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Friday, October 06, 2017

Attribution Modeling: Do You Know Where Your Sales Leads Are Coming From?

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Attribution Modeling: Do You Know Where Your Sales Leads Are Coming From? daily-golden-nugget-1575-60
Between your website, local newspaper, direct mail, radio ads, billboard, social media, and word of mouth, it's difficult to calculate exactly how your customers are finding you and what ultimately convinced them to make a purchase. What was once an easy task of calculating the ROI for an individual ad is now impossible because of so many different ways a customer can engage with you online.

"Attribution modeling" is the modern process of analyzing and assig...
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AT: 10/06/2017 11:09:48 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 15, 2017

Retailer Future: First Steps Towards Online Catalog and Ecommerce Websites

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Retailer Future: First Steps Towards Online Catalog and Ecommerce Websites daily-golden-nugget-1574-57
After many years of talking and teaching about it, I'm finally starting to see retail jewelers embracing the reality of catalog and ecommerce websites. The reality I'm referring to is the tedious process of photographing your inventory, maintaining a website, and handling all aspects of order fulfillment.

Within the jewelry industry, there are several ways to mimic an ecommerce website without actually setting it up or managing it yourself. Many large man...
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AT: 09/15/2017 07:11:02 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 08, 2017

Using Instagram and Snapchat Stories For Marketing

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Using Instagram and Snapchat Stories For Marketing daily-golden-nugget-1573-91
Earlier this year, I explained why Instagram should be your primary marketing channel and how to use photography and hashtags to build a following. If you're struggling with Facebook marketing for your business, then you should really go back and look at that previous post of mine.

Although I explained Instagram photography, I did intentionally exclude details about Instagram Storie...
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AT: 09/08/2017 09:33:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 01, 2017

Ecommerce is More than Selling; It's Retail Business Evolution

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Ecommerce is More than Selling; Its Retail Business Evolution daily-golden-nugget-1572-39
Twenty-five years ago, no one understood how the internet would trigger an evolutionary change in how almost every business in the world operates. Today, most businesses have some type of website to represent themselves online, and even the companies without websites have some type of online presence in business directories like Yelp and Google Maps.

It seems like every business industry has figured out how to use the internet to improve the efficiency of their business and their c...
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AT: 09/01/2017 11:27:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 25, 2017

Facebook Algorithm Cleans Up The News Feed Spam

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Facebook Algorithm Cleans Up The News Feed Spam daily-golden-nugget-1571-12
Way back on April 10, 2017, Facebook announced that they'd be cleaning up the News Feed to deliver the right content to the right people at the right time.

Their goal was to cut back on the amount of spammy content that is published by Pages that deliberately try to game the Facebook algorithm. Their algorithm measures the popularity of a post by the number of likes, comments, and shares it gets an...
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AT: 08/25/2017 09:42:13 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 18, 2017

How To Handle and Learn From Your Customer Reviews

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How To Handle and Learn From Your Customer Reviews daily-golden-nugget-1570-14

Have you Googled yourself lately?

Your online reputation is now part of your marketing. The results that people see in search help formulate the first impression that someone has of your business and whether or not they will purchase from you.

Managing your online reputation through reviews that appear on Facebook, Google Reviews, and Yelp is vital for your future business health. Savvy consumers are referring to what other people say in these online reviews and other consumer generated co...
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AT: 08/18/2017 09:49:30 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 11, 2017

Resurgence of QR Codes Brings The Real World and Cyberspace Closer Together

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Resurgence of QR Codes Brings The Real World and Cyberspace Closer Together daily-golden-nugget-1569-47
The digital screen on my bathroom scale has been on the fritz more and more every day, and I finally decided to do something about it today. I've owned different wearable devices over the past 7 years to monitor my health and daily activity, but I didn't yet have a smart bathroom scale to monitor my BMI or other health factors. Today was the day I would finally get one.

I contemplated buying one off Amazon.com but decided that I'd rather compare models ...
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AT: 08/11/2017 06:48:55 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 04, 2017

Facebook's Fight Against Fake News Forces You To Improve Your SEO

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Facebooks Fight Against Fake News Forces You To Improve Your SEO daily-golden-nugget-1568-98
What started as email spam years ago has turned into an ever-evolving monster of internet spam that permeates our emails, Google search results, automated telephone sales calls, and nonsense in our social media feeds. No matter how hard we try, marketing companies find new ways to put their message in front of us whenever we don't want it. This type of marketing is called interruption marketing, and it really has become an annoying interruption in everyday life as well.

Full...
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AT: 08/04/2017 07:07:35 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 28, 2017

7 Points on Social Media Etiquette

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7 Points on Social Media Etiquette daily-golden-nugget-1567-14
At the JA NY show on Monday July 24, 2017, it was my honor to sit on the panel discussion about social media etiquette. The panel was moderated by Ashley Davis, Associate Editor, National Jeweler. The other three panelists I sat with, were Levi Higgs, Archives and Social Media Manager with David Webb, Joy Butler, Transactional busine...
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AT: 07/28/2017 11:15:20 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 21, 2017

How to Promote Your Online Store In A Cost-Effective Manner

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How to Promote Your Online Store In A Cost-Effective Manner daily-golden-nugget-1566-12
I recently came across a seminar titled "How to Promote Your Online Store In A Cost-Effective Manner" and thought it was an extremely misleading headline. Whenever business owners ask me about cost effective online advertising, they usually mean "least expensive" rather than asking me how to achieve the best ROI with their online ads.

I've also found that many business owners believe that online marketing is simple, and that anyone can do it. Preying upon this belief, there are ad a...
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AT: 07/21/2017 07:07:25 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 14, 2017

Ecommerce Inventory: The Never Ending Update Saga

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Ecommerce Inventory: The Never Ending Update Saga daily-golden-nugget-1565-84
I was in New York City over the Independence Day weekend helping someone troubleshoot a sound and mixing board problem for a friend of mine. They recently bought a new sound board that was causing a hum when connected to the older equipment.

This little challenge was a throwback to my pre-2003 days when I volunteered as a sound and lighting engineer for community theatre productions. I knew exactly what the problem was and what was needed to solve it. I needed something called a "ground loop isolator," ...
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AT: 07/14/2017 11:56:10 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 07, 2017

How Scammers Are Using Social Engineering To Target The Jewelry Industry

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How Scammers Are Using Social Engineering To Target The Jewelry Industry daily-golden-nugget-1564-71
On June 23, 2017, the Jewelers' Security Alliance issued a special alert outlining a widespread scam that's been recently targeted at the jewelry industry. In the security alert, which you can read here, the JSA explains that scammers are profiling retailers and manufacturers in order to pull off the reported telephone scams.

According to the JSA...
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AT: 07/07/2017 07:49:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 23, 2017

Building A Business Directory Website: A brief case study

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Building A Business Directory Website: A brief case study daily-golden-nugget-1562-6
I recently had a few meetings with a French tourism company that needed help figuring out how to build traffic to their website. Their website wasn't anything special; honestly, it was just another directory website. Directory websites are a very common business model that range from large sites like CitySearch.com to local Chamber of Commerce websites. Niche focused directory websites can usually better serve their community than the larger sites.

Directory websites make money either by p...
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AT: 06/23/2017 06:21:22 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 16, 2017

The Ecommerce Business Plan

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The Ecommerce Business Plan daily-golden-nugget-1561-22
No one ever wants to write a business plan for their new business or new business venture. Most people feel that a business plan is especially needed when you want to raise startup capital, which while true, a business plan helps you create focus.

Many business owners have great ideas that they feel they can accomplish without writing the ideas down on paper. I started my first business in 1994 with just vague ideas and didn't write my first plan until 2 years later after suffering several slow starts.

Why Bother With A Business Plan? VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET



AT: 06/16/2017 11:08:15 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 09, 2017

Embrace Change to Prevent Business Stagnation

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Embrace Change to Prevent Business Stagnation daily-golden-nugget-1560-19
Every time internet technology changes, there is a chance that consumer expectations will change along with it. I often say that expectations change every time someone upgrades their smartphone. Unlike a desktop computer that we hold on to for 4 or 5 years, we each have the option to upgrade our smartphones at least every 24 months. The recent smartphone upgrade I did gave me faster processing speed, which means my apps, camera, and video editing run faster, but my internet speed is still controlled by my carrier.
...
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AT: 06/09/2017 09:30:33 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 02, 2017

6 Common Website Problems That Business Owners Don't Understand

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6 Common Website Problems That Business Owners Dont Understand daily-golden-nugget-1559-54
It's the hope of every business that they will build a website that helps make them a lot of money, but few websites ever achieve that goal. Turning a website into a money making machine won't happen overnight, and it won't magically happen without a lot of help from employees and the business owner.

Most small businesses don't know how to update their websites once they are launched; indeed, many will continually pay for website updates even though they can edit the website on ...
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AT: 06/02/2017 07:25:39 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 26, 2017

Time To Admit When You Need Help

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Time To Admit When You Need Help daily-golden-nugget-1558-90
I have met and helped many different entrepreneurs during my time as a volunteer business coach for my local chapter of SCORE, a division of the U.S. Gov. S.B.A. While I've helped them make their businesses better, I've also learned that most entrepreneurs of all ages share several similar personality characteristics and daily practices.

Life of an entrepreneur


Most entrepreneurs start out small and quickly learn all the jobs needed to make their business run. If you're a small business owner, then you are probably the best s...
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AT: 05/26/2017 11:15:42 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 19, 2017

Watch, Learn, Change, Adapt, or Just Die

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Watch, Learn, Change, Adapt, or Just Die daily-golden-nugget-1557-54
Many small businesses, not just retail jewelers, are caught in a tight monthly financial cycle. Those businesses teeter on financial ruin because the only thing needed to send them over the edge is a bad week of sales, unexpected loss of the star salesperson, tax penalties, medical bills, or the wrong choices of inventory. Each of these could be an unrecoverable setback.

According to the Jewelers Board of Trade, there was a total of VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 05/19/2017 08:03:05 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 12, 2017

The Ever Changing Reality Of Facebook

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The Ever Changing Reality Of Facebook daily-golden-nugget-1556-43For several years and through a lot of tough competition, Facebook has managed to maintain its status as the most popular social media network, although there seems to be an evolutionary shift of people away from Facebook and on to other networks like Instagram and Snapchat. Some organizations, groups, and communities are using Facebook's Group feature to create a community messaging board, while other organizations have migrated to networks like Telegram. For the moment, Facebook is still the network to use, but Instagram is growing quick...
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AT: 05/12/2017 09:21:58 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 05, 2017

The Marriage of Websites and Social Media

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The Marriage of Websites and Social Media daily-golden-nugget-1555-43
Your website is the cornerstone of all your online marketing; it's what people find when they search for a local business type or a specific product by name or by model number. People go to Google with an instigated need for an immediate purchase, when they need a specific service, or when they need to start research on a longer term decision making process. Those with immediate needs will take action based on what they see on your website or your social accounts. Those looking for an immediate purchase will look for an onlin...
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AT: 05/05/2017 11:12:51 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 28, 2017

The Right Choice for the Tight Budget: Google AdWords vs. Facebook Ads

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The Right Choice for the Tight Budget: Google AdWords vs. Facebook Ads daily-golden-nugget-1554-43
Because the online paid advertising playing field changes monthly, my clients constantly ask for my current recommendation for where to spend their limited marketing budget. Although there are many online advertising possibilities, I prefer that businesses use Google AdWords and Facebook Advertising because the ads can be changed frequently to highlight current offers.

Beware of Changing AdWords


Google AdWords is a complicated system that can be learne...
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AT: 04/28/2017 07:39:54 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 21, 2017

Make Smarter Decisions Based On Your Website Reports

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Make Smarter Decisions Based On Your Website Reports daily-golden-nugget-1553-21
Retail is being redefined every day. Everyone still looks at their bottom line sales, but it doesn't matter anymore if the sales are from foot traffic through the front door or via shipping boxes out the back. While most retail businesses are still struggling to figure out how to bring foot traffic back in the front door, I submit that it's probably easier to learn what it takes to build your ecommerce business and increase the flow of shipped product instead.

With regard to marketing, the common p...
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AT: 04/21/2017 11:17:22 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 14, 2017

6 Most Frequently Broken Or Missing Website Features

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6 Most Frequently Broken Or Missing Website Features daily-golden-nugget-1552-28
Website review and analysis are part of my everyday job. I've been actively analyzing and making suggestions on improving traffic acquisition, user flow, SEO, and usability for several years. I've shared this analysis process and the tips for improvement in my writings for the last few years to provide an insight into how you could do it yourself.

Today, I'll share 6 of the most frequently broken or missing website features that I have seen over and over again, and provide some suggestions for maki...
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AT: 04/14/2017 09:35:50 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 07, 2017

Instagram As Your Primary Marketing Channel

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Instagram As Your Primary Marketing Channel daily-golden-nugget-1551-32

Back When I Could Express Myself


MySpace used to be a fun social network. You had complete freedom to change your profile any way you wanted by adding music, changing colors, and customizing your background. Anyone with a working knowledge of HTML could customize the look of their page and turn it into their online bastion of delight. I remember when being on social media was nothing more than a fun competition of making your profile page look better than your friend's profile, then tease each other about it. ...
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AT: 04/07/2017 11:12:02 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 31, 2017

Hibu Website Review - Is It Really Worth The Money?

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Hibu Website Review - Is It Really Worth The Money? daily-golden-nugget-1550-19
It seems like once every year I come across another website using the Hibu service. Their corporate website says they are a leading provider of digital marketing to local businesses across the US, UK, and Spain. They say that they provide one-on-one service to unify digital marketing, website development, and SEO.

It all sounds good to the small business owner who is looking for an all-in-one online solution and doesn't have the time to learn or the money to hire the right people to do it. Hibu has...
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AT: 03/31/2017 12:31:54 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 24, 2017

Gold Wolff Jewelers Website Review

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Gold Wolff Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1549-82
In this week's website review, I'll show you an example of how Google reads words on your website and how you can see those words for yourself. I'll also show you why you should host your blog within your own website instead of using an outside service, I'll even show you screen shots of how Google views a website when the blog is hosted outside.

It all starts with a Google search for "jewelers flagstaff az." According to these results, there are not many jewelers n Flagstaff:

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AT: 03/24/2017 12:49:22 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 17, 2017

Photos Now Appear In Google Local Pack Results

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Photos Now Appear In Google Local Pack Results daily-golden-nugget-1548-30
Google made a significant change in the search results page layout over the last 7 days that removes the powerful advantage that they'd bestowed upon local businesses for about 10 years. Today, I'll dive into the details of those changes.

A Little Background


Google created their original Local Business database in the early 2000s and has morphed it through many permutations with names like Places, Maps, and Local. Today, they call it "Google My Business" or just GMB for short. Having your business...
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AT: 03/17/2017 11:43:44 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 10, 2017

Comparison Of Two Bozeman, Montana Jewelers

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Comparison Of Two Bozeman, Montana Jewelers daily-golden-nugget-1547-21
In last week's Golden Nugget, I presented some interesting information showing the comparison of web page visible content to the hidden HTML code in the background. From that post, you could conclude that your website goal should be to fine tune your code to prevent too much hidden code, a problem that is known as "code bloat."

I'm digging a little deeper into this topic again today because of the emails, phone calls, a...
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AT: 03/10/2017 12:59:13 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 03, 2017

Bloated Websites vs. Simple Websites

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Bloated Websites vs. Simple Websites  daily-golden-nugget-1546-82
I'm taking a different approach in this week's website review. Normally, I look for poorly ranked websites and try to find reasons why they are not ranking well. When I started my search this week, I found a bunch of mediocre websites that were outranked by Yelp and YellowPages. All of the websites needed improvement. Oddly enough, the site I thought needed the most improvement, was outranking all of the others.

Today, I'll explore why that might be happening. First, I searched for "jewelers Healdsburg CA" and saw these resul...
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AT: 03/03/2017 01:01:57 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 24, 2017

TamRon Jewelry Design Technical Website Review

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TamRon Jewelry Design Technical Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1545-20
For this week's website review, I went searching for "jewelers spokane wa" and had some trouble deciding on which site to review. There are several jewelers in Spokane to choose from with a wide range of websites from very old looking to very modern. The goal of this website review is to give ideas of how to improve a site and increase its ranking or improve its customer usability.

Pounder's Jewelry was the first website I found that could use improvement. The website address was VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 02/24/2017 12:29:10 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 17, 2017

Shockey Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Shockey Jewelers FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1544-43
This is the Friday Flop Fix website review. The goal of this review is to examine the mistakes a random website is making and suggest ways to fix it. I do my best every week to take on the role of a typical internet savvy consumer as I search for a review candidate. I also use the Google Chrome browser set to incognito mode so my previous browsing history does not influence the search results I see.

For today's search, I used the phrase "jewelry stores Elgin, IL" and saw these results:

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AT: 02/17/2017 09:59:01 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 10, 2017

A Review Of Online Reviews

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A Review Of Online Reviews daily-golden-nugget-1543-16
Online referrals are starting to make an impact on local businesses, but not in the way we all expected them to. A few years ago, the buzz within the online marketing community was that social networks would become a referral engine for people to ask advice through. Facebook even attempted to create a new type of social search engine to capture that referral service. Google also struggled with the idea that the internet would become a big referral engine, and they tried to capture a piece of it through Google+.

While Facebook and Google were comp...
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AT: 02/10/2017 12:26:28 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 03, 2017

McGuire's Jewelers Website Review

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McGuires Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1542-1
In honor of the jewelry shows in Tucson, Arizona this week, I decided to search for a website review candidate in that area. I began my search with the phrase "jewelry stores tucson az" and saw these results on Google:

McGuires Jewelers Website Review 1542-jewelry-stores-tucson-az-19

The goal of these weekly reviews is to poi...
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AT: 02/03/2017 12:17:51 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 27, 2017

Mike's Custom Jewelry #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Mikes Custom Jewelry FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1541-10
This is the #FridayFlopFix website review. The goal of this review is to learn from someone else's mistake by randomly choosing and dissecting a website that has problems, and explain potential fixes. Hopefully there is something we can all learn from.

Websites with mistakes usually don't rank very high in Google, so when I search for review candidates I usually look lower in the SERPs, and even deep within the forbidden-nowhere-zone on Google... Page 2.

This week, I started my search with the phr...
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AT: 01/27/2017 02:06:12 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 20, 2017

Cass Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Cass Jewelers FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1540-40
For this week's website review, I began my search for a "jewelry store High Point, NC" and got these results from Google:

Cass Jewelers FridayFlopFix Website Review 1540-jewelry-store-High-Point-NC-serp-51

I've circled the map in the above screen shot to point out that there wer...
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AT: 01/20/2017 01:24:05 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 13, 2017

Bruce G. Weber #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Bruce G. Weber FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1539-61
One of the marketing testing methods I use is to put myself out in the real world, away from my desk, to observe what an ad will look like when encountered out in the wild. Although I do test my digital marketing ads on different devices and browsers when sitting at my desk, it's difficult to get into the same headspace that a consumer would be in then viewing an ad or a website. This is my own interpretation of the proverbial "walk a mile in their shoes."

This is why I like writing my website reviews when I'm trave...
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AT: 01/13/2017 07:52:48 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 06, 2017

SERP Review for Sandy Springs, GA

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SERP Review for Sandy Springs, GA  daily-golden-nugget-1538-32
Time and time again, jewelers tell me they want to come up first in Google search for phrases like "engagement rings" or anything related to bridal jewelry. Those are tough keyword phrases to compete for since large ecommerce jewelry website spend a lot of time, money, and optimization efforts to maintain top ranking. Independent jewelers have a better chance competing in their local markets using the popular phrases that people search for.

Popular local phrases include the words jeweler, jewelry, or jewelry store, followed by either ...
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AT: 01/06/2017 08:20:53 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 30, 2016

Why Do So Many Bite Off More Than They Can Chew?

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Why Do So Many Bite Off More Than They Can Chew? daily-golden-nugget-1537-14
We each have our own set of specializations and talents. Someone in your family is probably better at cooking than all the others, while someone else is a better writer, carpenter, or a musician. The world would be a very boring place if we all had the same level of skill and proficiency in everything.

The Entrepreneurial Journey


At some point, you probably got the idea that you could make your favorite baubles or provide a service better than others you'd seen, and so you launched a business o...
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AT: 12/30/2016 10:46:07 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 23, 2016

Portland Oregon Search Results Review

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Portland Oregon Search Results Review daily-golden-nugget-1536-85
Happy Holidays! There are only a few hours left in the 2016 holiday shopping season as I write this. Those still doing their last minute shopping are probably thinking a little outside the normal box in order to find something good for their loved ones.

For this week's website review, I will work through a search scenario in hope to illustrate how your customers use the internet and why it's so important for you to build out your online identity much further than you might imagine. For many businesses, this is the make-or-brea...
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AT: 12/23/2016 10:31:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 16, 2016

June Birthstone Jewelry Gift SERP and Website Review

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June Birthstone Jewelry Gift SERP and Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1535-80
Has the search ranking on your website plateaued or declined over the last 12 months? It might be because you've fallen behind with adding new content and products to your website. Content is any type of written description, story, PDF document, photo, and even a video. The more you add the better your chances are to help increase your organic search results, which can lead to more traffic.

The depth of the content you have on your website doesn't just help with overall ranking, it becomes really ...
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AT: 12/16/2016 12:05:53 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 09, 2016

The Jewelry Source Website Review

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The Jewelry Source Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1534-15
Record breaking ecommerce sales have been in the news this week; in fact, online sales have been higher this year than ever before. One of the headlines from comScore this week was "Eleven Consecutive Billion-Dollar Days of Online Desktop Spending from Thanksgiving through Cyber Week Mark the Longest Streak Ever". It's importan...
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AT: 12/09/2016 12:11:51 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 02, 2016

JR Fox Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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JR Fox Jewelers FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1533-84
In this issue of the Golden Nugget, I'm on the lookout for a jewelry website that isn't correctly suited to help customers this holiday season. I'll document my first thoughts as I look at the website. The hope is that I can uncover problems and explain solutions so you can learn from the mistakes of others.

