Mediapainter was officially launched in the summer of 2006, only a few months after I’d graduated from University of California, Irvine. I’d just finished a week-long trip to Whistler, BC, Canada for epic snowboarding with the Camp of Champions, followed up by a month of surfing almost every day. I figured if I was to continue to enjoy even a shred of semblance to the lifestyle I was currently enjoying, I ought to get moving and figure out how to earn a respectable income.
For years I never even bothered having a website of my own; I’d just show potential clients the websites I’d done in the past, and that usually was good enough to get the ball rolling. Feeling like I needed to do something bigger, I did everything and anything that was trendy and all the rage. Naturally that means I started blogging, and my website was animated in Flash, regrettably. Don’t get me wrong, Flash has its time and place, but if you’ve ever visited a Flash website more than once or twice, it gets old fast.
After a while I got sick of looking at my own portfolio website. That happens to me a lot though; I always want something more, something better. It’s that obsessive compulsive side of my personality that drives me wild but at the same time evolves my skill set because I have no choice. My biggest pet peeve was that my search engine traffic was garbage; I wasn’t ranking for any keywords really, and that’s a result of developing an entire website completely in Flash which search engines cannot index.
At least they couldn’t back then; Adobe released some neat technology to Google in 2008 that would allow Flash files to be opened up and indexed by search engines. Although, I’ve yet to test if there’s any disadvantages, perhaps content being indexed slower than say, a dynamic driven WordPress site that’s pinging search engines every post. Word is that these Flash sites won’t be appearing at the top of many search results anytime soon!
Fast forward to 2009 and I’m on a mission to rank well in search engines, mostly Google. I’ve set reasonable expectations: PageRank 4 and would like to be in the top 10 organic results for the keyword phrase “Orange County Web Design.” To accomplish my goals, I’ve employed WordPress to power my website as a content management system and I’m unleashing my online marketing fists of fury to get those rankings up there. I’ll be documenting the journey, both successes and failures.
So far I’m at PageRank 2 and still have a while to go before I start killing it in the organic search engine results pages. For fun I’m going to launch a couple PPC campaigns in AdWords to see what kind of damage I can do; I’m also very curious to see what kind of action they’ve got going on with Facebook ads. In my line of work, you’ve got to be the cowboy and can’t wait for someone to tell you its all clear to move forward. If you wait around, it’ll be too late; the opportunity will have passed. Wish me luck!
