Full Sail Stories

Full Sail graduate Omar Ortiz works as the Vice President of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) at Synchrony Bank, a financial services company with locations across the US. In 2024, Omar was awarded a Synchrony CEO Award for pushing boundaries, challenging limits, and delivering outstanding results. “With so many talented colleagues within the company, I was humbled to be selected,” Omar shares.

Long before Omar worked in SEO at Synchrony, he studied marketing at the University of Illinois. His early career involved working in sales and marketing at Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Chase Bank. He wanted to dive deeper into marketing and decided to enroll in Full Sail’s online Internet Marketing master’s (now called Digital Marketing) degree program.

“I really loved learning about SEO and social media marketing, and once I learned there was a program [at Full Sail], that's where my passion took off.

“[SEO] really intrigued me because it's like a chess game,” Omar continues. “You have to figure out how to rank in search results without having all the answers. It's a lot of analysis, and I like that part of it — being able to figure things out and problem-solve on your own. I also knew a lot of people didn't [having internet marketing degrees at the time], so that would make me an asset whether I’m consulting or working for a big company.”

After graduation, Omar worked at various companies including the American Bar Association, where he elevated their SEO, social media, and email marketing, and Discover Financial Services, where he built their SEO content strategy. He also did SEO, social media, and Google Ads consulting for small businesses for eight years. Now, as the VP of SEO at Synchrony Bank, he helps cultivate the company’s SEO Center of Excellence and spreads awareness about it to other departments at Synchrony.

One recent highlight — in addition to winning the CEO Award — has been utilizing SEO to drive traffic to Synchrony’s blogs by figuring out the most relevant terms customers are searching for and incorporating that content into blog posts. “Over the last two years, we've [increased traffic to] the blog 100% each year, so over 200%,” Omar explains. “That's just from creating good content that was relevant to the business. When we first started, we helped get the blog up to 1 million visits in one year. Then in 2024, we got up to 2 million visits.”

As well as working at Synchrony, Omar is a Program Advisor for Full Sail’s Digital Marketing master’s program. He provides the program’s leaders with industry knowledge, information about digital marketing best practices, and advice on what companies are looking for and how faculty members can help prepare students for jobs.

To give current Digital Marketing students advice on how to succeed professionally, Omar shares: “[When you’re working], you, as the expert in the subject, are responsible for explaining not only what you do, but how it impacts the bottom line. Because when you go to any type of large company, the digital leaders care less about the individual tactics that you're using, and more that what you're doing is helping the company grow.

“Make sure you’re documenting all your wins, even if you think it’s minor, because that also plays a role… Be your own best advocate and don’t assume someone else is going to track all of what you bring to the table better than yourself.”