In the spirit of the holiday season, I'd like to look for some jewelry gift ideas, perhaps something I could buy locally. For this week I'm pretending to be in South Bend, Indiana, so I searched for "jewelry ...
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AT: 12/02/2016 01:06:43 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 25, 2016

Amidon Jewelers Black Friday Email & Website Review

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Amidon Jewelers Black Friday Email & Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1532-98
Over the last 6 years, I've subscribed to more jewelry email lists than I can remember. Whenever I do a website review, I look for the newsletter signup and add myself to their list. Most of the time, I never hear from those retail jewelers because they don't follow through with their email list.

Amidon Jewelers, in New Hampshire, is one of the few independent retail jewelers that I know that has consistently sent me emails since I signed up to their list way back in 2012. Years ago, they were sendi...
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AT: 11/25/2016 12:53:57 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 18, 2016

Franzetti Jewelers Website Re-Review

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Franzetti Jewelers Website Re-Review daily-golden-nugget-1531-88
In this week's website review, I'm going back to re-review the first website I ever wrote about way back in April 2013. At the time, I chose Franzetti Jewelers with the website http://www.franzettijewelers.com/. You can read the old review from April 19, 2013 here.

My review process was pretty unsophisticated 3.5 years ago. It took a while for me to realize that I should be ...
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AT: 11/18/2016 01:00:33 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 11, 2016

Avalon Park Jewelers Website Re-Review

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Avalon Park Jewelers Website Re-Review daily-golden-nugget-1530-39
For this week's website review, I'm revisiting a jeweler in Orlando that I reviewed in July 2014. Back then, I was searching for jewelers near the town of Christmas, in Orange County, Florida. According to my previous review here I had to use Google Maps to locate a nearby jeweler when searching for the phrase "jewelers in Christmas, Orange, Florida." Google certainly has made some advancement in their Google Local systems since then, ...
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AT: 11/11/2016 10:59:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 04, 2016

Tharoo and Co Website Re-Review

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Tharoo and Co Website Re-Review daily-golden-nugget-1529-14
Since April 2013, I've reviewed 190 different websites and made a countless number of suggestions for updating each one. Today, and for the next few weeks, I'm going to revisit a few of those old websites to see what's new and if they've made progress.

If they have made progress, it's not because I told them what to do. The disclaimer at the bottom of all my reviews says that I don't write these to solicit business, and the only way they will find out about the review is if they search for their name online. Fewer than 5 in 190 have ever ...
VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 11/04/2016 11:38:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 28, 2016

Weiss Jewelers Website Review

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Weiss Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1528-57
In this edition of the Golden Nugget, I've written a quick review of a retail jeweler's website to show you how a website might backfire on you without regular updates or simply looking at it.

I found Weiss Jewelers when searching Google for "jewelers Greeley, CO." Their website is:
http://www.weissjewelers.com/

First Impressions


This is what the home page looked like when I visited:

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AT: 10/28/2016 06:13:08 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 21, 2016

Matthew's Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Matthews Jewelers FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1527-78
Welcome to this week's edition of the #FridayFlopFix website review. This week's destination is Plantation, FL, which is right next to the Everglades wildlife area in Florida. Here are the Google results when I searched for "jewelers in plantation florida:"

Matthews Jewelers FridayFlopFix Website Review 1527-jewelers-in-plantation-florida-serp-71VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/21/2016 01:20:11 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 14, 2016

Jeweler's Choice #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Jewelers Choice FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1526-70
In honor of the jewelry shows taking place in Miami this weekend, I've chosen a Miami Beach jeweler for this week's website review. It all started with a Google search for "jewelers miami beach, fl" and these search results:

Jewelers Choice FridayFlopFix Website Review 1526-jewelers-miami-beach-fl-serp-49VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/14/2016 12:16:48 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 30, 2016

How Jewelers in Jurupa Valley, CA Compete

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How Jewelers in Jurupa Valley, CA Compete daily-golden-nugget-1524-48
My website reviews every week usually start with the random selection of a town, but this week, I didn't find any jewelers when I selected Jurupa Valley, California. If there are jewelers in Jurupa Valley, then they probably don't have a website or a large enough digital footprint for Google to find them.

With the lack of any real local results, Google returned store listings from surrounding towns and a bunch of directory sites, like Yelp. Here's what Google gave me:

VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 09/30/2016 11:46:58 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 23, 2016

Garland Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Garland Jewelers FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1523-71
This is the Friday website review where I randomly choose a retail jeweler and scrutinize their website for problems. I look for design mistakes, SEO mistakes, functionality mistakes, content mistakes, and even marketing mistakes.

This week I searched for "jewelers Renton, WA" to find a review candidate. Here are the results I saw in Google:

Garland Jewelers FridayFlopFix Website Review 1523-serp-38VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 09/23/2016 12:12:17 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 09, 2016

Abraxas Jewelers Needs A Lot Of Online Help

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Abraxas Jewelers Needs A Lot Of Online Help daily-golden-nugget-1521-65
The internet of things (IoT) now connects so much of daily life it's hard to remember what things were like 23 years ago when it was just in its infancy. New internet connected devices are announced every day that will undoubtedly shape our futures of personal life and how we reach customers and conduct business. Although there are plenty of new tech toys announced every week, it's the smartphone which has changed how we manage our daily lives.

With all these changes happening in the world around us, it's hard to im...
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AT: 09/09/2016 12:13:39 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 02, 2016

Van Atkins Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Van Atkins Jewelers FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1520-30
Can you learn from someone else's mistakes? That's exactly what I hope you'll get out of this Friday Flop Fix. This week, I'm venturing over to Tupelo, MS in search of a retail jeweler that might be making a mistake with their online presence.

This is the result I saw when searching for "jewelers tupelo ms" in Google:

Van Atkins Jewelers FridayFlopFix Website Review 1520-jewelers-tupelo-ms-serp-30VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 09/02/2016 06:56:26 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 26, 2016

Jerry Land Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Jerry Land Jewelers FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1519-43
What's good and what's bad? What works and what doesn't work? This is what I try to reveal every Friday as I work through my Flop Fix website reviews. I always start them with a Google search in a random town around the U.S. in search of an independent retail jeweler that could use a little help while also allowing me to publically explain what can be learned from their mistakes.

This week, I began my search for "jewelers Honesdale, PA" and saw these results:

VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 08/26/2016 06:56:29 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 19, 2016

Pascale Jewelers SERP Review

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Pascale Jewelers SERP Review daily-golden-nugget-1518-45
I find it interesting that, in this world of shopping malls and big box stores, there are still times when people automatically think of a specialty store for a specific need. Local retail jewelers are specialty stores because they focus on a single product category, but at the rate that JBT reports jewelers going out of business, it seems like the small local retail...
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AT: 08/19/2016 01:53:35 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 12, 2016

Arnold's Fine Jewelry #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Arnolds Fine Jewelry FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1517-40In this edition of the #FridayFlopFix review, I'm venturing over to Pasadena, CA in search of a jewelry store. These are the results I saw when using Google Chrome while in incognito mode. I searched for "jewelry stores pasadena ca."

Arnolds Fine Jewelry FridayFlopFix Website Review 1517-jewelry-stores-pasadena-ca-serp-48VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 08/12/2016 11:54:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 05, 2016

Pugh's Diamond Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Pughs Diamond Jewelers FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1516-77
It's time for the weekly case study of a website that's pretty old and in desperate need of a makeover. I call these weekly posts my Friday Flop Fix review. During these reviews, I look for websites that are implementing search engine optimization strategies poorly, or have poor website designs and I suggest ways to make them better.

This week, I searched Google for the phrase "jewelers Zanesville, OH" and was shown these results:

VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 08/05/2016 09:32:04 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 29, 2016

J. Schrecker Jewelry #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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J. Schrecker Jewelry FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1515-59
Welcome to my weekly Flop Fix website review. I dedicate my Friday Golden Nugget posts to reviews of randomly chosen jewelry websites. The review candidates are randomly chosen through a Google Chrome incognito search for jewelers.

This week, I searched Google for "jewelers Christian County, KY" and was given these results:

J. Schrecker Jewelry FridayFlopFix Website Review 1515-jewelers-Christian-...<br />
							<span class=VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 07/29/2016 03:20:10 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 22, 2016

Cairo GA SERP Review

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Cairo GA SERP Review daily-golden-nugget-1514-80
Welcome to a somewhat unusual Friday review. Every Friday, I usually look for a website that's a bit of a fixer-upper and I suggest how to make it better. This week, as usual, I opened my Google Chrome browser in incognito mode and ran a search for "jewelry stores in Cairo GA."

There are certain search phrases that trigger specific search results formats, and normally when you search for a "jewelers in _____" or "jewelry stores in ____" Google activates the local results version of the SERP, but today it didn't.

Instead, this is what I saw:

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AT: 07/22/2016 12:28:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 15, 2016

Marco Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Marco Jewelers FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1513-10
In this edition of my weekly website review, I searched for "jewelers Stamford, CT" and Google suggested these results:

Marco Jewelers FridayFlopFix Website Review 1513-jewelers-stamford-ct-serp-17

I decided to jump right past all the top listings on that page and went down to the eighth,...
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AT: 07/15/2016 06:32:14 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 08, 2016

Happy Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Happy Jewelers FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1512-39
Welcome to my weekly website review. Every Friday, I randomly look for a jewelry store website that has a few problems, that I call flops, and then I suggest ways to fix them. These short website reviews are not meant for the store itself but rather you, the reader. My hope is that you will discover something here that you also need to fix on your own site.

This week I used the phrase "jewelers Newport, RI" to search for my review candidate. Instead of choosing a jewelry store from the first page of the Google res...
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AT: 07/08/2016 11:03:44 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 01, 2016

J Mason Custom Jeweler #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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J Mason Custom Jeweler FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1511-47
Every Friday, I venture out into the unknown to find a website that needs some help; I call them flops that could use some fixing. My hope is that you, the reader, will be able to learn a thing or two from someone else's mistakes, so that's what I look for.

This week I searched Google for the phrase "jewelers in Chapel Hill NC," and got these results:

J Mason Custom Jeweler FridayFlopFix Website ...<br />
							<span class=VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 07/01/2016 10:56:28 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 24, 2016

Kaplans Fine Jewelry and Troubling Responsive Designs #FridayFlopFix

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Kaplans Fine Jewelry and Troubling Responsive Designs FridayFlopFix daily-golden-nugget-1510-9
Last week, I went shopping for a water proof iPhone case; something that would be good enough to protect the phone while canoeing on a river. After a bit of searching at the local mall, I found a potentially good case made by THULE. Due to its price, the THULE Atmos X5 case was locked in one of those anti-theft store packages that covered most of the important details. Before buying it, I needed to make sure it was really waterproof rather than just splashproof, and to what dep...
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AT: 06/24/2016 07:56:31 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 17, 2016

Hancock Jewelers#FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Hancock JewelersFridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1509-71
Reading the latest website optimization and marketing methods online, and putting them into practice on your own website is a daunting task for most business owners. Many question their own actions and simply don't know where to start. For this reason, every Friday I present these mini case study website reviews. My goal is to find a website that has a few obvious (to me) problems, or flops, and then I suggest first steps fixes to get them on the right track again.

Learning from mistakes, yours or some else's, i...
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AT: 06/17/2016 11:31:28 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 10, 2016

Murphy's Mountain Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Murphys Mountain Jewelers FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1508-9
In this week's website review, I'm heading over to Laramie, WY in search of a good jewelry store. My hope, like most savvy internet users today, is that I'll find a good jeweler based on the information they have on their website. If the website I find happens to be a total flop, well, then I'll give some suggestions to fix it.

I write these website reviews every Friday to demonstrate how to apply new SEO techniques, online usability, and content building to pre-existing websites that need help. ...
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AT: 06/10/2016 11:15:22 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 03, 2016

Precious Metalsmith #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Precious Metalsmith FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1507-87
This is my weekly #FlopFix website review. Each week, I find a random retail jeweler's website and suggest fixes that could make it better. I never know what I'll find when I start these reviews and I do my best to document my first impressions as I look at the site.

This week I'm venturing to Olympia, WA where I'll search Google for "jewelry stores in olympia wa." Here's a screen grab of the returned SERP:

VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 06/03/2016 11:31:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 27, 2016

Island Butterfly Jewelry and Jubilee #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Island Butterfly Jewelry and Jubilee FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1506-65
Welcome to my weekly random website review. In these reviews, I search for website candidates that have problems (aka flops) with their website, and I suggest fixes to make them better. This week, I'm taking a drive down to Accomack County, Virginia in search for a jewelry store. Accomack is near the famous Route 13 Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel that I once had the pleasure, and slight fright, to drive over. There are fewer bus...
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AT: 05/27/2016 06:26:33 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 20, 2016

Jewelers in Orange CA - #FridayFlopFix Website Reviews

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Jewelers in Orange CA - FridayFlopFix Website Reviews daily-golden-nugget-1505-50
Searching for a website candidate for this week's Friday Flop Fix was a little challenging. I began my search, as usual, looking for a random website candidate in a random city in the United States. My randomly chosen city this week was Orange, CA. My specific Google search phrase was "jewelers Orange, CA" for which I was given the search results you see below.

I've included my commentary in the screen capture:

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AT: 05/20/2016 12:30:22 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 13, 2016

Walter's Jewelry #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Walters Jewelry FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1504-61
This is my weekly website review where I search for a retail jeweler at random through Google and pick apart what they are doing online. I try to uncover the flops that are being made so I can suggest the fixes needed to improve what they are doing.

This week, I started my Google search with the phrase "jewelers Brookline, MA" and quickly found myself heading down a rabbit hole after viewing these results:

Walters Jewelry FridayFl...<br />
							<span class=VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 05/13/2016 12:30:51 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 06, 2016

Orca Jewels #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Orca Jewels FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1503-99
Every week, I review the website of a randomly chosen retail jeweler. This week, I searched for "jewelers Ketchikan, AK" to find a review candidate. This type of search always triggers Google local results format, which includes the top three business listings for that area. Google understands that people are usually looking for local businesses whenever a keyword is included along with a town name in a search query. Google then shows results formatted like this:

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AT: 05/06/2016 02:15:56 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 29, 2016

Trimarco Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Trimarco Jewelers FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1502-91

Maintain Your Momentum No Matter Where You Are


Your customers and online followers will eventually become familiar with the routine and presentation of your content. Your content, and how you post it online, eventually becomes part of your brand's positioning, which is why planning ahead is so helpful for building that brand identity. The routine is just as important as the visual look because eventually your followers, whether paying customers or just readers, will expect things from you.

In my ca...
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AT: 04/29/2016 09:18:18 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 25, 2016

Time To Change The Channels

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Time To Change The Channels daily-golden-nugget-1501-55
Over the last 6 months I've been writing a lot about the importance of associating all of your marketing channels together. Your website is the cornerstone of your marketing because that's where you can fully control the user experience, but social networks, offline ads, and online ads should now tie together to create a road of intriguing discovery for your customers.

While I've been following the ins and outs of exactly how to build that path of discovery, and explained it to you, I've not been following that path myself. Since July 27, 2010 I'v...
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AT: 04/25/2016 12:40:28 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 22, 2016

Google Maps Drives Customers to Your door... Unless Your Account Has Been Suspended!

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Google Maps Drives Customers to Your door... Unless Your Account Has Been Suspended! daily-golden-nugget-1500-58
It's time to take a drink, or maybe 15 drinks! The official jWAG drinking game is to take a drink every time I mention Google Maps. Why? Because the very first Golden Nugget I wrote was about Google Maps and it's been one of the most common topics I've written about since I started writing these Golden Nuggets on July 27, 2010. I've been writing special edition version of the Golden Nugget every 100 since. Today is my 1500th Golden Nugget....
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AT: 04/22/2016 11:58:08 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 21, 2016

Transfer Ownership of Google My Business From Employee To Store Owner #TBT

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Transfer Ownership of Google My Business From Employee To Store Owner TBT daily-golden-nugget-1499-61
Last weekend, I received a frantic phone call from a store owner that needed to fire an employee, but the employee was in control of all their Google accounts. The store's Google Analytics, Google AdWords, Google Search Console, and Google My Business accounts were all created by an employee years ago, and the store owner never insisted that those accounts be transferred into her name. It's a sticky situation now that should have been avoided from the beginning. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 04/21/2016 12:21:59 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Hellberg's Jewelers Website Review

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Hellbergs Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1498-2
Every week, usually on Friday, I write a website review. This week, I'm publishing my review a couple days early because I have something special planned for Friday. The goal of my website reviews is to dissect the online efforts for a random local retail jeweler. I don't bother reviewing the websites for chain stores because I want to illustrate how a local jeweler can improve a similar site like their own.

I find my website candidates by searching Google using the Chrome browser set to incognito mode. Incognito mode is good to use whe...
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AT: 04/20/2016 12:16:41 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Understanding DPI and PPI Resolutions Used in Print and Web Images

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Understanding DPI and PPI Resolutions Used in Print and Web Images daily-golden-nugget-1497-91
Although I frequently write about the importance of VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 04/19/2016 07:35:01 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 18, 2016

Should Social Links Be In A Website Header Or Footer?

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Should Social Links In A Website Header Or Footer? daily-golden-nugget-1496-69
I have a love/hate relationship with the placement of social network icons on a website. Some websites have them in their header and some put them in the footer. In this Golden Nugget, I'll give you my point of view of where and why you should place your social icons.

Are They Important Enough?


Back when MySpace and Friendster were the latest craze, it seemed like everyone was adding large icons for those networks to their website header. Websites without those icons were made to feel like...
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AT: 04/18/2016 12:44:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 15, 2016

Kama'aina Diamond Co. #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Kamaaina Diamond Co. FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1495-7
In this week's #FridayFlopFix website review, I'm heading over to Hawai'i in search for a jeweler who could use some website help. Every Friday, I search for a website that's not quite doing the best they could. I want to point out the flops on their website, and suggest some fixes.

I started my review candidate search with the query "jewelers waimea hi." Waimea is a town on the Big Island of Hawai'i. Instead of choosing from the websites that appeared on the first page of Google's results, I looked throu...
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AT: 04/15/2016 12:43:52 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 14, 2016

Passing The Family Business On To The Next Generation #TBT

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Passing The Family Business On To The Next Generation TBT daily-golden-nugget-1494-84
As a coach and a mentor, I'm often asked a variety of unexpected questions. Over the last week, I was working with another client to help them plan for their retirement. Their retirement is many years away, but right now, they needed some help planning their future profits and if they should sell the business or if their children will take it over.

Their children are in their early 20s and haven't committed to working in the store. Both children finished their non-jewelry college educa...
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AT: 04/14/2016 07:39:44 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Should I Archive My Sale Notices Or Just Delete Them?

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Should I Archive My Sale Notices Or Just Delete Them?  daily-golden-nugget-1493-38
A reader recently wrote in and asked if they should archive their sales notices on their website, or just delete them. There's no easy answer to this question because it all depends on how you made the announcement. Let's explore some of the reasons when and why to archive those notices.

Types of Notices


The question at hand is very general and does not specify if they wanted to archive a web page, a social media post, an email newsletter, or a sales email so I'll cover all three fo...
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AT: 04/13/2016 11:46:02 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Don't Apologize For The Delay Between Blog Posts

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Dont Apologize For The Delay Between Blog Posts daily-golden-nugget-1492-84
Stop apologizing for not updating your blog! That's it! Just stop it!

Throughout my entire career writing these Golden Nuggets, I have explained over and over again how important it is to have an active blog on your website. The basic goal of your blog is to provide good information to customers who want to know more about a topic.

The blog on your website is a good place to publish information that doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the pages on your site. Most webmasters spend a lot of time tw...
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AT: 04/12/2016 06:53:01 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 11, 2016

How-To Get The Most People To Sign Up For Your Email Newsletter

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How-To Get The Most People To Sign Up For Your Email Newsletter daily-golden-nugget-1491-39
Back when jWAG was formed in 2010, the common mantra touted by many online marketers was that "the money is in the list." The list, at the time, was a reference to the number of people on your email list. Since then, we now have the ability to reach customers through many other list methods, including Facebook retargeting lists, Google AdWords remarketing lists, and even push notifications through custom apps that people download. So many online marketing opportunities exist now tha...
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AT: 04/11/2016 06:35:06 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 08, 2016

The Gold Market Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Review

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The Gold Market Jewelers FridayFlopFix Review daily-golden-nugget-1490-11
This is the #FridayFlopFix website review where I take a critical look at a jeweler's website to find important mistakes and suggests ways to fix them. To kick off this week, I'm searching the "jewelry stores Longmont, CO" in Google. Here's a snapshot of the returned Google local listings:

The Gold Market Jewelers FridayFlopFix Review 1490-jewelry-stores-longmont-co-serp-75VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 04/08/2016 12:40:54 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 07, 2016

How To Rank Your Website When Someone Searches For Your Offline Ad #TBT

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How To Rank Your Website When Someone Searches For Your Offline Ad TBT daily-golden-nugget-1489-85
The axiom of search engine optimization is that your website will only rank for words that search engines can find on your website. If you learn nothing else about search engine optimization you must learn that one point. If you have learned that already; good, you don't have to read today, but before you go consider that many people aware of that axiom are still not applying.

Back in December 2014, I explained VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 04/07/2016 06:35:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 06, 2016

How To Get Customer Consent For Marketing and Social Media Photos

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How To Get Customer Consent For Marketing and Social Media Photos daily-golden-nugget-1488-71
When it comes to social media photographs, it's easy to forget that every person has a legal right to prevent you from posting a photo of their face online. Paid photographers and media companies are very aware of your legal rights, and they require people to sign a model release form.

