Did you know that nearly 10 percent of the population is color blind and that the majority of those individuals specifically have difficulty seeing the color red? Certainly being color blind shouldn’t exclude them from being potential customers. However, in this example, this is precisely what has happened. They’ve effectively excluded 10% of their market for no reason other than poor web design. Poor design decisions like these can be costly. Take for example a recent article published by the practical ecommerce titled, “SEO Report Card: Poor SEO Choices Cost Worthy Charity“. The article identifies some of the design issues affecting the SEO of the site and how those design related issues are adversely affecting their ability to raise money for a worthy cause. Another issue to consider is because it is an existing site, repairing the PR damage associated with failed first impressions can be a challenging task for even professional designers. Studies show that less than 20% of consumers will revisit a website that they perceive as poorly designed or containing less than relevant content. Often these repair projects involve a re-branding campaign and or a new market offering in terms of a new look and a steady source of fresh topic relevant content. Just as media providers have become more effective at presenting advertisements to their audiences in less than conventional ways. Media viewers are growing ever resistance to even their most subtle methods. These issues are all to often overlooked by less than informed consumers and ultimately can lead to a greater loss in terms of their time and money.

To learn more about our advanced SEO methods and how we can assist you in improving your sites organic traffic results, call us at 877-328-7552.