St. Petersburg Web Design Blog

Archive for the ‘Florida Web Design Marketplace’ Category

I’ve never written about a discussion on LinkedIn.com before, but this one is a whopper.  It’s all about if you had to choose between a candidate that had one years experience but was very intelligent or between someone with average intelligence and 10 years experience which would you choose.  On the surface this discussion about intelligence vs experience on LinkedIn, but a lot of comments that some of the HR people people have made in this discussion in a Project Managers group are stirring up some controversy.  Personally I find the discussion quite enlightening. Others have too, it has over 190 comments and growing ion just over a week (that’s a lot for LinkedIn).  The overwhelming majority of which ware pretty thoughtful contributions. Some have evidently found themselves embarrassed by the secrets they’ve leaked and deleted their comments.  I’m not sure why though, they seemed honest and well thought out.  Other have left the HR dirty laundry out there in the air, believing their nothing wrong with their opinions.  And their probably right.  Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

This conversation is social networking at it finest.  Lots of people talking about a very real issue that effects almost everyone one in the world. And everyone there is doing so in a way that’s positive, enlightening and contributory.  It’s amazing.

Here’s some of the things I’ve learned about my fellow Project Managers: Read the rest of this entry »

Every now and then it’s a great idea to follow up on a web site’s progress.  Even if the client wants nothing more than a economical small web site placed up and can’t afford to purchase any marketing for the web site.  Today we’ll following up on a company, Pateco, that just wanted a basic web site and had absolutely no budget for marketing the web site.  That’s ok, because we always throw in our Basic SEO package for free with every full site web design package.

The Basic SEO package is quite extensive.  It won’t get you to the top of the Google pile for very competitive key phrases like “Health Supplements” , but it will help separate you and help you out-compete the other web sites that haven’t done any on page SEO.  Our Basic SEO is basically a full site run, professional on page SEO effort.  This is more extensive (at least at Dream Designs it is) than you think.  The process is partially secret but here’s the things we do that we can publish:

Read the rest of this entry »

I just published another Florida focused web site. This isn’t tightly focused on St. Petersburg but instead on the general FL market. And yes, to a search engine, FL is different than Florida, but their getting lots better. In fact if you search for most terms using FL, instead of Florida, just about everything you get will have the word Florida bolded in the descriptions and the url’s as well as the rare instances of the “word” FL. It’s good that that the SE’s are catching on more and more to the way people write and search. I’m guessing the competition from Bing has had a lot of influence on a lot of the fixes to long time flaws Google has made recently. Including the one where incoming links aren’t so important anymore and the words on the page are more important.

Anyway the new web site is targeting the Fl Fishing market, Read the rest of this entry »

Hello, the economy in America might be bad, but the internet economy is kicking it live! You need a job? Well, I’ve got jobs for you:

• 4 Web Designers

• Must be able to build a web site that works in all browsers
• Must be able to make the images for this website
• Must be able to format this website with CSS in an external stylesheet
• Let me know about all your other related skills

• Learning all there is to know about how to get a web site #1 on Google (and the other SE’s) while doing all the grunt work involved.
• Yes, you’ll be paid money

Please use our contact page for initial contact.

Web Design Screen Shot

We’ve just completed a website design for a Sarasota Business. Sarasota Home Care is a small business serving Sarasota. They provide non medical home care for elderly (and other) residents. Things like, well just read the sight.

This is a 100 valid XHTML and CSS site.  It’s completely table free.  It uses horizontal lists in places.  It also applies CSS styling by using id attribute instead of the class= attribute like we usually do.  I don’t think I’ll switch to this method permanently.  It like to use the ID tag to call programmed actions often instead.  But it can be handy if your already assigning unique ID’s to elements because of programmed objects then you don’t have to clutter your code with css.  Plus that means a web designer can edit it in the future itself a programmer or myself . . .

That’s right, 55% of Americans used the internet to research candidates and issues in the last election.

If you are going to run for any office, from a local school board to President, remember this one thing:
It takes around 12 months to get a decent search engine presence.

the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 55% of Americans used the internet to not just ceck out a web page but:

• 45 percent of Internet users watched online videos related to politics or the election
• 33 percent of Internet users shared political content with others
• 52 percent of those on a social network used it for political purposes

By the way, it was only 11% in the 2000 elections. What do you think it’ll be by the 2012 elections?

If you have any doubt that a strong internet presence and an engaging website helped Obama secure the Presidency read this quote from the study:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama used the Internet to mobilize an army of volunteers that helped him defeat Republican John McCain in the November 4 election.

Obama supporters tended to be more engaged online than McCain backers, the study found. While 26 percent of Obama supporters active on the Internet posted their own thoughts or other content in an online forum, only 15 percent of McCain-backing Internet users participated, for example.

Still think you can run for office without at least one website?
Well, than keep thinking that, I guess we don’t need leaders who are so out of touch with the populace.