Those release forms grant ownership and permission to use the photos for any purpose, even to sell the photos or use in promotions to sell a product. A quick Google search for "sample mode...
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AT: 04/06/2016 11:57:55 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 05, 2016

You Must Figure Out The Best Time Of Day To Post To Social Media

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You Must Figure Out The Best Time Of Day To Post To Social Media daily-golden-nugget-1487-43
How can you accurately decide when to post to social media when there are many reports, infographics, and varying online advice on what time of day and how often to post to social networks? So many contradictory reports make it difficult to know what advice is the best advice.

There are plenty of infographics that show the alleged best times to post on social media and the VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 04/05/2016 12:14:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 04, 2016

How to Make It Easy For Customers To Leave Online Reviews

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How to Make It Easy For Customers To Leave Online Reviews daily-golden-nugget-1486-36
Last week, I reviewed some good ways to correctly implement QR codes in your marketing and in your store. One of the methods I suggested was to create a QR code that would lead people to an online review form. To do that, you'll need the website address for that form, but Google doesn't make it easy to find any more.

The company Grade.us provides VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 04/04/2016 12:36:28 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 01, 2016

Stonecraft Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Review

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Stonecraft Jewelers FridayFlopFix Review daily-golden-nugget-1485-19
This is the #FridayFlopFix edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Each week, I find a random retail jewelry stores and review their website in hopes that we'll be able to learn something from the process. I call this a "Flop Fix" because I specifically look for websites that are making mistakes, i.e. flops, so I can suggest fixes.

Here's the search results I saw this week when I searched Google for "jewelry stores Elko, NV":

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AT: 04/01/2016 12:38:36 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 31, 2016

The Best Way To Use QR Codes #TBT

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The Best Way To Use QR Codes TBT daily-golden-nugget-1484-74
There was a lot of marketing buzz around QR codes when they appeared in the USA in 2009 and 2010. Marketers thought they would be a hot sensation for smartphone users and started slapping them on all their ads. Even though QR codes began to appear everywhere, their usefulness and marketing success rates were small. What marketers didn't realize was that QR codes must be utilitarian, but most were gimmicky. I wrote this Nugget about...
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AT: 03/31/2016 12:13:51 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Using LinkedIn to Establish Your Credibility as an Expert

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Using LinkedIn to Establish Your Credibility as an Expert daily-golden-nugget-1483-64
I don't often write about LinkedIn because it's considered a business-to-business social network and my educational focus is helping entrepreneurs connect directly with consumers. That said, today I'm going to share how you could use this network to your advantage.

What is LinkedIn?


LinkedIn is a professional social network. The goal of this network is to allow you to maintain your curriculum vitae and connect with those you've worked with throughout your career. You can conn...
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AT: 03/30/2016 12:35:41 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Instagram Is Changing, But Brands Should Still Use It

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Instagram Is Changing, But Brands Should Still Use It daily-golden-nugget-1482-45
Instagram made headlines on March 15, 2016 when it announced that they would change the way their feed works. Since its inception, Instagram was a simple social network that allowed all users to scroll through the most recent photos posted by their friends. Keep scrolling to see the most recent photos. On March 15th, they announced that they will reorganize the feed for what you might care about the most, which is ex...
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AT: 03/29/2016 11:43:41 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 28, 2016

Using Your Smartphone To Improve How You Engage With Customers Socially

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Using Your Smartphone To Improve How You Engage With Customers Socially daily-golden-nugget-1481-17
Your success on social media is related to the amount of time you spend engaging with your customers. I like to think of social media as the online version of a business networking event. Plenty of people attend business networking events with grand notions of meeting new business partners only to get there and stand on the sidelines, or quietly sit at a table without working the room.

At some local networking events, you might have the opportunity to hand out ...
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AT: 03/28/2016 07:32:49 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 25, 2016

Fisher Jewelers & Silversmiths #FridayFlopFix Review

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Fisher Jewelers & Silversmiths FridayFlopFix Review daily-golden-nugget-1480-74
This is the #FridayFlopFix edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Each week, I look for candidate websites that are not ranking very well in Google search results and dissect them to figure out why they are ranking poorly.

This week, I searched for "jewelry stores Florence, SC" to find that poorly ranked site. I found an interesting situation with the store Fisher Jewelers & Silversmiths that I'll investigate today. I first noticed the AGS listing for the store shown here:

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AT: 03/25/2016 11:30:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 24, 2016

Tapping the JA Website for Jewelry Related Blogging Topics #TBT

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Tapping the JA Website for Jewelry Related Blogging Topics TBT daily-golden-nugget-1479-87
For this week's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to a Daily Golden Nugget that's in desperate need of updating, specifically what I wrote about the Jewelry Information Center, otherwise known as the JIC. JIC was created by Jewelers of America as a consumer education service. The jic.org website commonly posted current jewelry trends and was a great inspiration resource ...
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AT: 03/24/2016 11:42:18 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 23, 2016

The Tricky Steps From Social To Sales

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The Tricky Steps From Social To Sales daily-golden-nugget-1478-52
Social media marketing is quite frustrating. The rules seem to change every time you think you understand the right methods of how and when to share to social media. Most internet marketers will lead you to believe that business success will come if you can get 10,000 or more fans following you on every network, when in reality it takes a bit more than just growing your social fan base.

Somehow those social media fans have to be converted into sales as shown in this diagram:

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AT: 03/23/2016 08:53:39 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Should I Deactivate My Website When Taking A Hiatus From Working?

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Should I Deactivate My Website When Taking A Hiatus From Working? daily-golden-nugget-1477-20
Within the jewelry industry, I often hear about jewelry designers who take a break and put their business on hold while they reconsider their artistic direction or go back to school for additional training. Although it might seem like a simple idea to put a business on hold, how you present yourself online during your hiatus could have positive or negative ramifications on your future livelihood.

I've spoken to many jewelry designers who had a rough start with their busines...
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AT: 03/22/2016 12:38:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 21, 2016

Social Media is The Glue Holding The Customer Life Cycle Together

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Social Media is The Glue Holding The Customer Life Cycle Together daily-golden-nugget-1476-81
Social media is required for business--all businesses. It ties all your other advertising together: every ad you place in your local community, whether it's on TV, radio, on billboards, in all of your direct mail, for newspaper ads, or everything else you do on other social networks. Social media ties all your marketing together in such a way to support your customer life cycle.

Customer Life Cycle


There are specific steps that every customer must travel throug...
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AT: 03/21/2016 06:46:04 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 18, 2016

HUR Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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HUR Jewelers FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1475-45
This is the #FridayFlopFix website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Every week, I scrutinize the website of a random retail jeweler and make recommendations for how to improve the site. I seek out bad websites for these unsolicited reviews so you, the reader, can learn how to identify and improve upon your own websites.

I'm changing up my approach this week. Normally I choose a review candidate from the first few that appear in the Google search results; this week I'm digging into the second page of the searc...
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AT: 03/18/2016 12:50:11 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 17, 2016

Keywords Don't Belong In Your Meta Descriptions #TBT

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Keywords Dont Belong In Your Meta Descriptions TBT  daily-golden-nugget-1474-30
In today's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to January 2012 to my topic of avoiding keyword stuffing in meta descriptions.

What Are They?


The meta descriptions are the approximately 150 character descriptions you see in the search engine results pages. What you put in the meta descriptions does not count towards your search engine optimization; rather, it's there simply to exp...
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AT: 03/17/2016 11:27:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Social Media As The Minimum Marketing Effort to Maintain Customer Awareness of You

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Social Media As The Minimum Marketing Effort to Maintain Customer Awareness of You daily-golden-nugget-1473-47
The last seven days have been quite interesting, and fulfilling for me. In addition to the photography demo booth at MJSA Expo in New York City, I also presented three seminars/training classes, one of which was at MJSA this past Monday.

An interesting topic about marketing budgets and social media organically emerged during my training sessions last week, which I then added to my MJSA seminar at the last minute, and I want to share with y...
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AT: 03/16/2016 11:31:19 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 15, 2016

5 Ways to Improve Your Website Homepage

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5 Ways to Improve Your Website Homepage daily-golden-nugget-1472-68
In yesterday's Nugget, I gave you 4 ways to prepare for ecommerce. Long before you get to the ecommerce state, you need to have a perfectly working website that reflects how your business operates and the customer service you provide. To help you achieve that today, I'm giving you 5 ways to improve your website.

1. Make It Easy for Them to Contact You


Every website should have a specific Contact Us pa...
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AT: 03/15/2016 08:03:09 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 14, 2016

4 Ways To Prep Your Website For Eventual Ecommerce

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4 Ways To Prep Your Website For Eventual Ecommerce daily-golden-nugget-1471-33It seems like only yesterday when it was thought that email addresses would become more important than telephone numbers, and now a website address is more important than both a telephone number and a physical address. A website is the most important representation of your business, yet most jewelers don't treat it that way, and many still view it as an online brochure that needs to be made once, and then forgotten about.

The local retail jeweler is losing a lot of business to the internet. The younger gen...
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AT: 03/14/2016 01:21:56 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 11, 2016

Diamonds Fine Jewelry #FridayFlopFix Review

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Diamonds Fine Jewelry FridayFlopFix Review daily-golden-nugget-1470-62
It's time for the #FridayFlopFix where I review a random website from a local retail jeweler. The goal is to find some obvious mistakes, or flops, and suggest ways to improve upon, or fix, things.

This week, I'm looking for a candidate jeweler in Meridian, Idaho. This is the Google search results page I saw when looking for "jewelers Meridian, ID":

Diamonds Fine Jewelry FridayFlopFix Review 1470-jewelers-meridian-id-se...<br />
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AT: 03/11/2016 01:12:10 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 10, 2016

Good Photography Can Boost Your Overall Appearance Online and In-Store #TBT

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Good Photography Can Boost Your Overall Appearance Online and In-Store TBT daily-golden-nugget-1469-37
In preparation for this weekend's MJSA and JA Expo at the Jacob Javits center in NYC, I'm jumping way, way back to my fifth Daily Golden Nugget from July 30, 2010 about photography. I've written about photography many times since then, written product reviews about the VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 03/10/2016 12:52:27 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 09, 2016

Customer Experience and Marketing Campaigns Based on the Customer End-To-End Journey

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Customer Experience and Marketing Campaigns Based on the Customer End-To-End Journey daily-golden-nugget-1468-11
It's no surprise that the jewelry industry faces a tough road ahead. With JBT continuing to report increases in jewelry business discontinuances it's difficult to predict who will still be in business in the next 12 months, especi...
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AT: 03/09/2016 12:42:55 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 08, 2016

Improve Customer Retention with Personalized Perks

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Improve Customer Retention with Personalized Perks daily-golden-nugget-1467-29
I've long said that you need to build your email list and then segment that list according to previous sales for your targeted advertising. List building and segmentation both contribute to your customer retention ...
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AT: 03/08/2016 01:39:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 07, 2016

Facebook Messages: Your New Customer Service Channel

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Facebook Messages: Your New Customer Service Channel daily-golden-nugget-1466-20
Once upon a time, Facebook was the social network for college friends only. Then it was opened up to anyone to join. It was a free-for-all of friends keeping in touch without any special filtering getting in the way of seeing your friend's status updates.

When they let businesses join, there was a sudden surge of unwanted solicitations and plenty of users complaining that they were seeing too many business posts in their news feed. As is all things internet related, businesses viewed Facebook as t...
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AT: 03/07/2016 01:27:50 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 04, 2016

Imagine Jewelry Studio Website Disaster

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Imagine Jewelry Studio Website Disaster daily-golden-nugget-1465-92
Welcome to a very special #FridayFlopFix website evaluation. I call these weekly posts the "Flop Fix" because I specifically look for website problems, i.e. flops, for which I can offer improvement ideas, i.e. fixes, that everyone can learn from.

Well, this week is a doozy. I have been TRYING to publish this review every week since I ORIGINALLY wrote it back on December 16, 2015! Today is March 3, 2016; that's 11 weeks ago. There's a story behind this that should make you all cringe. Forewarning, I'm about to reveal some...
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AT: 03/04/2016 12:16:48 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 03, 2016

Domain Services Renewal and Search Engine Submission Service Scam #TBT

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Domain Services Renewal and Search Engine Submission Service Scam TBT daily-golden-nugget-1464-18
For this week's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to the topic of domain name scams. Unfortunately, this throwback doesn't go back too far since I last wrote about this in June 2015, when I reported the exploits of iDNS and their Domain Name Expiration Notices.

A new scam came through my inbox this week that business owners should be aware of. I deem t...
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AT: 03/03/2016 08:51:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 02, 2016

Mimic Your B&M Customer Service Through Your Contact Form

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Mimic Your B&M Customer Service Through Your Contact Form daily-golden-nugget-1463-14
I've often said that a website needs to provide customer service features that mimic the service that you offer in a store. Today, I'm going to specifically explain one of those feature you should strive for.

In-Store Customer Service


Think about the following scenarios for a moment.

Scenario 1:
A customer is shopping in your store and tells your sales associate that they like the way you've recently remodeled the store.

Scenario 2:
A customer ...
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AT: 03/02/2016 01:32:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 01, 2016

New Google SERP Format Does Not Show AdWords On Right Side Of Desktop Results

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New Google SERP Format Does Not Show AdWords On Right Side Of Desktop Results daily-golden-nugget-1462-94
Since the beginning of Google time, their search results page has been formatted as a two column layout. The wider left column showed the organic results and the thinner right column had the paid AdWords ads. Eventually, Google started including paid ads above and below the right column organic results.

Google established their own set of website quality guidelines to ...
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AT: 03/01/2016 12:37:08 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 29, 2016

Keywords and Content: Working Together to Establish Expertise in a Topic

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Keywords and Content: Working Together to Establish Expertise in a Topic daily-golden-nugget-1461-23
Last month, I spent a lot of time analyzing the keyword data I collected during the 2015 holiday season. The information that surfaced was just the tip of the iceberg that I had, but it would take months to go through and write about it all, so I limited my analysis to the list this list:


AT: 02/29/2016 12:35:30 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 26, 2016

Pruett's Jewelry #FridayFlopFix Review

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Pruetts Jewelry FridayFlopFix Review daily-golden-nugget-1460-81Don't want to read? This week you can also watch the video recording of this review here!

Welcome to the weekly #FridayFlopFix website review. Every Friday, I search a random town for an older website that needs help improving, and I suggest fixes for their flops.

This week, I searched Google for "jewelers Odessa, TX" and saw these results:

Pruetts Jewelry FridayFlopFix Re...<br />
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AT: 02/26/2016 01:21:17 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 25, 2016

Deep Websites Create Discovery Issues for Users and Search Engines #TBT

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Deep Websites Create Discovery Issues for Users and Search Engines TBT daily-golden-nugget-1459-13The navigation of your website can help or hurt how easily people and search engines discover all your content. For this week's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to the good topic of deep website linking from January 2011. With websites growing larger and larger every day, the concept explained in that old Nugget is more valid today than it was back then.

De...
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AT: 02/25/2016 12:27:35 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Business Startup: Entrepreneurs Should Hire Marketing Professionals

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Business Startup: Entrepreneurs Should Hire Marketing Professionals daily-golden-nugget-1458-18
Entrepreneurs face many challenges when they first open their business. Frequently, business owners don't even know how to get started with registering their business on a local, county, state, or federal level. During my time as a business mentor with SCORE, I've been surprised by the number of aspiring entrepreneurs who come in asking for legal and accounting advice to help them get through their initial start-up peri...
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AT: 02/24/2016 07:58:55 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 23, 2016

The Unbalanced Branding Relationship Between Retail Jewelers and Jewelry Designers

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The Unbalanced Branding Relationship Between Retail Jewelers and Jewelry Designers daily-golden-nugget-1457-37
I have this love/hate relationship with the words "branding" and "brand." When I became an entrepreneur and started studying different marketing approaches, I still remember my initial confusion of seeing those words used in connection with advertising. Up until then, I only knew of branding as a method of marking livestock, such as cows. The origin of the word brand, in fact, has Germanic origins relating to burning an identification mark into ...
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AT: 02/23/2016 02:12:48 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 22, 2016

Top 10 Misfit Children Nuggets from 2015

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Top 10 Misfit Children Nuggets from 2015 daily-golden-nugget-1456-24
Bloggers have an unyielding passion to write and share their expertise with the world. Unlike a freelance writer for hire that is paid to create an editorial, most passionate bloggers write because they care greatly about the topic, and many do it for free. Those of us who write for free are often disappointed by posts that don't get the attention we wish they did; after all our blog posts are our children and we want our children to grow up and be successful and not unacknowledged misfits.

Much to my chagrin, not every b...
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AT: 02/22/2016 07:36:26 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 19, 2016

Tallmon's Jewelry #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Tallmons Jewelry FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1455-71Don't want to read? This week you can also watch the video recording of this review here!

This is the weekly #FridayFlopFix edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Every Friday, I search for a really bad website in a random town, and provide ideas for how to fix all of its flops.

This week when I searched Google for "jewelers Scottsbluff, NE" I saw these results:

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AT: 02/19/2016 08:48:32 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 18, 2016

Pandora Plans Expansion of Owned Concept Stores Which Will Directly Compete With Retailers #TBT

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Pandora Plans Expansion of Owned Concept Stores Which Will Directly Compete With Retailers TBT daily-golden-nugget-1454-78
Last year, I wrote this analysis of Pandora's Q1 2015 financial results along with some ideas of how to deal with the inevitable sunsetting of the reseller agreement you have with them. For today's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm revisiting that topic with an analysis of Pandora's Q4 2015 fin...
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AT: 02/18/2016 10:21:32 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Left Unchecked, Comments On Your Facebook Ad Will Kill Its Effectiveness

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Left Unchecked, Comments On Your Facebook Ad Will Kill Its Effectiveness daily-golden-nugget-1453-55
Planning the perfect Facebook ad is quite time consuming. Some ads, like Valentine's Day promotions, are only good for a few weeks, while others could be good for quite a long time. You could boost a regular post VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 02/17/2016 01:38:21 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Most Popular Mobile Devices and Resolutions from December 2015

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Most Popular Mobile Devices and Resolutions from December 2015 daily-golden-nugget-1452-10
Bring up the topic of smartphones with your friends and the conversations will soon turn into a debate over the reasons why some think the Android OS phones are better than iOS phones. While the iOS phones are only available in a limited number of models from Apple, the Android OS is available on dozens of different models from dozens of different phone manufacturers.

Regardless what your personal smartphone choice is, knowing what your customers are using will help you design a ...
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AT: 02/16/2016 09:38:43 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 15, 2016

Top 10 Daily Golden Nuggets of All Time

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Top 10 Daily Golden Nuggets of All Time daily-golden-nugget-1451-43
I'm going back to my own jWAG website tracking today to look at the top 10 Daily Golden Nuggets of all time, that are still relevant today. I see that some of the Nuggets with the highest reader count are out of date because Facebook and Google have changed things, and a few others are very similar so I'll have to do some consolidating.

Popular Screen Resolutions


1. The most popular screen resolutions change constantly as new mobile devices and laptops are introduced. I publish an updated version of screen resol...
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AT: 02/15/2016 09:58:17 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 12, 2016

Dominique's Jewelry #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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Dominiques Jewelry FridayFlopFix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1450-16Don't want to read? This week you can also watch the video recording of this review here!

This is the #FridayFlopFix website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. This week I've randomly chosen Santa Clarita, CA as the city to search for my review candidate. When I searched Google for the phrase "jewelers Santa Clarita, CA," I saw these three Google business listings:

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AT: 02/12/2016 02:01:38 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 11, 2016

How To Think of 52 Different Blogging Topics For Your Content Creation Calendar

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How To Think of 52 Different Blogging Topics For Your Content Creation Calendar daily-golden-nugget-1449-19
In this #ThrowbackThursday nugget edition, I'm jumping back to a simple one from October 2010 about finding blogging topics.

Blogging has become the primary way of generating content for your website that search engines then use to better understand what your website is all about so they can correctly match you with the people searching for...
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AT: 02/11/2016 12:18:26 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Organic Mobile Search Engine Results from December 2015

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Organic Mobile Search Engine Results from December 2015 daily-golden-nugget-1448-57
A few weeks ago, I published a Nugget showing the recent trends in search engine organic usage. I've been tracking those statistics since 2010, and now I have enough information to compare mobile organic visits to desktop organic visits.

In that previous Nugget, I showed that Google cu...
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AT: 02/10/2016 01:09:17 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 09, 2016

The Benefits of Using Long Scrolling Pages and Parallax Layouts on Your Website

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The Benefits of Using Long Scrolling Pages and Parallax Layouts on Your Website daily-golden-nugget-1447-12
There's a trending website design idea that has its place, but that place is certainly not on your home page. Today, I'll explain what this website design trend is, what's good and bad about it, and how to use it.

Infinity Scrolling


Social media websites have changed the way we interact with website. Before Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, everyone thought that the internet was made up of individual web pages. But social networks g...
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AT: 02/09/2016 12:52:25 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 08, 2016

Top 10 Daily Golden Nuggets According to Facebook

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Top 10 Daily Golden Nuggets According to Facebook daily-golden-nugget-1446-29
Everyone loves a Top 10 list. Last week while summarizing my top 10 Daily Golden Nuggets from 2015 according to Google Analytics, I realized I should go through the list to see what the top Nuggets are according to Facebook.

Tracking the most active social media content might seem silly, but there's real value to this activity. When you first start blogging or otherwise buildi...
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AT: 02/08/2016 01:13:30 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 05, 2016

Goldsmith Jewelry Repair & Design #FridayFlopFix Review

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Goldsmith Jewelry Repair & Design FridayFlopFix Review daily-golden-nugget-1445-75
Welcome to the special #FridayFlopFix edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. This week, I'm on the hunt for a jewelry business in Bowling Green, KY that has a bad website. That's right, I'm looking for a flop that needs fixing. A quick search in Google for "jewelers Bowling Green, KY" lead me to a prime candidate for today: Goldsmith Jewelry Repair & Design with their website
http://www.goldsmithjrd.com/

First Impressions


...
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AT: 02/05/2016 12:27:15 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 04, 2016

Landing Page Planning #TBT

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Landing Page Planning TBT daily-golden-nugget-1444-39
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping way back to September 2010 to the topic of landing page planning, although I didn't specifically call it landing page planning back then.

