This is the Friday Website Review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal of today is to pick the website of a random retail jeweler and review it for either search engine optimization, usability, technical errors, or countless numbers of other issues.
This review is not intended to solicit business from the candidate jeweler that I find, but simply so others can learn from the analysis process.
Today I'm using the Chrome browser in incognito mode to search for the phrase "jewelers in evansville Indiana" and this is the top search results:
(click to view larger)
I'm going to choose Rogers Jewelers as my review candidate, but since this is a review I want to point out a mistake I've been noticing for more than a week now.
Click on the image above to enlarge it and you'll see an arrow pointing to the AdWords ad for Littman Jewelers. The ad you see there says "Littman Jewelers Mobile" with a link to their mobile website m.littmanjewelers.com. This mobile ad should not be appearing on my desktop computer. Clicking that ad brought me to a mobile website, which looked absurd on a desktop computer. I'm pointing this out so you can see how even a large agency working for a chain store can make an AdWords mistake.
Now on with the review of the website: https://rogersjewelers.com/; you might want to open it up to follow along as you read this review.
The first thing I noticed about the site is that it the Google SERP brings me to the secure version of the website, that is to say the "https://" version of the site as shown in this image:
Look where I indicated "A" and you'll see the green lock showing the secure site.
However, the "Home" link on the top menu navigation of every page, indicated with a "B," brings you to a different URL, and the non secure version of the site as indicated by "C" in this image:
This setup is a technical problem with their website. Google should not be linking to the secure version of their website if their own navigation contradicts it. Additionally, the link to the "Home" page on their navigation should link to the same home page that the Google SERPs are also pointing to.
The end result here is that a user's web browser will get confused, and Googlebot, the spider software Google uses to explore the internet, could also get confused.
I think I'm seeing evidence of Googlebot's confusion, because I found that Rogers Jewelers has 11 stores in total with 2 of them located in Evansville, IN. Here's a screen shot from their Locations page:
But yet this was the Google Local Places for Business in the SERP:
My analysis of the situation is that they set up their Google Places for Business account with the secure version of their site even though their website doesn't offer e-commerce. Someone made a big mistake with that.
I'd like to point out another type of disconnect that Google seems to have identified. Look closely at the screen shot of the addresses again and you'll notice that the address is incorrectly formatted for a US address.
It specifically says:
Rogers Jewelers
EVANSVILLE
Lawndale Shopping Center
912 S. Green River Road
(812) 479-0252
Even though the Indiana state name is above the address, Google doesn't understand how to read this. Googlebot is a computer, and it only knows how to comprehend addresses when they are formatted correctly, as in this:
Rogers Jewelers
Lawndale Shopping Center
912 S. Green River Road
Evansville, IN 47715
(812) 479-0252
I'd also like to point out that the footer of all the pages has this list of stores and town names:
There's certainly no lack of local town names, except that Google isn't correctly associating those town names with the appropriate state, thus creating the disconnect of the missing Google Local listing.
These few technical issues that I've pointed out should be easy for Rogers Jewelers to correct, and they'd probably see a jump in their organic visitors once they do.
That's it for this week's basic review.
FTC Notice: I randomly choose this website and won't be telling the retailer jeweler that I'm doing a review. Unless someone else tells them, they will only find out about this review if they examine their Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. I'm not doing this to solicit business from them, but rather as an educational exercise for everyone. This review is completely impartial and all my comments are listed in the order that I discovered them.
