Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’
Learning The Technologies Of Tomorrow

When it comes to Web Design and Development, industry standards and techniques are constantly evolving. As a result, our line of work requires us to work diligently in order to stay informed of the newest web trends and technologies. More so, it is not enough to just know these technologies exist, developers must understand these technologies to the degree that they can effectively deploy them at the appropriate time. No one understands this better than those of us at the helm and that’s why, beginning this past June both Jared and I took the first step to learning the technologies of tomorrow by enrolling in Full Sail University’s Bachelor of Science Degree Program.
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://nerdcore.downbytheriverllc.com
Jared Lawandales, Internet Marketer @ http://transcendance.downbytheriverllc.com
Down By The River, LLC. as an organization is in no way affiliated with, or endorsed by Full Sail University.
OneCentHostgatorCoupon.com Launched!
Click on any image in this article for an expanded view.
Down By The River, LLC. is pleased to announce the launch of OneCentHostgatorCoupon.com.
We were tasked with the objective of developing an edgy, yet simplistic, click to conversion marketing approach for OneCentHostgatorCoupon’s Hostgator referral service. The site’s homepage features a very straight forward interface that allows visitors to create and activate a special coupon that gives the user one month of Hostgator’s webhosting service for just 1 penny. No strings attached, it really is as simple as 1…2…3. The entire process takes less than 30 seconds for a visitor to complete. In addition to the 1,2,3 coupon, the main page also plays host to a powerful viral social marketing tool known as a Tweetboard*.
* Quoted from http://tweetboard.com/alpha/
Tweetboard is a fun and engaging micro-forum type application for your website. It pulls your Twitter stream in near real-time (max 1 min delay), reformatting tweets into threaded conversations with unlimited nesting. Conversations that spun off the original conversation are also threaded in-line, giving your site visitors full perspective of what’s being discussed.Tweetboard is also a powerful viral tool that engages your website visitors. Each time someone posts (or replies) via your board, a link back to the corresponding conversation is appended to their tweet, creating a viral stream of Twitter traffic to your website.
Advanced Analytical Reporting
Beyond the site’s user friendly service, the back-end boasts a number of powerful features. One of the key objectives of this project was to deploy a reporting system capable of analyzing real-time traffic and visitor details. OneCentHostgatorCoupon’s tracking capabilities are quite simply, World Class. This powerful system not only provides the site’s administrators with the ability to pull real-time analytical data but actually provides the capability to display detailed Visitor Maps with location pins, city, and country. The visitor details include: what page the visitor is on, IP address, host lookup, online time, city, state, country, geolocation maps and more. While this may seem like an overwhelming amount of data to manage, the sites advanced reporting system makes it a simple task allowing the site’s administrators to easily navigate through the extensive data. The system also allows the sites operators to track and create custom reports for individual key indicators that they identify along the way. This functionality allows the site’s operators to do a multitude of things including, testing and comparing response rates for individual coupons.
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Page One SEO Graphic Design 32940
Our SEO efforts continue to pay dividends as our web presence continues to grow. Our SEO campaigns have successfully increased our organic traffic by an average of one hundred and sixty-eight percent per month since our site relaunched on it’s new platform just three months ago. Our advanced SEO strategies continue to produce page one results for our targeted keywords, most recently adding “Graphic Design 32940″ to that list. (Click on the image to the right fo an expanded view) And unlike some SEO companies that represent Business Listings as page one results, we are referring to pure algorithmic results provided by organic searches.
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.
Request an SEO Report Card Using The Form Below:
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