Planning your landing page long before you need to use it is an important part of a successful online marketing strategy, but before I get in too deep of how to help with the success, let me just briefly explain what a landing page is.

What is a Landing Page?

<...
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AT: 02/04/2016 12:09:52 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 03, 2016

2015 Holiday Season Keyword Data: Query Word Count and Unique Keywords

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2015 Holiday Season Keyword Data: Query Word Count and Unique Keywords daily-golden-nugget-1443-70
Throughout the past month, I analyzed different sets of keywords that I collected during the 2015 holiday season. Most of that research focused on overall analysis of the keyword data without breaking it down into the desktop, mobile, or tablet categories of devices. I chose that approach to save time, and quite frankly, so as not to bore everyone with too much similar information.

That said, in this edition, I am splitting apart the results to show you how the u...
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AT: 02/03/2016 08:05:17 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 02, 2016

2015 Holiday Season Keyword Data: Top Keyword Phrases

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2015 Holiday Season Keyword Data: Top Keyword Phrases daily-golden-nugget-1442-42
This is the last Daily Golden Nugget where I'll dive deeply into specific keyword phrases I collected during the 2015 Holiday Season. I've presented a lot of information over the last 30 days and I could spend another month sifting through it, but this stuff does get boring after a while when there's no specific goal in mind. That's an important thing to remember; it's best to perform your keyword research when you have a specific goal in mind. Every time I grind through keyword data, I seem to lose an...
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AT: 02/02/2016 12:09:18 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 01, 2016

Top 10 Daily Golden Nuggets from 2015 According to Google Analytics

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Top 10 Daily Golden Nuggets from 2015 According to Google Analytics daily-golden-nugget-1441-60
Today I'm stepping back into 2015 to review the top 10 Daily Golden Nugget posts according to my Google Analytics account. Take a quick look to see if you remember them, and if you were able to put any of this information to use:

EVM Chip Cards


1. U.S. Retailers Must Install EMV Chip Card Terminals at Point-of-Sale by...
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AT: 02/01/2016 01:04:23 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 29, 2016

The First Place #FridayFlopFix Review

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The First Place FridayFlopFix Review daily-golden-nugget-1440-32
This is the #FridayFlopFix edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Each week I seek out a website that needs some help, and I make improvement suggestions. Most of the time, I simply do a random Google search for a jewelry store, sometimes I come across a store randomly during work, and sometimes one of my friends sends me a website that perplexes them.

Last Friday night, my dear friend Cindy Edelstein sent me an email w...
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AT: 01/29/2016 08:08:33 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 28, 2016

Get Customers to Check-in to your Facebook Page #TBT

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Get Customers to Check-in to your Facebook Page TBT daily-golden-nugget-1439-92
Welcome to the #ThrowbackThursday edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Today, I'm jumping back to one of my early posts about location based services and checking-in on Facebook.

It was all the rage during the summer of 2010 to have a check-in app on your smartphone check-in everywhere. Gowalla, Foursquare, Whrrl, and Loopt were competing heavily when Facebook tried getting into the game. Facebook's initial eff...
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AT: 01/28/2016 12:05:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 27, 2016

2015 Holiday Season Keyword Data: Jeweler vs. Jewelers

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2015 Holiday Season Keyword Data: Jeweler vs. Jewelers daily-golden-nugget-1438-30
The difference between the singular and plural version of the same keyword phrase oftentimes represents a very specific consumer point of view. When digging into your website keyword data, it's very easy to arbitrarily group phrases together, but doing so will most likely lead you to the wrong conclusions, which translates to the wrong SEO advice, which leads to the wrong marketing advice, and eventually the wrong business direction.

You have plenty of opportunity to capture data from your websi...
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AT: 01/27/2016 09:52:54 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 26, 2016

2015 Holiday Season Keyword Data: Fine Jewelry

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2015 Holiday Season Keyword Data: Fine Jewelry daily-golden-nugget-1437-59
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm going to examine more of the keyword data I collected during the 2015 holiday season, specifically the phrase "fine jewelry."

Retail jewelers and jewelry designers like to think of themselves as being in the "fine jewelry" industry, and they might even use that phrase in their advertising, but the truth is that the general public doesn't think about "fine jewelry;" they just view all jewelry as jewelry. Website research and search engine optimization activities ra...
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AT: 01/26/2016 12:21:04 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 25, 2016

Mobile Website Personalization using Responsive Content and RESS

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Mobile Website Personalization using Responsive Content and RESS daily-golden-nugget-1436-77
If technology and website design are not your cup of tea, you might want to skip this one. On the other hand, if you're a business owner who wants to understand the future of how to make your mobile customers happy, and want to learn some advanced concepts that will help with the future of customer detection and personalization, read on.

Mobile Personalization


There are a lot of mobile devices out there. The data I analyzed while writing my latest VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 01/25/2016 08:20:12 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 22, 2016

Kent Jewelry #FridayFlopFix Review

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Kent Jewelry FridayFlopFix Review daily-golden-nugget-1435-2
This is the Friday Flop Fix edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Each Friday, I search for a website that isn't living up to its full potential, and I give suggestions on making it better; my fixes for their flops. I started my search today with the query "jewelers Rolla, MS" and received this as a result:

Kent Jewelry FridayFlopFix Review 1435-jewelers-rolla-ms-serp-74 VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 01/22/2016 01:13:37 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 21, 2016

Organic Search Engine Results from 2015 #TBT

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Organic Search Engine Results from 2015 TBT daily-golden-nugget-1434-68
Welcome to #ThrowbackThursday edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. As I looked back over my recent data, I realized I haven't analyzed the top performing search engines for quite a long time. The last time I reported the top search engines results was back in May 2014.

I've collected a lot of data since then, and now I can even report on the differences between desktop and mobile search engine usage.

Global...
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AT: 01/21/2016 09:56:21 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 20, 2016

2015 Holiday Season Keyword Data: Engagement Rings

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2015 Holiday Season Keyword Data: Engagement Rings daily-golden-nugget-1433-12
What I'm presenting today is a continuation of the 2015 Holiday Season keyword data I presented yesterday. Today, I'm reviewing my findings about search queries that contained the phrase "engagement rings."

What I have here today is similar, yet very different to the "engagement ring" information I presented yesterday. Notice the difference in the query phrase between today's plural version an...
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AT: 01/20/2016 07:22:24 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 19, 2016

2015 Holiday Season Keyword Data: Engagement Ring

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2015 Holiday Season Keyword Data: Engagement Ring daily-golden-nugget-1432-12
Today I'm reviewing more keyword data that I collected during the 2015 Holiday Season, specifically some of my findings about search queries that contained the phrase "engagement ring."

Take note that I said the singular form of the phrase "engagement ring," rather than the plural form "engagement rings." Originally, I was going to review both variations in today's Daily Golden Nugget like I did for my VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 01/19/2016 10:37:23 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 18, 2016

Local Business Suffering? It's Time To Think About Your Global Audience

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Local Business Suffering? Its Time To Think About Your Global Audience daily-golden-nugget-1435-33
I realize that over the last 12 months, I've spent most of my time talking about Google to the exclusion of the other search engines. Many SEO professionals, myself included, feel that if you can achieve high ranking in Google then you should easily be able to achieve high ranking in any search engine. It seems only natural since Google is the de facto search engine, right?

While Google might be the most popular search engine in the U.S., it's not the most popul...
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AT: 01/18/2016 12:22:16 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 15, 2016

Goodman's Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Review

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Goodmans Jewelers FridayFlopFix Review daily-golden-nugget-1430-87
During my internet travels over the last few days, I came across the website for Goodman's Jewelers in Madison, WI. It caught my attention and I immediately decided to use it for today's #FridayFlopFix review. I hope to make a few suggestions that will help them improve how they use their site, and give you a few ideas on what to avoid on your own site. Let's dig in...

The website I'm looking at today is Goodman's Jewelers at:
http://www.goodmansjewelers.com/...
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AT: 01/15/2016 01:21:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 14, 2016

Understanding Your Bounce Rate #TBT

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Understanding Your Bounce Rate TBT daily-golden-nugget-1429-73
For today's #ThrowbackThursday Nugget, I'm jumping back to my explanation of bounce rate from January 2011.

Not much has changed since I wrote that previous Nugget, but I should recap the basics.

What is a Bounce Rate?


I should explain what a bounce rate is for those of you not quite up to speed. This is the percentage of people who visit your website, look at one page, click nothing else, then either close their web browser or c...
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AT: 01/14/2016 02:00:29 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Minimalist Website Design Causes The Revival of The Splash Screen

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Minimalist Website Design Causes The Revival of The Splash Screen daily-golden-nugget-1428-42
Mobile websites are important, but a growing trend of mobile website design has me a little worried that websites are accidentally turning back the clock to a time of poor usability.

Splash Pages


The splash page was a very popular type of website home page design prior to 2010. A splash page was supposed to welcome a visitor to your site with a pretty image or an animation, and sometimes even music. Typically, there was a big arrow or the words "enter site" lik...
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AT: 01/13/2016 08:26:52 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 12, 2016

2015 Holiday Season Keyword Data: Diamonds vs Diamond

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2015 Holiday Season Keyword Data: Diamonds vs Diamond daily-golden-nugget-1427-10
Today I'm reviewing more keyword data that I collected during the 2015 Holiday Season, specifically some of my findings about search queries that contained the words diamond and diamonds.

The typical keyword phrases I've reported on in the past have not changed much at all, and includes these examples:


AT: 01/12/2016 08:36:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 11, 2016

jWAG Celebrates Its 6th Year Helping You To Better Understand The Internet

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jWAG Celebrates Its 6th Year Helping You To Better Understand The Internet daily-golden-nugget-1426-45
It all started six years ago; that's right, we're celebrating the jWAG's 6th anniversary today with the ambitious and philanthropic mission to surface our research about the internet and how the jewelry industry could best use technology to improve their business.

When my business partner and I launched the Jeweler Website Advisory Group (jWAG), we never expected it to blossom into the resource that is now referenced by so many people, even outside the jewe...
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AT: 01/11/2016 01:02:33 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 08, 2016

David Reynolds Jewelry and Coin #FridayFlopFix Review

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David Reynolds Jewelry and Coin FridayFlopFix Review daily-golden-nugget-1425-34
This is the #FridayFlopFix edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Each week, I look for a random retail jewelry store website that is using the wrong approach on their website, and I make suggestions for improvements. This week when I searched Google for "jewelers st. petersburg fl," I was given these results:

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AT: 01/08/2016 01:03:13 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 07, 2016

SEO Micromanaging Can Lead to Over-Optimization

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SEO Micromanaging Can Lead to Over-Optimization daily-golden-nugget-1424-94
For this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm only jumping back about a year to a topic that has come up several times over the last 12 months: Website Over-Optimization.

In January 2015 I wrote a piece about getting ranked as number 1 in Google. In it, I bashed all those companies that send random solicitations claiming they can jump your website ranking to first place in Google. Coincidentally, this morning...
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AT: 01/07/2016 12:19:33 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 06, 2016

Holiday Season 2015 Keyword Data from Desktop Search Impressions and Clicks

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Holiday Season 2015 Keyword Data from Desktop Search Impressions and Clicks daily-golden-nugget-1423-53
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm continuing my analysis of a lot of keyword data I collected during the 2015 Holiday Season. Today's information is a continuation of the organic impression and click data I previously shared.

For today's Nugget, I sorted through the 16,000 keywords collected from desktop ...
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AT: 01/06/2016 12:49:28 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 05, 2016

Holiday Season 2015 Search Impression and Click Results for Retail Jewelers

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Holiday Season 2015 Search Impression and Click Results for Retail Jewelers daily-golden-nugget-1422-54
Now that we closed the book on the 2015 Holiday Season, it's time to review the results. Over the course of the holiday season, I captured more than 47,000 different keyword queries related to retail jeweler websites. I'm sifting through all that information to find something actionable for retail jewelers. I've been looking for things like a list of good keywords, or popular designer brands to carry, or even where to focus your energy over the next few month...
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AT: 01/05/2016 12:24:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 04, 2016

Website Session Stats from the 2015 Holiday Season

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Website Session Stats from the 2015 Holiday Season daily-golden-nugget-1421A-0
With the 2015 Holiday Season at an end, let's take a look at some website tracking results from the Thanksgiving week through Christmas.

I have a lot of data to from various retail jeweler websites. The set of data I'm referencing below was recorded across retail jewelry websites that have been active with updating their website regularly over the last 12 months. These same websites are also mobile friendly. This includes a combination of retail jewelers and ecommerce sites. Remember, the results show...
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AT: 01/04/2016 12:20:09 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 01, 2016

R&R Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Review

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R&R Jewelers FridayFlopFix Review daily-golden-nugget-1421-23
Happy New Years and welcome to #FridayFlopFix! FridayFlopFix is what I call my weekly website reviews. The goal of these Friday the Daily Golden Nugget editions is to find a website that is behind on expected website standards, i.e. flops, and provide suggestions for fixing it.

Last night, on New Year's Eve, millions of people watched the ball drop in Time Square, New York City. In honor of this, I've also decided to focus my attention on NYC to locate a retail jeweler. Considering the NYC Diamond District and so many retail jeweler ...
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AT: 01/01/2016 01:44:19 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 31, 2015

ThrowbackThursday to 2015 Predictions

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ThrowbackThursday to 2015 Predictions daily-golden-nugget-1419-42
Coincidently, this is the final Daily Golden Nugget for 2015 and it falls on a #ThrowbackThursday, giving me the perfect opportunity to check back in on my 2015 predictions from last year this time. Was I right, or very wrong? Let's find out...


Content Marketing Will Become More Important


My specific prediction was that the word "blogging" would be replaced with the phrase "content marketing" by the end of 2016...
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AT: 12/31/2015 10:47:43 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Insights for 2016

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Insights for 2016 daily-golden-nugget-1418-76
The year 2015 is about to come to a close, but before it does, I'm venturing out on a limb to give you my forecast insights for 2016. This year, I'm referring to these as "insights" and not necessarily as "predictions" because these things are what I already see happening in a small way, and steadily growing. They are in no particular order...

Social Media Change with the Young Generation


The current teenage generation is struggling to hide from their parents online. Many of them want nothing to do with Facebook because the grown-...
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AT: 12/30/2015 08:23:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 29, 2015

The Majority of Couples Get Engaged on Christmas Eve

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The Majority of Couples Get Engaged on Christmas Eve daily-golden-nugget-1417-36
Social media is bringing to light something that retail jewelers have known since they started selling jewelry: Christmas is when "everyone" gets engaged. According to the Chillisauce Marriage Proposal Survey, the most popular day to pop the question is Christmas Eve. Here's the bar graph with their findings:

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AT: 12/29/2015 10:53:15 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 28, 2015

The Usefulness of RSS Feeds in a Post Google Reader World

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The Usefulness of RSS Feeds in a Post Google Reader World daily-golden-nugget-1416-16
I enjoy all the feedback and questions I receive from my readers. Last week, I received a question about RSS feeds which I'll address today. This is a higher level topic that I last mentioned in my Nugget from December 16, 2010, but have never explained in full detail. The detail I'll cover today might be of some interest to those of you who blog on a regular basis, and...
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AT: 12/28/2015 01:00:45 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 25, 2015

Christmas Specific SERP Review

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Christmas Specific SERP Review daily-golden-nugget-1415-5
This is a special Christmas edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Each and every Friday, I write some type of website critique or review as an educational case study. For Christmas today, I'm changing it up and reviewing a Christmas-related search engine results page.

As I started my search today by typing out "christmas jewelry ideas," Google offered me the suggestions you see here:

Christmas Specific SERP Review 1415-ch...<br />
							<span class=VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 12/25/2015 08:58:47 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 24, 2015

'Twas The Jeweler's Night Before Christmas #TBT

by
(We had something else planned for today, but then realized that it is #ThrowbackThursday, so why not just repost last year's poem instead? Enjoy...)

'Twas the night before Christmas, and time to close doors
after a long four weeks, the time still soars.
Did you break record sales with engagement rings sold?
Hope she says yes tomorrow; the future's untold!

While it's usually children dreaming the morning's delight;
the guys that you helped are filled with horrible fright.
You're the town's best jeweler; the men come to you;
your jewelry's the best at getting an "I do."

The times, they have changed, and there's much online chatter,
you've got to keep up, or else you won't matter.
You made mistakes then, when your website used Flash,
but you took steps; improvement when sales came to a crash....
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AT: 12/24/2015 01:50:52 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 23, 2015

The IoT Breaks When You Least Expect It

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The IoT Breaks When You Least Expect It daily-golden-nugget-1413-84
It's hard to keep up with the many subtle technology changes that happen on the internet every day. Just when you think you understand how things work, they change. It's not just how the internet works, but also how all those devices connect to and use the data available on the internet, which is referred to as the Internet of Things.

Facebook and Google are infamous for making subtle dail...
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AT: 12/23/2015 12:06:30 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 22, 2015

How To Calculate the Google AdWords Cost Per Visitor on a Non Ecommerce Site

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How To Calculate the Google AdWords Cost Per Visitor on a Non Ecommerce Site daily-golden-nugget-1412-73
I've previously estimated and explained that the customer cost of acquisition for a retail jeweler is somewhere around $75. You can calculate this number by summing up your advertising expense for a campaign and dividing that by the number of new customers you've acquired during that period.

Since measuring the s...
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AT: 12/22/2015 10:44:24 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 21, 2015

Using Google Image Search and Shared Images to Increase Web Traffic

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Using Google Image Search and Shared Images to Increase Web Traffic daily-golden-nugget-1411-14
We're all visual people. Smartphones and social media give us the freedom to snap and share photos all day long. Google has gotten much better as locating socially shared images and surfacing them in their image search.

When analyzing websites, I often find that there's more organic traffic arriving from Google image search than from web search. You can see this in your own Google Search Console data by looking at the Search Analytics report an...
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AT: 12/21/2015 12:50:59 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 18, 2015

Highlands Jewelers #FridayFlopFix

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Highlands Jewelers FridayFlopFix daily-golden-nugget-1410-22
This is my weekly #FridayFlopFix website review where my goal is to find a website that has a few problems and suggest potential fixes. I start this review with a jewelry store search in a random town and then I quickly look through the search results for websites with problems I can talk about in a terse evaluation like this.

I started my hunt for a candidate website this week with a search for "jewelry highland in." Google showed me these results:

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AT: 12/18/2015 01:10:53 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 17, 2015

Let's Frame These iFrames Correctly - #TBT

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Lets Frame These iFrames Correctly - TBT daily-golden-nugget-1409-26
For this week's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to April 2012 to the topic of jewelry designer line microsites. Specifically, I need to update my information about <iframes> and how their usage has changed over the 3.5 years since I wrote that original Nugget.

What is an <iframes>?


Iframes are standard HTML tags which allow you to take a website and make them appear within one ...
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AT: 12/17/2015 09:02:33 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Introduction and Implementation of rel=canonical

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Introduction and Implementation of rel=canonical daily-golden-nugget-1408-17
In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget, I introduced 4 SEO issues that harm product catalogs that are usually correctable with a little bit of work. There's another, more technical SEO issue that often runs wild on many product catalog and e-commerce sites that must now be addressed.

Introduction to Duplicate Product Pages


Flexible product catalogs allow you to search...
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AT: 12/16/2015 01:32:35 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 15, 2015

4 Common SEO Problems Found in Product Catalogs

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4 Common SEO Problems Found in Product Catalogs daily-golden-nugget-1407-22
Although all evidence says that e-commerce and online product catalogs are the future of retail business on the web, many jewelers have been slow to deploy those types of websites. In preparation for this current holiday season, I was working on the search engine optimization (SEO) settings for several sites that either launched e-commerce sites or large product catalogs. I'll explain a few of those settings in this Daily Golden Nugget.

Many of the good content management systems and ...
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AT: 12/15/2015 12:49:47 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 14, 2015

Comparison of Organic New Users Between November 2014 and 2015

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Comparison of Organic New Users Between November 2014 and 2015 daily-golden-nugget-1406-58
I recently did a comparison of the total user sessions between November 2014 and 2015 including a breakdown of usage on mobile, desktops, and tablets.

I'm continuing my analysis of the same data as measured across retail jeweler websites; this time I'm comparing the increase or decrease of new users between November 2014 and 2015.<...
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AT: 12/14/2015 02:53:24 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 11, 2015

C F Reuchlein Jewelers Flop Fix

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C F Reuchlein Jewelers Flop Fix daily-golden-nugget-1405-45
Welcome to the #FridayFlopFix website review. During this holiday season, I'm shopping for a few websites that have problems: websites whose features could easily turn them into a flop and hurt their business.

I started my search with the query "jewelry gifts in huntington wv" and was given these results from Google:

C F Reuchlein Jewelers Flop Fix 1405-jewelry-gifts-in-huntington-wv-26VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 12/11/2015 10:04:02 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 10, 2015

Google+ and Google Reviews Are Dead #TBT

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Google+ and Google Reviews Are Dead TBT daily-golden-nugget-1404-94
This is a pretty sad edition of #ThrowbackThursday. In fact, it's not even much of a throwback since I'm only jumping back 3 months to September 2015 to my explanation of how to share Google reviews to your website.

Testimonials and online business reviews are an important part of a customer's pre-screening process of you. While every online directory has a review system, arguably Yelp a...
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AT: 12/10/2015 10:27:08 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 09, 2015

Customers Do Use Mobile Devices For Product Information While Shopping In Your Store

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Customers Do Use Mobile Devices For Product Information While Shopping In Your Store daily-golden-nugget-1403-83
Since 2010, the predicted website and internet usage trends right before the holiday season have suggested that more people will use their smartphones to pre-shop retail stores and to look up product information while in a store. What better way to save time during the busy holiday shopping season than to look for online product information and find stores that carry the items?

While out shopping with my mother o...
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AT: 12/09/2015 12:24:03 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 08, 2015

Introduction to Open Graph Markup and Why It's Important For Social Sharing

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Introduction to Open Graph Markup and Why Its Important For Social Sharing daily-golden-nugget-1402-63
I've dissected a lot of websites that were not performing well, or produced completely unexpected results. One problem that seems to be appearing more and more is the inconsistent way that social networks are reading a web page and pulling information that you want to share. You see, you try sharing a link on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and they will quickly spider the URL you are sharing and make suggestions for the images,...
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AT: 12/08/2015 12:08:23 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 07, 2015

What To Do With Landing Pages Once A Marketing Campaign Is Over

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What To Do With Landing Pages Once A Marketing Campaign Is Over daily-golden-nugget-1401-37
Do you have a specific question about your website or want more details about something I've previously written about? Don't be afraid to write in and ask; you might just see your question in an upcoming Daily Golden Nugget.

Last week, I received a follow up question regarding the Nugget about 302 redirecting your home page for special even...
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AT: 12/07/2015 10:03:55 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 04, 2015

Changes to Google Maps Results and Google+ Business Listings

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Changes to Google Maps Results and Google+ Business Listings daily-golden-nugget-1400-10
Welcome to the 1,400th Daily Golden Nugget. In honor of reaching another "00" status, I'm returning back to the root topic of where these Nuggets began, which is an update on what's happening with Google Maps. It's become our own personal drinking game, so let's explore it again with a beverage of your choice.

During the last 5 months, Google has changed a tremendous amount with regard to how Search, Maps, and Google+ work together. It started with a large c...
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AT: 12/04/2015 02:03:18 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 03, 2015

Decorating Your Website For the Holidays #TBT

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Decorating Your Website For the Holidays TBT daily-golden-nugget-1399-7
In this edition of #ThrowbackTursday, I'm jumping back to October 2011 to the topic of website holiday themes.

In that Nugget, I explained how you could add a few small, cheerful holiday design changes to your website as well as some quick links to help holiday shoppers.

Most retail websites maintain the same design throughout the entire year even though those same businesses will dec...
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AT: 12/03/2015 10:01:06 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 02, 2015

Joe Kassab Website Flop Fix Review

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Joe Kassab Website Flop Fix Review daily-golden-nugget-1398y-29
Every week, normally on Friday, I write a website review with suggestions on how to make a random site better. I have something special planned for this Friday so I have to move my Flop-Fix review to today.

My purpose here is to find a website that has something wrong, point it out, and give suggestions on how to fix it. My suggestions are entirely my own and based on my past experience, research, or observations. I found my review candidate this week with the query "jewelry stores Happy Valley, OR" and th...
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AT: 12/02/2015 09:10:22 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 01, 2015

Organic Traffic Results For Thanksgiving and Black Friday Weekend 2015

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Organic Traffic Results For Thanksgiving and Black Friday Weekend 2015 daily-golden-nugget-1397-78
Reports from the first weekend of the big holiday season in the U.S. are in, and they are quite mixed.

Businesses both large and small tried to get a jump on the Black Friday specials this year by advertising "Black Friday" discounts throughout the four weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. Early in November, a blog post on C|Net speculated that VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 12/01/2015 02:14:40 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 30, 2015

Comparison of Total User Sessions Between November 2014 and 2015

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Comparison of Total User Sessions Between November 2014 and 2015 daily-golden-nugget-1396-43
Internet technology and search engine optimization changes continue to affect small businesses and the marketing methods they use. Google forced everyone to think seriously about their mobile website in April 2015 with #mobilegeddon, creating a surge in businesses that finally took mobile websites seriously.

I'm closing out this month with a comparison of websit...
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AT: 11/30/2015 01:35:48 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 27, 2015

Kuhn's Jewelers Website Flop Fix

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Kuhns Jewelers Website Flop Fix daily-golden-nugget-1395-3
Welcome to the #FridayFlopFix edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, and it's also Black Friday in the U.S., the largest retail shopping day of the year for U.S. retailers.

The goal of these weekly flop fixes is to identify something on a retail jeweler's website that should be fixed. My suggestions are based on my previous experience and research. In honor of the upcoming Cyber Monday, I decided to specifically look for a retail jeweler with an e-commerce website to find some flops that need fixing. I made my search f...
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AT: 11/27/2015 12:20:42 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 26, 2015

302 Redirecting Your Home Page to Landing Pages #TBT

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302 Redirecting Your Home Page to Landing Pages TBT daily-golden-nugget-1394-28
Today is Thanksgiving Day in the U.S., the only national holiday that transcends all races and religions. The holiday is typically celebrated by gathering together with friends and family and enjoying an elaborate meal. The next few weeks will see huge spikes in retail store sales, and today is probably the last day off most retail store owners in the U.S. will have until Christmas Day.

I'm mentioning this because a recent review of my own Google Analytics revealed that 47% of...
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AT: 11/26/2015 10:07:05 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Customer Selfies and Testimonials that Follow FTC Guidelines

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Customer Selfies and Testimonials that Follow FTC Guidelines daily-golden-nugget-1393-39
Today is the eve of the official start of the "holiday season" in the U.S. Retail businesses have been preparing their inventory, ads, and employees for the last few months in hopes to really boost sales this year.

In a perfect world, most holiday season ads are already finalized and scheduled, but there's always the opportunity for retailers to gain a little extra publicity every day through different types of engagements with their customers.

Typ...
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AT: 11/25/2015 12:09:07 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Stay off the FTC's Radar When Offering Paid Endorsements

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Stay of the FTCs Radar When Offering Paid Endorsements daily-golden-nugget-1392-49
The SocialPro Conference was held on November 18-19th in Las Vegas. It began with a keynote Q&A presentation between Mary Engle, the FTC’s Associate Director for Advertising Practices, and Danny Sullivan, founding editor of MarketingLand.

As I read through the transcripts of the entire Q&A here, I was reminded of t...
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AT: 11/24/2015 12:57:59 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 23, 2015

Does Your Website Properly Portray Your Business With the Use of Pronouns?

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Does Your Website Properly Portray Your Business With the Use of Pronouns?  daily-golden-nugget-1391-60
Need some advice to help you solve a business or website issue that keeps you up at night? Send it in through the jWAG Contact Form or to me directly through any social network; just search for my name "matthewperosi" on any social network and send a message.

Today I'll weigh my opinion in on this question
Dear Matt,

I am a one-person shop for the most part, al...
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AT: 11/23/2015 11:33:17 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 20, 2015

Jewelsmith Inc Website Flop Fix

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Jewelsmith Inc Website Flop Fix daily-golden-nugget-1390-11
Welcome to the #FridayFlopFix edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, where I intentionally look for a jewelry website that has problems, and I make suggestions to correct them. This week I'm searching for "jewelers in Durham, NC" for my flop fix candidate. These are the Google results I had to choose from:

Jewelsmith Inc Website Flop Fix 1390-serp-jewelers-in-durham-nc-74VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 11/20/2015 12:17:32 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 19, 2015

Your Estimations Are Wrong: Website Redesigns Take Longer Than You Think

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Your Estimations Are Wrong: Website Redesigns Take Longer Than You Think daily-golden-nugget-1389-50
Welcome to #ThrowbackThursday! Today I'm jumping back to a conversation about the troubles encountered when redesigning a website that I first covered in September 2011.

The process of redesigning a website can be broken into several different stages, including, but not limited to:
  1. Revaluation of website goals...
    VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 11/19/2015 12:32:38 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Let Your Website Evolve Into What It Should Be

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Let Your Website Evolve Into What It Should Be daily-golden-nugget-1388-91
Every business experiences some type of growing pains; these usually have something to do with lack of time, hiring the right employees, and supply and demand of products, but there's also a website growing pain that's very real.

Eventually you will grow beyond the needs of your current website. The next time you rebuild your website it should take a lot more thought and plann...
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AT: 11/18/2015 12:53:18 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Building Your First Website; Then Growing Beyond It

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Building Your First Website; Then Growing Beyond It daily-golden-nugget-1387-39
There are a lot of easy ways for business owners to build their first website. WordPress is a good option for businesses that just want to put information online, and Shopify is a good option for those hoping to sell online quickly. Both of these systems offer out-of-the-box jewelry website templates and setups to get your website live in just a few days. GoDaddy also runs a marketing campaign...
VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 11/17/2015 01:03:45 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 16, 2015

When Should You Hyperlink To A New Browser Window?

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When Should You Hyperlink To A New Browser Window? daily-golden-nugget-1386-61
Have a burning question you need answered about your website? Send it in through the jWAG Contact Form or to me directly through any social network; just search for my name "matthewperosi" on any social network and send a message.

Today I'll weigh my opinion in on this question
Hi Matt,

When setting up my new website, my programmer had all of my internal page links open into a new window... is this normal prac...
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AT: 11/16/2015 12:06:42 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 13, 2015

Harbour Pointe Jewelers Website Flop Fix

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Harbour Pointe Jewelers Website Flop Fix daily-golden-nugget-1385-55
This is the #FridayFlopFix of the Daily Golden Nugget. I'm on the hunt for a retail jewelry store with a bad website, or at least with something that's broken so I can suggest a way to fix their flop.

My search this week led me to Mukilteo, WA, specifically the Google search for "jewelers in Mukilteo, WA" and these results:

Harbour Pointe Jewelers Website Flop Fix 1385-jewelers-in-mukilteo-serp-80 VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 11/13/2015 08:47:24 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 12, 2015

Don't Buy Your Fans #TBT

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Dont Buy Your Fans TBT daily-golden-nugget-1384-61
For today's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping to the topic of buying your friends, or more specifically, not buying them.

Buying Website Links


There are plenty of online services offering to increase the traffic to your website, increase the number of links pointing to you website, increasing the number of Twitter followers you have, and increasing the number of people who like your Facebook page. More often than not, these services ...
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AT: 11/12/2015 07:35:43 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Using Your Local Product Inventory To Attract Local Customers

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Using Your Local Product Inventory To Attract Local Customers daily-golden-nugget-1383-66
Did you know that 61% of smartphone users are more likely to buy from mobile sites and apps that offer some type of customized information for their location? That statistic came from the Consumers in the Micro-Moment study conducted in August 2015 by Google and Ipsos. The full details of that study are here.

Of course, you might no...
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AT: 11/11/2015 08:32:57 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 10, 2015

PCI DSS Compliance: Protect Your Merchant Account

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PCI DSS Compliance: Protect Your Merchant Account daily-golden-nugget-1382-87
A lot of small details need to be reviewed before launching an e-commerce website, one of which is the need to be PCI DSS compliant.

Eventually, you'll need to tell your merchant company or your bank that you are opening an e-commerce website, and when you do, they'll want to know about your PCI DSS compliance.

PCI DSS Basics


PCI DSS is the acronym for Payment Card Indu...
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AT: 11/10/2015 01:54:08 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 09, 2015

Sharing and Re-Sharing: What Types of Posts Have The Best Organic Reach On Facebook?

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Sharing and Re-Sharing: What Types of Posts Have The Best Organic Reach On Facebook? daily-golden-nugget-1381-20
Do you have a specific question about your website or business that you'd like to see answered in a future Daily Golden Nugget? Please send it in through the contact form on the jWAG website http://www.jwag.biz/contact-us.html.

Here's an interesting question I received recently:
"For the best bang for my buck, so to speak, is it better to re-share an...
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AT: 11/09/2015 07:30:47 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 06, 2015

Baxter's Fine Jewelry Website Review

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Baxters Fine Jewelry Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1380-16
Hello and welcome to the Friday Flop Fix, or #FridayFlopFix. Every Friday I randomly choose and review a retail jeweler's website. Normally I just choose the first jeweler that appears in the SERP listing for whatever town I look at; sometimes I find good sites, and sometimes I find bad sites. I'm going to change it up and intentionally look for sites that have problems, the website flops as it were, and offer ideas to fix them.

My search this week to me to Warwick, RI, specifically the Google search for "j...
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AT: 11/06/2015 01:04:59 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 05, 2015

Landing Pages Help Prevent Distractions and Create Focus #TBT

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Landing Pages Help Prevent Distractions and Create Focus TBT daily-golden-nugget-1379-99
For this week's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to my August 2011 topic of Landing Pages that I explained here and here.

Website redesign and ad specific landing pages are more important than ever. I use video and heatmap tracking on several of my customer websites to...
VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 11/05/2015 10:17:05 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 04, 2015

What is Google RankBrain and How Does it Affect Search?

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What is Google RankBrain and How Does it Affect Search? daily-golden-nugget-1378-73
Google has been working on artificial intelligence (AI) for several years. When I first reported Google attempts at AI back in February 2012, it was still a far flung dream. Since then Google has achieved an early stage machine learning artificial intelligence that has improved search results, and created higher than expected profits for the company this year.

N...
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AT: 11/04/2015 12:09:13 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 03, 2015

When Was The Last Time You Read Your Own Website?

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 daily-golden-nugget-1377-83
When was the last time you read your own website? Even though that seems like a simple, even a silly question, can you remember when you last read through your entire website?

If you're like most business owners, you probably haven't read through your website since the last redesign, or worse, since you first launched it several redesigns ago.

No doubt that your business has changed since your website was last launched. Here are some simple examples of things that might have changed in your store that you neglected to change online.

Store Hours
It's sur...
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AT: 11/03/2015 12:21:51 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 02, 2015

Jewelry E-Commerce Sites Can't Succeed Without Crystal Clear Photography

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Jewelry E-Commerce Sites Cant Succeed Without Crystal Clear Photography daily-golden-nugget-1376-99
A few weeks ago, I was privileged to present a photography workshop at MJSA ConFab. Even though I don't necessarily like to be known as "The Jewelry Photography Guy," I seem to be gaining that reputation. After all, this was the 4th time I've enjoyed teaching jewelry photography techniques at an MJSA event.

I'm always being asked the same few questions about photography, which usually includes questions about macro lenses, lighting, and ...
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AT: 11/02/2015 06:57:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 30, 2015

Jewelry & Timepiece Mechanix Website Review

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Jewelry & Timepiece Mechanix Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1375-48
Welcome to the Friday Website Review. In honor of Halloween, I went searching for a spooky or horror related city name in which to find a candidate jeweler to review. Sadly, populated places like Devil's Peek, Hells Corner, and Pumpkinville are nothing more than tourist traps in the middle of nowhere with nothing more than a general store.

I then tried a search for Haddonfield, Illinois, the city portrayed in the Halloween movie series. But as it turns out Haddonfield, Illinois is a fictiti...
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AT: 10/30/2015 09:41:25 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 29, 2015

Most Popular Smartphone Resolutions for September 2015 #TBT

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Most Popular Smartphone Resolutions for September 2015 TBT daily-golden-nugget-1374-56
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to a year ago to the last time I updated my report on the most popular smartphone resolutions used by visitors to retail jewelry websites.

The last time I reviewed smartphone screen resolutions was only a week after the iPhone 6 had been released. For several years, the iPhone has been the most...
VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/29/2015 09:32:29 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 28, 2015

No Thank You - Don't Use Automated Social Media Replies

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No Thank You - Dont Use Automated Social Media Replies daily-golden-nugget-1373-57
Here's a question that came in recently that I'll answer in this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget:
When I get a new follower on social media, should I thank them for the follow, or the Like - and if so, how do I do that without looking desperate, and move them closer to an in-store conversion or visit.
Should I be sending them to my website? It feels like that is sending them away, not towards us.
Thanks!

-- Twisted on Twitter

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AT: 10/28/2015 12:12:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Browser Usage Statistics for the Retail Jewelry Industry, 2014-2015

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Browser Usage Statistics for the Retail Jewelry Industry, 2014-2015  daily-golden-nugget-1372-8
The web browser wars rage on. Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari... Which one do you use?

It's time to check in again on the current state of affairs of website browsers usage. Since I started tracking this data several years ago, I've been surprised with the popularity growth and decline of my personal favorite web browsers. The informed internet user will use the web browser they like the most, downloading it from whatever default brow...
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AT: 10/27/2015 11:57:07 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 26, 2015

2015 Holiday Run-Up Summations

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2015 Holiday Run-Up Summations daily-golden-nugget-1371-26
One month ago today, I introduced the 2015 Holiday Run-Up with the premise that this year you could create several specialized marketing campaigns, or micro-campaigns, focused on singles products or groupings of products. Implementing the micro campaigns would require lots of product photography, correctly targeting your customers, writing lots of product content, sharing that product content to social media, coordinating...
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AT: 10/26/2015 08:40:32 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 23, 2015

Bell Family Jewelers Website Review

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Bell Family Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1370-60
Welcome to this week's edition of the Friday Website review. I'm journeying to Bayside, NY this week in search of my website review candidate. Using Google Chrome, I searched for the phrase "jewelers near bayside ny" and saw these results:

Bell Family Jewelers Website Review 1370-serp-95

Bell Family Jewelers appears first in the...
VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/23/2015 12:35:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 22, 2015

Setting Up Google AdWords Express #TBT: 2015 Holiday Run-Up

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Setting Up Google AdWords Express TBT: 2015 Holiday Run-Up daily-golden-nugget-1369-39
It's #ThrowbackThursday, and it's also the 19th installment of my special 2015 Holiday Run-Up series. Over the last 30 days, I've written out holiday marketing steps for Pinterest, Google+, VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/22/2015 12:25:28 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 21, 2015

How To Measure Offline ROI: 2015 Holiday Run-Up

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How To Measure Offline ROI: 2015 Holiday Run-Up daily-golden-nugget-1368-93
"Save the clock tower! Hey kid, save the clock tower. Lightning struck that thing, 60 years ago!"

Today is Back to the Future Day, the day predicted in the 1989 movie Back to the Future II (BTTFII) where Marty McFly and Doc Emmett Brown race to the future--Wednesday, October 21, 2015--to save the McFly family from a horrible fate.

During that iconic silver screen time jump, the movie VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/21/2015 09:44:35 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Instant Gratification and Long Term Investment in Your Website: 2015 Holiday Run-Up

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Instant Gratification and Long Term Investment in Your Website: 2015 Holiday Run-Up daily-golden-nugget-1367-37
As I write this, I'm indulging in a very large pumpkin muffin. It will quite possibly be my lunch for today even though I know it's just a quick fix of food and not the type that could sustain me for more than a few hours.

Our lives are filled with quick fixes of one type or another. Many advertising tactics feed into the need to satisfy the human nature for a quick fix. In the website and e-commerce realm, we of...
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AT: 10/20/2015 12:35:50 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 19, 2015

Discover Your Own Social Media Timing and Scheduling: 2015 Holiday Run-Up

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Discover Your Own Social Media Timing and Scheduling: 2015 Holiday Run-Up daily-golden-nugget-1366-51
The time needed to manage social media can easily eat up most of your day. Over the last few weeks, I've detailed a lot of social media tactics in this 2015 Holiday Run-Up series. If you've missed out on the discussion so far, then go back to the beginning here and catch up.

As I've detailed steps for VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/19/2015 09:41:14 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 16, 2015

Trends Jewelers Case Study

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Trends Jewelers Case Study daily-golden-nugget-1365-78
It's Friday. Every Friday, I start out by saying "This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget." I'm sure you guys are tired of reading that. Anyone want to suggest a hashtag that alliterates with Friday? Send your suggestions to me on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or just email them to me.

So it is Friday, and it's review day. The goal is learn something from a random website of a random retail jeweler chosen from a random city somewhere in the U.S. This week that random somewhere is Raynham,...
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AT: 10/16/2015 11:55:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 15, 2015

Why To Post To Google+ #TBT: 2015 Holiday Run-Up

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Why To Post To Google+ TBT: 2015 Holiday Run-Up daily-golden-nugget-1364-67
In today's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to January 2014 to my directions on how to post to Google+. This is also a continuation of my special 2015 Holiday Run-Up series giving you the tactics you need to help boost your sales this upcoming season.

I've already given you steps and tactics for VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/15/2015 11:15:17 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Simple Explanation and Twitter Usage Suggestions: 2015 Holiday Run-Up

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Simple Explanation and Twitter Usage Suggestions: 2015 Holiday Run-Up daily-golden-nugget-1363-53
I've covered topics of Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram so far in this Run-Up to the 2015 Holiday season. This is my 14th installment in this special Daily Golden Nugget series to help you boost your 2015 holiday sales.

If you're just joining in for the first time, then you should review the outline of this series I explained here. I'...
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AT: 10/14/2015 12:34:12 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Instagram Videos and Marketing Campaigns: Holiday 2015 Run-up

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Instagram Videos and Marketing Campaigns: Holiday 2015 Run-up daily-golden-nugget-1362-92
This is the continuation of my annual Daily Golden Nugget "Holiday Run-Up" series loaded up with step-by-step explanations of how to make the most of your holiday season advertising. The focus of this Run-Up is how to make the most of your product advertising to attract customers through multiple media methods. This is the 13th installment of the Run-Up, and this series still has a few more days before I finish all the topics that should make a positive impact on ...
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AT: 10/13/2015 12:52:41 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 12, 2015

Pinterest Pinning and Marketing Campaigns: Holiday 2015 Run-up

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Pinterest Pinning and Marketing Campaigns: Holiday 2015 Run-up daily-golden-nugget-1361-33
This is Part 11 of my annual special Daily Golden Nugget "Holiday Run-Up" series packed with tactics to help you during November and December this year. I started this series 3 weeks ago with directions for all the initial steps needed to prepare for the information you'll find in these last few run-up days. The initial marketing strategies overview is here....
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AT: 10/12/2015 10:44:34 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 09, 2015

Keith Chapman Jeweler Website Review

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Keith Chapman Jeweler Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1360-42
This is the weekly website review where I choose a random retail jeweler and compare their website and online identity to what is commonly known about search engine optimization, online marketing, and customer usefulness.

I started this week's review with the Google search "jewelers athens oh" and saw these results:

Keith Chapman Jeweler Website Review 1360-jewelers-athens-oh-serp-85VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/09/2015 11:27:43 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 08, 2015

How-to Boost a Facebook Post #TBT: Holiday 2015 Run-up

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How-to Boost a Facebook Post TBT: : Holiday 2015 Run-up daily-golden-nugget-1359-92

This is probably the Daily Golden Nugget you've been waiting for! Over the last few weeks I've been working through several topics related to marketing for the upcoming holiday season. This is part 10 in that special Holiday Run-Up series, and it's also a #ThrowbackThursday edition.

I'm not throwing back too far in this one, only to August 2014, when I explained how to use Facebook's VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/08/2015 11:57:15 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 07, 2015

Prevent Your Facebook Boosted Posts From Getting Rejected: Holiday 2015 Run-up

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Prevent Your Facebook Boosted Posts From Getting Rejected: Holiday 2015 Run-up daily-golden-nugget-1358-88
This is Part 9 of my annual special Daily Golden Nugget "Holiday Run-Up" series packed with tactics to help you during November and December this year. I started this series with an overview of the marketing strategies that have worked over the last 12 months and have been expanding on each idea every day since.

Today I'...
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AT: 10/07/2015 11:13:20 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 06, 2015

Product Photoshoot Tips When Ultimate Photo Use Is Unknown: Holiday 2015 Run-up

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Product Photoshoot Tips When Ultimate Photo Use Is Unknown: Holiday 2015 Run-up daily-golden-nugget-1357-79
This is Part 8 of my annual special Daily Golden Nugget "Holiday Run-Up" series packed with tactics to help you during November and December this year. I started this series with an overview of the marketing strategies that have worked over the last 12 months and have been expanding on each idea every day since.

Today ...
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AT: 10/06/2015 11:44:42 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 05, 2015

Online Product Information Leads to Purchase Decisions: Holiday 2015 Run-up

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Online Product Information Leads to Purchase Decisions: Holiday 2015 Run-up daily-golden-nugget-1356-6
This is Part 7 of a multi-day Daily Golden Nugget series packed with tactics to help you in your 2015 holiday marketing. The series started with the overview of 2015 holiday marketing strategies and has continued since.

In this edition, I'll explain ways you can plan your product content to correspond to the holiday ads you have ...
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AT: 10/05/2015 11:00:53 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 02, 2015

S.E. Needham Jewelers Website Review

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S.E. Needham Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1355-60
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The purpose of this website review is to look over a random retail jeweler's website to evaluate if they are correctly applying what we know about the internet, online marketing, and business. We'll see if improvements can be made, or if we can learn something from them.

Each week I start by searching Google in a random town for a typical phrase that a consumer would search for. This week the search phrase is "jewelers logan ut," and he...
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AT: 10/02/2015 08:54:06 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 01, 2015

Donating Gift Cards to Local Charity Events #TBT: Holiday 2015 Run-up

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Donating Gift Cards to Local Charity Events TBT: Holiday 2015 Run-up daily-golden-nugget-1354-62
For today's edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I want to jump back to a Nugget from November 2013. In it, I gave ideas on how to use gift certificates as a reputation management tool. That idea, which is still very viable today, is to donate a gift certificate to your local charity in exchange for asking them to write an online review. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/01/2015 11:03:42 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Directions for First Time Users of Facebook Audience Insights: Holiday 2015 Run-up

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Directions for First Time Users of Facebook Audience Insights: Holiday 2015 Run-up daily-golden-nugget-1353-73
This is Part 5 of a multi-day Daily Golden Nugget series packed with tactics to help you in your 2015 holiday marketing. The series started with the overview of 2015 holiday marketing strategies.

In this edition, I'll show you how to use the Facebook Audience Insights tool to build and save a target audience fo...
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AT: 09/30/2015 07:01:37 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Uploading Your Customer List to Facebook Custom Audience: Holiday 2015 Run-up

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Uploading Your Customer List to Facebook Custom Audience: Holiday 2015 Run-up daily-golden-nugget-1352-38
This is Part 4 of a multi-day Daily Golden Nugget series packed with tactics to help you in your 2015 holiday marketing. The series started with the overview of 2015 holiday marketing strategies. Today I'm specifically covering the topic of...

Choosing Your Target Audience


When deciding on the items to promote...
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AT: 09/29/2015 11:28:54 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 28, 2015

Understanding Product Photos for Ads and Social Use: Holiday 2015 Run-up

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Understanding Product Photos for Ads and Social Use: Holiday 2015 Run-up daily-golden-nugget-1351-82
This is Part 3 of a multi-day Daily Golden Nugget series packed with tactics to help you in your 2015 holiday marketing. The series started with the overview of 2015 holiday marketing strategies. Today I'm specifically covering the topic of...

Photography: When More is Not Just More


A professional photographer has a kee...
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AT: 09/28/2015 06:54:49 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 25, 2015

Carlson's Jewelry Smithing Website Review

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Carlsons Jewelry Smithing Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1350-68
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. I'm starting my Google search this week with the phrase "jamestown ny jewelers" to find the review candidate for today. That search yielded these results:

Carlsons Jewelry Smithing Website Review 1350-jamestown-ny-jewelers-serp-37VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 09/25/2015 12:04:02 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 24, 2015

Using Domain Names to Track Offline Ads: Holiday 2015 Run-up #TBT

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Using Domain Names to Track Offline Ads: Holiday 2015 Run-up TBT daily-golden-nugget-1349-46
This is the #ThrowbackThursday edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, but it also has a special tie-in to my ongoing Run-up series of 2015 Holiday Season Marketing Preparedness. The throwback doesn't go back too far, in fact it's a year ago today when I originally wrote about using different domain names to track your offline marketing. I've since...
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AT: 09/24/2015 07:45:42 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Branding Your Holiday Advertising: Holiday 2015 Run-up

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Branding Your Holiday Advertising: Holiday 2015 Run-up daily-golden-nugget-1348-86
This is Part 2 of a multi-day Daily Golden Nugget series packed with tactics to help you in your 2015 holiday marketing. The series started yesterday with the overview of 2015 holiday marketing strategies. I'm breaking down each section of that overview into a more detailed Daily Nugget.

Beginning with...

Create a Uniform Branding With Your Ads


Acc...
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AT: 09/23/2015 11:42:05 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Run-Up Planning for the 2015 Holiday Season

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Run-Up Planning for the 2015 Holiday Season daily-golden-nugget-1347-81
Another summer has come to a close and the holiday season is almost here. No matter what the financial forecasts say, I want to give you some current ideas to improve your marketing methods, and hopefully your sales, through the end of this year.

Create a Uniform Branding With Your Ads


I'd like to start with a suggestion for you to review the ads you are already planning for this season. Instead of running standalone ads this year, you can use all the potential advertising methods...
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AT: 09/22/2015 11:04:07 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 21, 2015

Google Files Lawsuit Against SEO Agency to Protect Small Businesses

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Google Files Lawsuit Against SEO Agency to Protect Small Businesses daily-golden-nugget-1346-5
This is great; Google is finally taking action!

The economy of the United States is built on small business. Those who run a small business know that every decision is a trade off of one thing for another. Taking a short cut today might help to lower expenses, but that same short cut might create bigger problems in the future.

As a business coach I'm always helping entrepreneurs evaluate business tradeoffs and opportunities that might financ...
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AT: 09/21/2015 11:11:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 18, 2015

Vincenete Jewelers Website Review

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Vincenete Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1345-68
In this edition of the weekly website review, I'm venturing to Freeport, NY to look for a jeweler. My search begins in Google with the phrase "jewelers freeport new york." Here's a snapshot of the search results I saw:

Vincenete Jewelers Website Review 1345-jewelers-freeport-new-york-serp-11VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 09/18/2015 11:02:46 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 17, 2015

Why and How to Offer A Site Map To Your Users #TBT

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Why and How to Offer A Site Map To Your Users TBT daily-golden-nugget-1344-57
In this edition of ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to May 2011, and my discussion of HTML Site Maps.

There are two types of site map files you might find on a website. If you've ever worked on your search engine optimization, you might be familiar with the sitemap.xml file that search engines read to better understand your website. That XML file contained a record of every page on your site ...
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AT: 09/17/2015 11:51:33 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Home Depot Data Breach Much Earlier Than Expected?

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Home Depot Data Breach Much Earlier Than Expected? daily-golden-nugget-1343-26
This is the story of a stolen credit card number, money laundering, and how EMV chip technology could have prevented it.

Quick EMV Recap


Two short weeks from today, on October 1, 2015, the payment card industry in the U.S. will change who is responsible for fraud liability. There's a big potential for you to lose money if you are not compliant. You can read my previous in-depth Nuggets about VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 09/16/2015 06:51:44 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Shifting Away From Traditional Media to Smarter Digital Ad Spending

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Shifting Away From Traditional Media to Smarter Digital Ad Spending daily-golden-nugget-1342-58
The holiday season is quickly approaching and you need to consider how you will be spending your advertising dollars. Will you hold an event promoted with post cards and phone calls? Will you have a Black Friday sale promoted in the local newspaper? What medium will you use for your weekly ads for the holiday season?

There are a lot more choices now than just newspapers, post cards, billboards, TV, and radio. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 09/15/2015 09:43:22 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 14, 2015

3 Mobile Website Considerations for 2015 and Beyond

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3 Mobile Website Considerations for 2015 and Beyond daily-golden-nugget-1341-56
Last week I explained what I've been seeing with regard to mobile trends and your business future. Because of those trends, I strongly urge all businesses to start migrating their approach of reaching customers using the internet from a desktop computer point of view to a smartphone point of view. Doing so will be a complete shift in how you think, and what you...
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AT: 09/14/2015 06:27:31 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 11, 2015

Thomas Michaels Designers Website Review

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Thomas Michaels Designers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1340-40
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal of these weekly reviews is to evaluate a random retail jeweler's website against website design methods, SEO strategies, usability, and technology trends. I use Google Chrome in incognito mode to find every review candidate with a basic local search phrase. I also try to capture my first impressions in these reviews and write them during my initial pass through the website.

The local search phrase I'm using this week is...
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AT: 09/11/2015 06:30:40 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 10, 2015

Using Google Trends To Evaluate A New Designer Line #TBT

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Using Google Trends To Evaluate A New Designer Line TBT daily-golden-nugget-1339-26
For Throwback Thursday today, I'm jumping back to the topic of having designer brands on your website.

When it comes time to consider a new jewelry designer for your store, you have an extra tool at your fingertips to help decide if you should buy into the line or not. However you evaluate a new line, you can also use Google Trends to help you decide.
<...
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AT: 09/10/2015 11:12:32 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 09, 2015

Business Considerations In Light Of Mobile Device Usage Trends

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Business Considerations In Light Of Mobile Device Usage Trends daily-golden-nugget-1338-86While there's a lot of chatter about TV cord-cutting, I'm starting to see the another type of cable being cut: the ethernet cable.

Although the majority of my reporting is based on measured data, I also feel it's important to report on the unscientifically tracked trends that I observe in my daily life, trends I notice when interacting with my own customers, and how I obser...
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AT: 09/09/2015 07:47:29 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 08, 2015

How to Edit Page Titles and Meta Descriptions in Weebly

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How to Edit Page Titles and Meta Descriptions in Weebly daily-golden-nugget-1337-98
Last month, while presenting my e-commerce seminar at the RJO conference, I was asked my opinion of the do it yourself website Weebly, and if it was good for search engine optimization (SEO). Weebly is a simple website system that you can learn really fast and build a simple website in an evening. It's a solution for those on a very tight budget, but it's easy to quickly grow out of it when it comes time for a higher level of tracking needed to help grow your business.
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AT: 09/08/2015 11:31:32 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 07, 2015

Comparing Google AdWords Keyword Targeting to Facebook Audience Targeting

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Comparing Google AdWords Keyword Targeting to Facebook Audience Targeting daily-golden-nugget-1336-28
Today's Daily Golden Nugget comes from a question I received last week to explain the difference between ad targeting on Facebook and Google AdWords. In simple terms, the AdWords targeting can use a really sophisticated way to target what people are searching for. On the other hand, Facebook uses a really sophisticated way to target the demographics of the people themselves.

Let me dive a little deeper...

Google AdWords Ke...
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AT: 09/07/2015 06:51:10 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 04, 2015

Kuehn Sisters Diamonds Website Review

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Kuehn Sisters Diamonds Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1335-78
In this week's Friday website review, I'm heading to Morgantown, WV to find a candidate jewelry store to review.

When I started my search with the phrase "morgantown wv jewelry stores," I saw these Google results:

Kuehn Sisters Diamonds Website Review 1335-morgantown-wv-jewelry-stores-serp-82 VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 09/04/2015 11:03:57 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 03, 2015

Google Website Optimizer is Now Google Experiments #TBT

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Google Website Optimizer is Now Google Experiments TBT daily-golden-nugget-1334-68
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I need to jump back to my discussion about Google Website Optimizer in September 2011. In 2012, Google closed down their Website Optimizer standalone product and merged its features into Google Analytics. They now call it Experiments instead of Website Optimizer.

The old Optimizer was designed to handle A/B testing, which is when ...
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AT: 09/03/2015 06:39:03 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 02, 2015

How To Share Google Business Reviews To Your Website

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How To Share Google Business Reviews To Your Website daily-golden-nugget-1333-99
PLEASE NOTE: The new version of Google+ launched on November 17, 2015 no longer supports the ability to share reviews. This Daily Golden Nugget is defunct, but saved here for archival purposes.

The other day, I explained how Google+ has been completely disconnected from Google's local search results. When Google built Google+, they wanted...
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AT: 09/02/2015 09:36:31 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 01, 2015

Review Your Marketing Results From Last Year Before Planning This Year

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Review Your Marketing Results From Last Year Before Planning This Year daily-golden-nugget-1332-94
September has a strange place on my yearly calendar. I view it as a month that tries to maintain a death grip on the hot days of summer while also revealing the temperatures and colors of the fall. I remember how it was to dread the beginning of the school year, and now, even though I'm not a parent myself, I can appreciate how parents feel now to have their children occupied all day again.

As a consultant serving the jewelry industry, I n...
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AT: 09/01/2015 09:17:58 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 31, 2015

Implications of Google Local 3-Pack replacing the Google+ Local 7-Pack

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Implications of Google Local 3-Pack replacing the Google+ Local 7-Pack daily-golden-nugget-1331-59
Back on July 10, 2015, I reported seeing a very different looking version of the Google Local search results in my Friday website review here. I was a little disturbed by the appearance of that mobile design and I'm now saddened to report that...
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AT: 08/31/2015 09:31:29 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 28, 2015

Kevin Main Jewelry Website Review

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Kevin Main Jewelry Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1330-38
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Each week, I dig down into a random retail jewelry store website to discover the good and bad of what they've done with their online identity. The goal is to learn something that you can also apply to your own online identity.

This week I've decided to search San Luis Obispo, CA for my candidate jeweler. I'm starting my search with the phrase "wedding rings San Luis Obispo, CA." This is the Google SERP that was returned:

VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 08/28/2015 12:54:39 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 27, 2015

Getting New Websites Indexed in Google #TBT

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Getting New Websites Indexed in Google TBT daily-golden-nugget-1329-40
It's time for this week's Throwback Thursday Daily Golden Nugget. I'm jumping back to March 2011 to my discussion of Older, Wiser, Faster Indexed Websites to specifically revisit the difference between new websites and old websites, and how Google indexes them.

New Websites


People don't race to shop at your store as soon as you build a new website. Before that can happen, Google needs t...
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AT: 08/27/2015 11:05:10 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Time Management For The Retail Jeweler: Part 3

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Time Management For The Retail Jeweler: Part 3 daily-golden-nugget-1328-72
This is final part of my 3-part series on Time Management. I realize it's a bit ironic that I've written Daily Golden Nuggets on Time Management and it's taking forever to read through them.

In the first two installments, I explained my methods of how I prioritize time, how I figured out the best time of day for me to work, how I deal with time consuming tasks, the time suck of social media, and how delegating tasks saves me time.

This 3-part series builds upon itself, so please g...
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AT: 08/26/2015 07:16:50 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Time Management For The Retail Jeweler: Part 2

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Time Management For The Retail Jeweler: Part 2 daily-golden-nugget-1327-64
This is part 2 of a 3-part series on Time Management. I have to thank Rod Worley with Four Grainer: Inside the Jewelry Trade Radio Show for motivating me to write this series. While I was on his podcast show, he asked me the following question: "Where are they supposed to find the time?"

Instead of writing simple direction to explain how to get things done, I decided to dive deep...
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AT: 08/25/2015 07:17:08 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 24, 2015

Time Management For The Retail Jeweler: Part 1

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Time Management For The Retail Jeweler: Part 1 daily-golden-nugget-1326-45
In July 2015, I was a guest on the Four Grainer: Inside the Jewelry Trade Radio Show, with host Rod Worley. You can listen to the recording of that episode here.

Rod puts together a good radio show loaded with several questions that always intere...
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AT: 08/24/2015 06:57:15 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 21, 2015

Horrible Retail Jeweler Websites Near Grand Fork

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Horrible Retail Jeweler Websites Near Grand Fork daily-golden-nugget-1325-78
This is the Friday website review where I do a Google search for an independent retail jeweler in a random town, then review their website.

This week, I'm starting my search with the phrase "jewelry stores in grand fork nd." Every week that I do this, I try to give you my first impressions of every website as I work through it. Just looking at the results given below, I have a feeling this week's review is going to be quite... nasty. Hold on to your seats gang and let's jump in...<...
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AT: 08/21/2015 07:36:40 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 20, 2015

Conversion Rate Optimization - #TBT

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Conversion Rate Optimization - TBT daily-golden-nugget-1324-45
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back 4 years to August 9, 2011 to my topic of conversion rate optimization.

What's A Conversion?


A "conversion" refers to some type of customer interaction that results in the capture of the customer's identity, usually their email address. E-commerce sites also measure conversions according to the number of online sales they have.
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AT: 08/20/2015 09:15:05 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Plan Your Facebook Posts to Help Build Your Business

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Plan Your Facebook Posts to Help Build Your Business daily-golden-nugget-1323-19
I recently had someone tell me that they felt it was better to post anything to their business Facebook account than nothing at all. This particular jeweler didn't have anyone in the store willing to manage their Facebook account, yet they felt it was important to be active.

Their solution was to hire a social media management company that didn't know anything about jewelry, and was posting non sequitur information to their account. Although their fan base was slowly increas...
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AT: 08/19/2015 07:42:59 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Don't Lose The Ability To Learn From Success and Failure

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Dont Lose The Ability To Learn From Success and Failure daily-golden-nugget-1322-2
'Tis currently the season for jewelry stores to upgrade their websites in preparation for the upcoming holiday season.

Website upgrades are good, as long as you are upgrading to something better. Everything online can be tracked and learned from. Before upgrading your website you should be reviewing all your previous collected data to see how you can improve.

The defacto standard in website tracking is Google Analytics, a massive tracking and analysis system that m...
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AT: 08/18/2015 10:51:10 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 17, 2015

When Moderating Blog Comments Leads to Malware Attacks

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When Moderating Blog Comments Leads to Malware Attacks daily-golden-nugget-1321-20
Those of us who try to make an honest living using the internet are often overshadowed by those who use the internet as a tool for destruction.

Cyber security is a real threat, and it comes in various shapes, sizes, and disguises. Even though we might spend lots of money maintaining our anti-virus and firewall software, there are still Trojan types of attacks that can catch you completely off guard.

I was able to identify and document a Trojan cyber attack last wee...
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AT: 08/17/2015 07:57:55 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 14, 2015

Jensen Jewelers Website Review

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Jensen Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1320-97
This is the weekly random website review where I search for a website candidate in a town near you and review how well their website is put together.

I never know what I'm going to find. Sometimes I find great sites and sometimes I find sites with a lot of problems. I do my best to write down my first impressions of the sites in an attempt to illustrate how a consumer might be reacting.

No matter what, there's always something to learn from.

To kick off the review, I'm searching for "engagement rings ho...
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AT: 08/14/2015 11:42:14 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 13, 2015

Your Reviews From Other Sites Are Hidden - #TBT

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Your Reviews From Other Sites Are Hidden - TBT daily-golden-nugget-1319-30
In this edition of Throwback Thursday, I have to report some news which saddens me. It relates to how your business websites reviews appear; or rather; no longer appear in Google search results.

In October 2014, I wrote this Nugget explaining how to use Google My Business to find and reply to online reviews that are not part of the Google system. In other words, customer reviews that are ...
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AT: 08/13/2015 06:34:28 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Site Speed Suggestions: Practical SEO Guide

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Site Speed Suggestions: Practical SEO Guide daily-golden-nugget-1318-32
In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget, I explained a little about your website site speed and how to view the Google Analytics report that shows you how slow your website is.

While you could ask your website programmer to help you figure out how to fix your website, there's another report in Google Analytics that gives you initial ideas of what to do. It's called the Speed Suggestions report and it can be...
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AT: 08/12/2015 06:33:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Site Speed: Practical SEO Guide

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Site Speed: Practical SEO Guide daily-golden-nugget-1317-93
After writing about code and speed optimized websites in my #TBT last week, I wanted to bring your attention to Site Speed optimization tools that are built into Google Analytics.

As a quick recap, the speed of your website will help increase your website ranking a little bit, and when it comes to SEO, every little bit counts.

To get to them, you first log into Google Analytics then click on Be...
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AT: 08/11/2015 09:18:31 AM   0 COMMENTS
Saturday, August 08, 2015

Should You Trust Random SEO Email Solicitations?

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Should You Trust Random SEO Email Solicitations? daily-golden-nugget-1316-12
I was recently asked if I could help evaluate an SEO agency based on their email solicitation. SEO, or search engine optimization, changes so quickly it's difficult to know if an agency will be providing the most up to date services.

Here's the email I was asked to evaluate:







Reminder-SEO starts from just @99 USD per month
Hi,
First of all thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to read and consider this, We are of...
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AT: 08/08/2015 08:35:35 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 07, 2015

Beaudet Jewelry Design Website Review

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Beaudet Jewelry Design Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1315-56
For this week's review, I'm using my iPad to look up a review candidate. Every week, I use the Chrome browser in incognito mode to search for a random jeweler. In case you don't know, the iPad version of Chrome also has an incognito mode.

This week, I'm searching for "jewelry stores Eugene OR." Here's the Google SERP I saw on the iPad:

Beaudet Jewelry Design Website Review 1315-serp-jewelry-stores-Eug...<br />
							<span class=VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 08/07/2015 11:44:07 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 06, 2015

Quick Check For A Code and Speed Optimized Website #TBT

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Quick Check For A Code and Speed Optimized Website TBT daily-golden-nugget-1314-37
Today's Throwback Thursday is going back to January 2011 to the Nugget about website speed.

In that old Nugget, I explained that a website's speed could be adversely affected by the software that runs it, i.e. the content management system, or CMS for short.

This is still very true today, and it's probably the main thing I look at when evaluating a website. A sloppy CMS or website ...
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AT: 08/06/2015 11:41:34 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 05, 2015

These Yelp Reviews Are Worthless

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These Yelp Reviews Are Worthless daily-golden-nugget-1313-4
"There's no stupid question."

That's what I always say when a jeweler wants to ask me a question but starts off saying "I have a stupid question," which happened several times over this past weekend while I was at the RJO show in St. Louis. When it comes to asking me questions though, you have to be aware that I always use the good questions as future Daily Golden Nuggets, like this one.

After my Local Marketing seminar at the RJO show, a jeweler was explaining that they often ask for their customers to write ...
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AT: 08/05/2015 07:04:14 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 04, 2015

Don't Sell Over Social; Just Build Connections

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Dont Sell Over Social; Just Build Connections daily-golden-nugget-1312-49
I'm sitting on a regional jet right now as I write this. I'm heading back to New Jersey after three days with the RJO in St. Louis, Missouri. For me, it was a weekend of discussions about e-commerce, online local marketing, and social networking.

I was very impressed with all the jewelers I spoke to this weekend and I'm starting to think that the need for social media is starting to be understood as a necessity for marketing, even though the results can't be tracked. Many jewelers told me...
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AT: 08/04/2015 08:37:15 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 03, 2015

Blocked Resources: Practical SEO Guide

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Blocked Resources: Practical SEO Guide daily-golden-nugget-1311-8
In today's Practical SEO Guide, I will tell you about website "Blocked Resources," how to view this report in Google Search Console, and how Google alerts you when they find a blocked resource.

First, let me explain that a Blocked Resource is a page, script, or some file that Google cannot read because you are telling them not to read it; yet, that same page, script, or file is used on the public site.

There's a difference between your public site and your backend area that you use to manage your sit...
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AT: 08/03/2015 07:07:48 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 31, 2015

Michael Genovese Jewelers Website Review

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Michael Genovese Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1310-14
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. I'm always on the lookout for a jewelry website we can learn from, both good and bad. In honor of my visit to St. Louis, MO this weekend I'm going to look for one of the retail jewelers in St. Louis to review.

Using Google Chrome in incognito mode, I searched for "jewelry stores st louis mo." This is the SERP that was returned to me:

VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 07/31/2015 12:35:04 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 30, 2015

Depreciated HTML4 Tags #TBT

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Depreciated HTML4 Tags TBT daily-golden-nugget-1309-86
Let's talk about depreciated HTML tags. This is my Throwback Thursday topic from the last time I told you about a few depreciated HTML tags to avoid.

The HTML language is currently in its 5th incarnation, as in HTML5. Prior to Cascading Style Sheets, aka CSS, we had to use formatting features built into the HTML code, like <font> and <big> and <center>. Now we use CSS to format how a web page looks.
<...
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AT: 07/30/2015 12:25:54 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Exit Pages: Practical SEO Guide

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Exit Pages: Practical SEO Guide daily-golden-nugget-1308-14
In today's Daily Golden Nugget, I'll show you how to look at your Google Analytics Exit Page report and explain what it is, and steps you can take to analyze it.

This is part of my Practical SEO Guide series with the goal of giving you quick, actionable information to make the search engine optimization of your website a little better.

Get started by logging into your Google Analytics account and navigate your way over to Behavior -> Site Content -> Exit Pages as shown in this animated screen grab:

VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 07/29/2015 07:43:48 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Landing Pages: Practical SEO Guide

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Landing Pages: Practical SEO Guide daily-golden-nugget-1307-68
This Daily Golden Nugget is part of my Practical SEO Guide series with the goal of giving you quick, actionable information to make the search engine optimization of your website a little better.

Today we're looking at the Landing Page Report in Google Analytics. Log in to your Google Analytics account and navigate your way over to Behavior -> Site Content -> Landing pages as shown in this animated screen grab:

VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 07/28/2015 11:39:58 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 27, 2015

Managing Social Media: Business Strategy Made Easy

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Managing Social Media: Business Strategy Made Easy daily-golden-nugget-1306-37
When you consider the time it takes to be involved with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+ and so many social networks, it's no wonder so many people live their lives carrying their smartphone in their hand all day. So many people have traded everyday verbal conversations for terse text conversations and deluges of selfies.

Those who have chosen a smartphone-tethered life, now find it second nature to use social network as a way to keep their friends and family in...
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AT: 07/27/2015 07:03:31 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 24, 2015

Skeie's Jewelers Website Review

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Skeies Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1305-25
This is the weekly website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Each week, I work through these website reviews to give you real examples to learn from. It doesn't matter if the website is good or bad, there's always something to learn from.

I'm changing it up a little this week. Normally I search for the phrase "jewelry store" and a random town name, but not this week. In honor of this weekend's official kickoff of the Jewelers Equality Alliance<...
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AT: 07/24/2015 06:40:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 23, 2015

Avoid Article Spinning, It's Bad SEO #TBT

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Avoid Article Spinning, Its Bad SEO TBT daily-golden-nugget-1304-58
In this edition of Throwback Thursday, I'm jumping back to September 2011 and the topic of Article Spinning.

To understand what Article Spinning is you must first understand the importance of having a blog on your website. My avid followers will already know that I'm all about the blogging. High value blogging content... High value blog content that you post on your main website!

Times...
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AT: 07/23/2015 07:48:08 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Reporting on Alternate Domain Names: Practical SEO Guide

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Reporting on Alternate Domain Names: Practical SEO Guide daily-golden-nugget-1303-79
Did you know that it's possible to track the effectiveness of your offline marketing, as in, print ads, TV commercials, and even billboards? Yep, it's true, and it's simple too... Just use a different domain name on each ad.

You can then set up each domain name with special UTM variable tracking like I explained yesterday to see how often people respond to ...
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AT: 07/22/2015 08:20:14 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Using Alternative Domain Names: Practical SEO Guide

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Using Alternative Domain Names: Practical SEO Guide daily-golden-nugget-1302-66
In yesterday's Nugget I quickly showed you how to read the Google Analytics Acquisition Channels Report. I quickly mentioned that you can use the "(Other)" channel to see how well your offline and online ads are running, but that type of information doesn't just magically appear; in...
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AT: 07/21/2015 11:45:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 20, 2015

Acquisition Channels: Practical SEO Guide

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Acquisition Channels: Practical SEO Guide daily-golden-nugget-1301-82
In today's Practical SEO Guide, I will show you how to access the Google Analytics Acquisition Channels report and explain how to read it.

The Acquisition Channels report provides a high level view of the different marketing channels that brought people to your website.

Log into Google Analytics and click on Acquisition -> All Traffic -> Channels as you see here:

Acquisitio...<br />
							<span class=VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 07/20/2015 01:02:15 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 17, 2015

Google My Business Smartphone App

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Google My Business Smartphone App daily-golden-nugget-1300-16
Once again, the Daily Golden Nuggets have reached another milestone: 1300!

It was 1,300 weekdays ago that I wrote the first Nugget about Google Maps. In honor of my first topic, I now write about Google Maps and its subsequent incarnations ever since, and save them for these milestones.

The original Maps service has transformed several times through the years and had names like Local, Places, Local Business, and Google+ Local. Ever since Google started using Google+ to tie all its services together, the p...
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AT: 07/17/2015 11:24:51 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 16, 2015

Killed By Duplicate Product Content #TBT

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Killed By Duplicate Product Content TBT daily-golden-nugget-1299-92
In this edition of Throwback Thursday, I'm jumping back about 1,100 days to Nugget No 199 and the topic of duplicate product content.

Conversations about duplicate content range from dealing with multiple domain names to VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 07/16/2015 09:10:22 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 15, 2015

My Jeweler Website Review

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My Jeweler Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1298-70
Once a week, usually on Friday, I write a website review for a randomly chosen retail jewelry store. This week the review is being moved to Wednesday.

For this week's review, I'm searching for "jewelers in Sedona, AZ" using Google Chrome in incognito mode. The results I saw during last week's review were formatted for a smartphone. This week the results are formatted for a desktop browser again. Oddities like that are usual...
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AT: 07/15/2015 07:03:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Audience Engagement: Practical SEO Guide

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Audience Engagement: Practical SEO Guide daily-golden-nugget-1297-76
After all the time and money you spend on your website, wouldn't it be nice to know how much people like it, or how much time they spend on it?

There's a simple report inside Google Analytics, called the Audience Engagement report, that will tell you exactly that.

Log into your Google Analytics account and click on Audience -> Behavior -> Engagement as shown here:

...<br VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 07/14/2015 01:13:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 13, 2015

Domain Name Renewals: Practical SEO Guide

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Domain Name Renewals: Practical SEO Guide daily-golden-nugget-1296-30
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a warning about the latest domain name scams that are sent through the mail. Those types of scams are trying to trick you into spending unnecessary money with them, but they are not stealing your domain name from you.

With so many domain name scams around, it's difficult to recognize when you get a legitimate domain name renewal notice. Those notices are e...
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AT: 07/13/2015 11:54:49 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 10, 2015

Rogers and Co Fine Jewelry Website Review

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Rogers and Co Fine Jewelry Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1295-82
This is the weekly website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Each Friday, I work through these reviews to help you understand the good and bad ways a retail jewelry store website works. I look for good and bad website design, content, photography, usability, and search engine optimization in hopes that we can all learn something new.

Each week, I use Google Chrome in incognito mode to search for review candidates. Incognito mode allows me to hide potentially personalized search results ...
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AT: 07/10/2015 09:34:02 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 09, 2015

Tuning Your Website For Fast Mobile User Experiences #TBT

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Tuning Your Website For Fast Mobile User Experiences TBT daily-golden-nugget-1294-31
For this week's Throwback Thursday, I'm jumping to April 11, 2011 and my topic of speeding up your website images. This is an important topic that never gets old.

The internet has sped up tremendously since the days of dial up 14400 baud modems. Back then, it would take 45 seconds to download a 62K image; today, it takes only 1 second to download through cable and 4G connection spee...
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AT: 07/09/2015 07:43:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 08, 2015

Demographics and Interest Reports: Practical SEO Guide

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Demographics and Interest Reports: Practical SEO Guide daily-golden-nugget-1293-90
Facebook is becoming well known for their ability to provide to the surface, very detailed demographic and the personal interest data about your customers. They've been able to give more details than the data Google has provided for several years. In light of Facebook's advancements, Google has improved their own demographic and interest data and made it available through Google Analytics and AdWords.

Before you can access to the demographic data from Google, you need t...
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AT: 07/08/2015 11:50:32 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 07, 2015

Comparing Current and Past Analytic Data: Practical SEO Guide

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Comparing Current and Past Analytic Data: Practical SEO Guide daily-golden-nugget-1292-48
The data reported by Google Analytics is really helpful for every website owner to look at. By default, the reports provide really insightful data over the last 30 days of activity for users, sessions, pageviews, and bounce rates, but that's only a small piece of what GA can do for you.

The big benefit of GA is being able to produce a report for any time frame in the past and compare it to any other time frame in the past. You can compare the last 30 days t...
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AT: 07/07/2015 08:02:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 06, 2015

Product Page Titles: Practical SEO Guide

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Product Page Titles: Practical SEO Guide daily-golden-nugget-1291-53
As I quickly approach my 1300th Daily Golden Nugget, I find myself pondering my existence. What else could I possibly write about that I haven't already?

Truthfully, a lot, but I'm also realizing that's I've never created a series of simple examples or how-to's for typical search engine optimization tasks. So, starting today, I'm going to work through several days (however many it might take) to show you how to tie together simple SEO procedures.

I'll tie together information from free tool...
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AT: 07/06/2015 12:49:58 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 03, 2015

The Blue Diamond Website Review

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The Blue Diamond Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1290-87
While it's customary for people to take long holiday weekends off from work, your website is never closed. The first impression that your website makes is as important as that first greeting when a customer walks into your store.

This is my Friday Website Review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. I write these reviews to demonstrate live examples of both good and bad retail jewelry websites. I never know where these reviews will end up and I try to be as impartial as possible when writing them.

I also try ...
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AT: 07/03/2015 11:01:17 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 02, 2015

TBT: Structured Markup, Schema.org, and Recent Google Penalties

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TBT: Structured Markup, Schema.org, and Recent Google Penalties daily-golden-nugget-1289-62
A few days ago, Search Engine Land published an interesting article explaining how Google is penalizing websites that abuse the way they use schema.orgmarkup. That post was an interesting read for me and a good lead in for this edition of Throwback Thursday.

I've written about VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 07/02/2015 06:51:37 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 01, 2015

Designer Spotlight: ANZIE

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Designer Spotlight: ANZIE daily-golden-nugget-1288-99
The 2015 Las Vegas jewelry shows came to a close one month ago today. On the morning of June 1, 2015, I was on the search for designers who would be willing to work with retail jewelers the way I explained in this pre-Vegas post here..

A quick recap from that Nugget:
  • Don't rely on your inventory management software to tell you what to buy.
  • Don't trust your own judgment for selec...
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AT: 07/01/2015 06:41:40 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Marriage Equality: How Retail Jewelers Can Embrace It

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Marriage Equality: How Retail Jewelers Can Embrace It daily-golden-nugget-1287-3
Over the last few days, we've all seen our share of rainbows exploding from our computer screens and smartphones. The Supreme Court of The United States (SCOTUS) ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment requires States to allow same-sex marriage in their State and recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.

While the legal fight for legal same-sex marriage rights is now over, the personal conflict and religious views will continue for quite a long time to come. Regardl...
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AT: 06/30/2015 11:53:08 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, June 29, 2015

Protect Yourself From Continued Domain Name Scams

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Protect Yourself From Continued Domain Name Scams daily-golden-nugget-1286-8
The internet is loaded with scam artists.

Every day there are email offers for incredible search engine optimization services guaranteeing first place ranking. I also get plenty of emails asking for my help to transfer money in exchange for a percentage of what gets passed through my bank account.

Scams. All scams!

Domain name scams are also very common, some of them arrive via regular mail and some arrive via email. It's important to recognize them as scams and not pa...
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AT: 06/29/2015 12:23:07 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 26, 2015

Barry Peterson Jewelers Website Review

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Barry Peterson Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1285-86
This is the weekly random retail jewelry store website review. The purpose of these weekly Friday reviews is to find out how to improve your own website by dissecting the techniques of another website.

This week I'm searching for "jewelers in sun valley, Idaho." Here's the SERP for that search query:

Barry Peterson Jewelers Website Review 1285-serp-jewelers-in-sun-valle...<br />
							<span class=VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 06/26/2015 12:10:03 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 25, 2015

#TBT Try Changing Your Name To Avoid Failure

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TBT Try Changing Your Name To Avoid Failure daily-golden-nugget-1284-57
Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople


Names may change, but things stay the same. What's in a name, really?

In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to November 18, 2010 and m discussion of when Google first announced their "Google Places" service.

Well, honestly, there's not much to say about Go...
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AT: 06/25/2015 12:14:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, June 24, 2015

How To Accomplish Real Time Reporting At Live Events

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How To Accomplish Real Time Reporting At Live Events daily-golden-nugget-1283-11
It doesn't matter how many blueprints, multi-part marketing plan ideas, strategies, and VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 06/24/2015 11:25:54 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Secure Certificates and SSL: Growing Importance of HTTPS Secure Websites

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Secure Certificates and SSL: Growing Importance of HTTPS Secure Websites daily-golden-nugget-1282-17
It's been about a year since Google announced that having a secure website would be a ranking signal. A secure website is one that uses "https://" as the URL instead of "http://."

I hate it that most web browsers hide the "http" part of a URL in the address bar, but I recognize that it helps make the internet more understandabl...
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AT: 06/23/2015 12:18:32 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, June 22, 2015

Blogging Is The Balanced Meal That Nourishes Your Website and Plumps Your Business

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Blogging Is The Balanced Meal That Nourishes Your Website and Plumps Your Business daily-golden-nugget-1281-1
I'm not sure if it's just me or general public awareness, but I feel that the subject of blogging has been a hot topic for the last two months. I think it started as a snowball effect because of this post where Robinson Meyer expla...
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AT: 06/22/2015 08:51:40 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 19, 2015

Polly's Fine Jewelry Website Review

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Pollys Fine Jewelry Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1280-90
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Today I'm searching for "jewelers in North Charleston, South Carolina" using the Chrome browsers on my iPhone 6. I have Chrome set in incognito mode to avoid personalized search results.

Here are the full results returned on my phone. As you can see, I've indicated that all the organic results are "mobile-friendly":

Pollys Fine Jewelry Website Review 1280-SERP-5...<br />
							<span class=VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 06/19/2015 09:15:06 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 18, 2015

You Should Always Disclose Financial Compensation In Exchange For Online Endorsements #TBT

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You Should Always Disclose Financial Compensation In Exchange For Online Endorsements TBT  daily-golden-nugget-1279-2
The other day while having a rather long lunch date with my friend and industry colleague, Peggy Jo Donahue, we touched on the topic of disclosure for paid endorsements and how they should be handled online. It is an important topic that I realized I have not written about in too much detail other than to briefly mention it in VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 06/18/2015 09:51:37 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, June 17, 2015

JCK Talks 2015: How the game is changing: Big Data in Retail

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JCK Talks 2015: How the game is changing: Big Data in Retail daily-golden-nugget-1278-47
The term Big Data is one of the internet's latest buzz words that everyone is talking about but no one seems to know what it is, why they should care about it, how to collect it, or how to use it.

Put simply, Big Data is the collection of massive amounts of demographic and tracking information you gather about your customers. Once gathered, you then churn that information into reports that help you better plan future marketing and provide interesting insights ...
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AT: 06/17/2015 11:29:07 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Learning Branding and Social Engagement From IHOP's New Logo and Social Campaign

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Learning Branding and Social Engagement From IHOPs New Logo and Social Campaign daily-golden-nugget-1277-46
It must be summer. That's the only time I ever go to IHOP. In fact, this is the second time this month I've visited this family favorite. I was preoccupied with JCK work during my first visit earlier this month, but this time around I'm able to relax and leisurely enjoy a Saturday morning breakfast.

I always know what to expect when visiting IHOP. The menus always show crystal clear, large photos of mouthwatering stacks...
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AT: 06/16/2015 09:51:50 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, June 15, 2015

JCK Talks 2015: The Power of Blogging

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JCK Talks 2015: The Power of Blogging daily-golden-nugget-1276-4
This Daily Golden Nugget is my 1,276th in a row. When I started this blogging journey nearly 5 years ago, I never expected where it would take me. Truthfully, every blogger begins their writing journey for personal reasons and we never know where we will end up.

Blogging is huge. The word blog has become the general term to represent all types of content creation that involves written words. When I started writing these Nuggets, I envisioned them only as email newsletters that would be archived online. I...
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AT: 06/15/2015 06:36:28 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 12, 2015

J&M Jewelry Mobile Website Review

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J&M Jewelry Mobile Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1275-33
Welcome to the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal for today is to find and perform a usability review of a random jewelry store mobile website. I'm performing the review on, and taking screen shots with, my iPhone 6.

The first review for today is to see if a google.com search through the Safari web browser would yield the same results as a search using the Google search app on the iPhone. Here's a side by side comparison of the two methods:

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AT: 06/12/2015 07:22:44 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 11, 2015

What Is A Money Site?

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What Is A Money Site? daily-golden-nugget-1274-3
This is the Throwback Thursday edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Today I'm jumping back to Nugget number 55 and the topic of money sites.

The topic of marketing funnels came up during the 2015 JCK Talk on multi-channel marketing. The original idea of a marketing funnel was that you would reach a lot of people with a broad scope...
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AT: 06/11/2015 08:44:10 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, June 10, 2015

JCK Talks 2015: The Retail Revolution

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JCK Talks 2015: The Retail Revolution daily-golden-nugget-1273-81Thanks to The EDGE Retail Academy, attendees of JCK 2015 were able to witness two presentations from Terry Hawkins, bestselling author, well-established business woman, and President of the training company People In Progress Global. I had the fortune of attending her JCK Talk titled "The Retail Revolution" on Thursday, May 28, 2015.

Terry is certainly a dynamic speaker that keeps the audience entertained and engaged while also sharing valuable infor...
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AT: 06/10/2015 09:07:05 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, June 09, 2015

JCK Talks 2015: Introduction to Multichannel Marketing for Retail

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JCK Talks 2015: Introduction to Multichannel Marketing for Retail daily-golden-nugget-1272-43
Jennifer Shaheen, President of Technology Therapy Group was among those speakers chosen to present at the 2015 JCK Las Vegas show. Jennifer and I are industry colleagues and we share 99% of the same point of view about the internet and how retail jewelers should be using it for their marketing.

I've seen Jennifer present at ...
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AT: 06/09/2015 09:44:38 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, June 08, 2015

JCK Talks 2015: Best Information Regarding Employee Hiring and Training

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JCK Talks 2015: Best Information Regarding Employee Hiring and Training daily-golden-nugget-1271-10
The jewelry industry has changed a lot since the emergence of the internet and especially through the last few years of financial hardship. Honestly, it's not just the jewelry industry, but all retail sectors. Technology has helped revolutionize customer service, and even more importantly, customer expectations in other sectors.

In an effort to help the jewelry industry better understand how to keep up with important changes, the theme o...
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AT: 06/08/2015 08:39:08 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 05, 2015

The Jewelers of Las Vegas Website Re-review

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The Jewelers of Las Vegas Website Re-review daily-golden-nugget-1270-61
In honor of the big jewelry shows in Las Vegas that came to a close on Monday this week, I'm searching around Las Vegas again for this week's website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget.

I was still in New Jersey when I wrote last week's review of another Las Vegas jeweler, but this time I'm sitting in my hotel room at The Excalibur writing this weeks.

Last week, I simply searched for...
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AT: 06/05/2015 12:55:26 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 04, 2015

Testing and Optimizing Your Website For Speed #TBT

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Testing and Optimizing Your Website For Speed TBT daily-golden-nugget-1269-10
In this edition of Throwback Thursday, I'm jumping back to September 2010 and this Nugget on website page speed.

The "speed of your website" is the amount of time it takes for your site to download to the device you are using. A lot of factors play into the your page speed that have nothing to do with your site, things like:

* Internet connection via cable, fiber, wireless, or ce...
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AT: 06/04/2015 07:49:21 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, June 03, 2015

Don't Ruin Your Ads; PhotoShop Disasters are Avoidable

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Dont Ruin Your Ads; PhotoShop Disasters are Avoidable daily-golden-nugget-1268-97
I angst a lot over the poor photo quality I often see used on jewelry websites and in print ads. Someone will never know the detail of intricate fine jewelry unless they are holding it in their hand or looking at a perfect quality photo.

I have a simple idea of a perfect quality photo: just be in focus and properly lit.

I like to use photos with interesting backgrounds to attract attention and then high definition photos with pure white backgrounds on the product det...
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AT: 06/03/2015 06:53:42 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, June 02, 2015

Keep The Logos On Your Website Up To Date

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Keep The Logos On Your Website Up To Date daily-golden-nugget-1267-22
The internet is a very visual place. Photos, videos, memes, animated graphics, and company logos flood every social network. When used incorrectly, they also create clutter on websites.

One of the methods I use to gauge how often a website is updated is to look at the 3rd party logos used throughout the website. I'm especially critical of search engine optimization companies that tout their modern SEO services next to search engine logos that are more than 10 years old.

Here's one such c...
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AT: 06/02/2015 07:23:46 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, June 01, 2015

Create Marketing Campaigns That Allow For Natural Discovery of the Full Message

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Create Marketing Campaigns That Allow For Natural Discovery of the Full Message daily-golden-nugget-1266-23
I was at a social media marketing meeting in New York City last month when someone asked if they should be posting the same photos and status update to every social network.

That was a good question, and there's no real straightforward answer. In reality, it depends if you have the same audience following you on all the social networks. If the same audience follows you on all networks, then they will get very bored very ...
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AT: 06/01/2015 06:48:06 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 29, 2015

Summerlin Jewelers Website Re-Review

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Summerlin Jewelers Website Re-Review daily-golden-nugget-1265-51
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Usually I choose a random city around the U.S. to find a retail jeweler, and this week, in honor of the Las Vegas jewelry shows, I'll search around Las Vegas, Nevada.

The following is a screen grab when I searched for "jewelers in las vegas." The top listed store is The Jewelers of Las Vegas. They have updated their website since I last re...
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AT: 05/29/2015 01:14:58 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 28, 2015

Foursquare Is Quite Useful While Other LBS' have Checked-Out #TBT

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Foursquare Is Quite Useful While Other LBS have Checked-Out TBT daily-golden-nugget-1264-58
In today's Throwback Thursday, I'm bringing back a group of old Nuggets that are near and dear to my hart: Location Based Services.

One of our more ambitious events here at jWAG was back in August 2010 when we held live video broadcasts several days in a row, we called it "jWAG Live 2". Every day we covered different topics, one of which was ...
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AT: 05/28/2015 08:32:09 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Rethinking The Open To Buy Provided By Your Jewelry Management Software

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Rethinking The Open To Buy Provided By Your Jewelry Management Software daily-golden-nugget-1263-99
Shortly before leaving for the JCK show in Las Vegas this year, I was reading through The Retail Jeweler magazine and reviewing the monthly column I submitted. Magazines editorial deadlines are always more than a month, sometimes two months, ahead of the publication date and I needed to refresh my memory of what I had written.

While flipping through the magazine, I found an ad for The EDGE software. The ad touted that they were voted #1 ...
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AT: 05/27/2015 06:41:29 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Recommended Monthly Online Marketing for Jewelers

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Recommended Monthly Online Marketing for Jewelers daily-golden-nugget-1262-1
After last week's Nuggets about marketing funnels and determining a funnel cost, I received an email from a reader wanting to know my current recommendations for a marketing funnel.

Here are my recommendations for monthly online marketing, in this o...
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AT: 05/26/2015 01:12:01 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 25, 2015

30-Days After Google Mobile Update: The Results Are In

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30-Days After Google Mobile Update: The Results Are In daily-golden-nugget-1261-83
It's officially been one month since Google Mobilegeddon on April 21, 2015. I've been eagerly following the blogs and new channels of several companies that are tracking the results, and they all seem mixed.

Google started showing mobile friendly websites in search results earlier than April 21st. Reports from Search Engine Land stated that the mobilegeddon rollout seemed to be slo...
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AT: 05/25/2015 11:33:26 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 22, 2015

Morning Star Jewelers Website Review

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Morning Star Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1260-66
This is another edition of the Friday Website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Each week, I use Google Chrome in incognito mode to search out a random retail jeweler from around the U.S., and then I review their website.

I never know what I'm going to find when I start these reviews. My hope is that I can illustrate one of my previous Daily Nuggets with a live example.

My search began this week with the phrase "jewelers in Evergreen, CO" and saw this as my search results:

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AT: 05/22/2015 07:57:10 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 21, 2015

#TBT Get Help Writing Those Jewelry Product Descriptions

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TBT Get Help Writing Those Jewelry Product Descriptions daily-golden-nugget-1259-69
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back, almost to the beginning. My 8th Nugget was a really good idea for writing good online jewelry sales copy that I want to revisit today.

I recently wrote how to avoid the thin content trap in jewelry catalogs, a...
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AT: 05/21/2015 11:25:35 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Determining the Cost of Different Methods of Marketing in Your Funnel

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Determining the Cost of Different Methods of Marketing in Your Funnel daily-golden-nugget-1258-48
In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget, I explained how to analyze the cost of your marketing funnel. Today, I'll follow up with some specific funnel ideas to help you formulate your own plan.

Understanding Previous Marketing


Here's a tricky question to think about... Do you measure ad success by the number of people it brought...
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AT: 05/20/2015 09:09:37 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 19, 2015

The Misunderstood Cost of the Marketing Funnel

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The Misunderstood Cost of the Marketing Funnel daily-golden-nugget-1257-3
The truth of the matter is that your business will never survive without some type of marketing. Word of mouth marketing is not enough anymore to support your business. Simple posts to social media and meager ads in community newspapers won't support your overhead, or even put food on your table.

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, you should VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 05/19/2015 11:16:30 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 18, 2015

Pandora Plans For Higher Profits Despite The Poor Treatment Dished To Retailers

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Pandora Plans For Higher Profits Despite The Poor Treatment Dished To Retailers daily-golden-nugget-1256-74
Over the past 5 years, many retail jewelry store owners have asked my opinion about a jewelry designer before deciding to buy into a new line. I always find these questions interesting because they are asking my opinion as a data analyst, rather than a current trends watcher.

You see, you can easily track the popularity of a jewelry designer based on the number of people who search Google for their name or product name. G...
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AT: 05/18/2015 09:16:33 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 15, 2015

John Tolle Jewelry Website Review

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John Tolle Jewelry Website Review  daily-golden-nugget-1255-82
This is the Friday website review where I search for a jeweler in a random town around the United States then review their website. By reviewing a live site, I'm usually able to highlight good and bad points that we can all learn from.

For this week, I wanted to find a retail jewelry store in Laguna Beach, California. Here's the SERP when I googled "jewelers in Laguna Beach, California":

John Tolle Jewelry ...<br />
							<span class=VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 05/15/2015 11:24:59 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 14, 2015

Optimize For Speed: Mobile Users Don't Need Your High Quality Images

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Optimize For Speed: Mobile Users Dont Need Your High Quality Images daily-golden-nugget-1254-43
In today's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to April 2011 when I wrote about image sizes. You can read the old Gold Nugget here. This is still a very relevant topic today that's worth revisiting.

In this age of high speed internet, there are many times when you can get a faster connection through the 4G on your smartphone than through the wired connection y...
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AT: 05/14/2015 12:19:46 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Jewelry Designers and Retail Jewelers: A Potential Marriage To Revitalize The Industry

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Jewelry Designers and Retail Jewelers: A Potential Marriage To Revitalize The Industry daily-golden-nugget-1253-74
Diamonds are supposed to be forever and a girl's best friend, but lately they are a tough sell. While many of my retail jewelry store customers are still looking for ways to increase their wedding and engagement ring sales, there are plenty of other opportunities for with designer lines of jewelry that could attract a new audience to your store.

The New Jewelry Designer


Since 2013 I've been networ...
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AT: 05/13/2015 09:58:46 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 12, 2015

E-Commerce Isn't The Answer for A Declining Business: Learn Who Your Customer Is First

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E-Commerce Isnt The Answer for A Declining Business: Learn Who Your Customer Is First daily-golden-nugget-1252-91Last week, Rob Bates, News Director for JCK wrote an interesting article with theories of why the jewelry industry is in a funk.

You can read that article yourself, but in brief, the 6 theories posed were:
  1. People are disappointed... Which I guess means all of us in the jewelry industry are wondering when our industry will rebound from the recession like...
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AT: 05/12/2015 11:10:32 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 11, 2015

Learning From the Marketing of a Marvel Mouse

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Learning From the Marketing of a Marvel Mouse daily-golden-nugget-1251-76
I'm one of those people. I admit it... I don't turn my cell phone off in a movie theater.

It's not that I want to be rude; I do put it on silent; but I have to keep the vibrate setting on. The nature of my job is such that I'm always on call to monitor a few very important websites for a few of my clients. So I can't be out of touch from those computers and servers. In fact, the only times I'm unplugged is when I'm at 38,000 over the Atlantic. WiFi isn't available on the transatlantic f...
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AT: 05/11/2015 11:43:41 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 08, 2015

Goldirocks Jewelers Website Review

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Goldirocks Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1250-36
Way back on May 3, 2013, I reviewed the website for Alletti Jewelry. In that review, I explained that they were using the GoDaddy WebsiteBuilder and showed why it was a pretty bad content management system (CMS).

Recently. I came across a different retail jeweler's website using the new version of GoDaddy's Online Store CMS. The store is Goldirocks Jewelers and their website is VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 05/08/2015 06:14:51 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 07, 2015

Replace Ugly URLs With Easy To Understand Words

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Replace Ugly URLs With Easy To Understand Words daily-golden-nugget-1249-80In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm revisiting the URL restructuring topic from March 15, 2011.

I consider URL restructuring to be one of the more advanced SEO techniques that you can employ after a deep review of how your website is performing in organic search. It's the process of turning your long, messy looking website addresses into shorter, easy to understand addresses.

H...
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AT: 05/07/2015 06:18:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 06, 2015

Where Should You Blog for Your Business?

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Where Should You Blog for Your Business? daily-golden-nugget-1248-84
Before social media, there was Blogging.

Blogging has passed through various evolutions in the years since its original inception in 1994. The first blogs were created to help people keep their friends up to date with what they were doing. Services like Open Diary, Slashdot, and LiveJournal we...
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AT: 05/06/2015 01:09:10 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 05, 2015

Email Marketing Won't Ever Die

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Email Marketing Wont Ever Die daily-golden-nugget-1247-67I remember back in the late 1990s when I was helping people set up their first email addresses and told them that email would eventually be more important than their telephone number. Since then, the internet evolved in ways we never imagined and, although email didn't cause telephone obsolescence, some say that both methods of communication are going away.

According to this report from Pew Research, the most popular use for smart...
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AT: 05/05/2015 11:07:40 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 04, 2015

SEO Ranking Comparison Between Two Competing Jewelry Websites

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SEO Ranking Comparison Between Two Competing Jewelry Websites daily-golden-nugget-1246-53
Do you have a question about your own online marketing situation or feel perplexed about something specific on the internet? Send it to me and I'll answer it as a future Daily Golden Nugget if I can.

Shortly after posting my Friday website review on the morning of April 24, 2015, one of my email readers asked me a really viable question about the SERP results from that day's review. You can read the review VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 05/04/2015 07:10:08 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 01, 2015

Wick and Green Jewelers Website Review

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Wick and Green Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1245-45
Welcome to the weekly edition of the Friday jewelry website review. Every week, I randomly choose a candidate website and put it to the test for design, SEO, usability, content, and a wealth of other website and business related issues.

I never know how they will turn out; sometimes good and sometimes bad. I always try to write these reviews in the order in which I browse around the site, providing my first reactions as I discover things.

This week, I'm searching for "Jewelers in Asheville, No...
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AT: 05/01/2015 01:42:53 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 30, 2015

Breadcrumbs Leave Helpful Trails For Mobile Users

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Breadcrumbs Leave Helpful Trails For Mobile Users daily-golden-nugget-1244-62
For today's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm revisiting the topic of breadcrumb trails in your website.

In regard to your website, a breadcrumb trail is a specially formatted set of links that helps users navigate your website without needing to click the browser's back link.

Google first suggested the use of the breadcrumb trail in 2012 as a way to help simpl...
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AT: 04/30/2015 12:43:22 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Start the Transformation Into an IoT Smart Jeweler

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Start the Transformation Into an IoT Smart Jeweler daily-golden-nugget-1243-39
The potential for online catalogs and e-commerce jewelry websites is slowly transforming how local jewelry stores do business. Although the jewelry industry has been shrinking, this transformation will undoubtedly change the face of the industry, and my belief is that it will be revitalized as more modern retail methods are introduced to meet the demands of the modern jewelry buy...
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AT: 04/29/2015 11:09:48 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Plan Your Next Contest To Be The First Step in Your Sales Funnel

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Plan Your Next Contest To Be The First Step in Your Sales Funnel daily-golden-nugget-1242-6
Using a contest to promote your company and build awareness is a viable method of marketing for any business.

During the past month, in preparation for Mother's Day, many retail jewelers held jewelry design contests. Typically this type of contest required a sketch of a pendant to be submitted to the jeweler through some method. The winner would have their pendant turned into reality by Mother's Day.

Over the past 4 years, I've been helping retai...
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AT: 04/28/2015 11:06:20 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 27, 2015

Future Progress and Profit is Unattainable Without Proper Planning

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Future Progress and Profit is Unattainable Without Proper Planning daily-golden-nugget-1241-76
I've been online since 1988 and I began programming websites professionally in 1994. With 36 years experience online, you certainly can say I'm one of the internet "old timers." In the mid 1990s, we had no idea how the internet would transform the world. Indeed, just watch any sci-fi movie from the early 90s and you'll see how their portrayals of the future completely lack the everyday technology we take for granted today.

The Early Internet<...
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AT: 04/27/2015 12:24:32 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 24, 2015

McCary's Jewelry Website Review

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McCarys Jewelry Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1240-97
In this edition of the Friday website review, I'm traveling to Shreveport, Louisiana in search of my review candidate. Using the Chrome browser in incognito mode, I searched for "jewelers Shreveport, Louisiana" and saw these SERP results:

McCarys Jewelry Website Review 1240-jewelers-shreveport-louisiana-serp-89VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 04/24/2015 07:57:57 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 23, 2015

The Thin Content Jewelry Catalog Trap

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The Thin Content Jewelry Catalog Trap daily-golden-nugget-1239-64
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to the topic of "thin content" that I first explained back in September 2011.

Thin Content Explained


In simple terms, thin content refers to a web page that has very few words on it. Google likes to refer to this content as pages "with little or...
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AT: 04/23/2015 11:11:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Discover Server Health and Hacking Attempts in Web Server error_log Files

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Discover Server Health and Hacking Attempts in Web Server error_log Files daily-golden-nugget-1238-2In this third and final edition in my series on web server logs, I'll explain what an error_log is and the important information you can find within. My previous two Nuggets explaining your web server's access_log can be found here and VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 04/22/2015 06:40:08 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Log File Referrals and What to Watch Out For When Reading Them

Log File Referrals and What to Watch Out For When Reading Them daily-golden-nugget-1237-47In yesterday's Nugget, I explained web server log files and how they could be used to read the IP address information for your website visitors.

In today's Daily Golden Nugget, I'm continuing the log file conversation with a more detailed look at referrals.

Here's the same example I showed you yesterday:
66.240.78.1...
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AT: 04/21/2015 09:07:06 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 20, 2015

Website Log Files Contain Personally Identifiable Informatio

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Website Log Files Contain Personally Identifiable Informatio daily-golden-nugget-1236-66
Since the dawn of computer networks, every server has recorded logs of all communications activities. You might be surprised to find out that email servers keep logs of every email sent, who they came from, and who they were sent to. Many large organizations even save copies of those emails.

When it comes to sharing files, all FTP servers and all file sharing services, like Dropbox, keep track of what files were uploaded and downloaded.

Then, of course...
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AT: 04/20/2015 11:29:40 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 17, 2015

Adams Fine Jewelry Website Review

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Adams Fine Jewelry Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1235-64
This is the Friday jewelry website review where I find a random retail jeweler and review their website for design, usability, and SEO. In each one of these reviews, my goal is to show how the information from my other Daily Golden Nuggets can be directly applied to a website.

This week, I'm using the Google Chrome browser in incognito mode to search for "jewelers st joseph mo." Here's a snapshot of the results:

...<br VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 04/17/2015 09:30:38 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 16, 2015

4 Important SEO Points Every Business Owner Should Know

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4 Important SEO Points Every Business Owner Should Know daily-golden-nugget-1234-61
I usually commemorate special numeric milestones when writing these Daily Golden Nugget. Most notably are the Google Maps updates every 100th Nugget, but there have been fun ones like 404 and 410 too.

This is Daily Golden Nugget Number 1234, and it's also #ThrowbackThursday...
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AT: 04/16/2015 09:48:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Don't Stress Over Income Tax; Plan Ahead With Better Accounting

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Dont Stress Over Income Tax; Plan Ahead With Better Accounting daily-golden-nugget-1233-33
Today is Tax day in the U.S., the deadline for filing your personal income tax. For many Americans, this is nothing more than the yearly meeting with an accountant, H&R block, or an evening in front of a computer with TurboTax, but it's not so easy for business owners.

I started my first business in 1994 and have paid myself through various methods through the years. In the beginning, my bookkeeper did the payroll by hand then I transitioned to a full pay...
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AT: 04/15/2015 07:26:50 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Should You Pay For Inclusion in a Directory Website?

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Should You Pay For Inclusion in a Directory Website? daily-golden-nugget-1232-64
I'm in favor of the entrepreneur that tries to build a business around a perceived need. What make entrepreneurship in the U.S. so exciting is that you potentially make a healthy living off an idea you dream up yourself.

The internet makes those dreams possible.

A few weeks ago, one of my clients brought my attention to the following message that was posted on their Facebook wall.

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AT: 04/14/2015 11:33:32 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 13, 2015

The Push and Pull of Hardware, Software, and Customer Service Technology

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The Push and Pull of Hardware, Software, and Customer Service Technology daily-golden-nugget-1231-21
When I first opened my business in 1994 as a computer consultant, the drivers of new technology were a lot different. In the mid 90s, it was typical to first buy a computer before figuring out what software you could use on it. Many of my customers wanted their own programs written, too. Those were the days of DOS and Windows 3.1, and the options for software were limited to what you could find in your local Egghead Software store, or you ha...
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AT: 04/13/2015 07:13:12 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 10, 2015

Klutts Jewelers Website Review

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Klutts Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1230-23
In this week's edition of the Friday Website Jewelry Website Review, I'm beginning my search in "jewelers morgan city, la" to find a website review candidate. I go through these website reviews every Friday as a way to monitor and show you what's happening in the world of jewelry websites. I never know how the review will turn out, but the hope is that something is learned.

Here's the Google SERP for Morgan City:

Klutts Jewe...<br />
							<span class=VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 04/10/2015 06:23:19 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 09, 2015

Adding Value To The Internet #TBT

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Adding Value To The Internet TBT daily-golden-nugget-1229-84
In this edition of #ThrowBackThursday, I'm jumping back to an old topic, and still a very valid topic explained in Daily Golden Nugget number 175 back on March 25, 2011... Adding new value to the internet.

Content, content, content! That's what Google wants. Countless numbers of official Google webmaster blog posts, videos, and presentations by Google employees at internet expos talk about the continual need to create new content.

<...
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AT: 04/09/2015 01:14:43 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 08, 2015

Planning Your Jewelry Store's Profitable Future

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Planning Your Jewelry Stores Profitable Future daily-golden-nugget-1228-19
Last week, I was doing a little research into the US census data on this website. The U.S. business census data is captured every 5 years, but there's a delay before the information is published. The 2012 was only recently published.

Shrinking Number of Retail Jewelry Stores


The data shows that there were only 16,847 corporations that classified themselves as "jewelry stores" in 2012, and there were 2...
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AT: 04/08/2015 11:55:34 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 07, 2015

3 Email Follow-Up Ideas Engage Customers After a Jewelry Store Contest

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3 Email Follow-Up Ideas Engage Customers After a Jewelry Store Contest  daily-golden-nugget-1227-21
A jeweler wrote to me the other day asking for help with their Mother's Day contest promotion. The promotion is being advertised through the local papers but the contest takes place through their website. To enter the contest you need to fill out the online form and agree to sign up for their newsletter.

Because the contest is centered around creating a custom design, this jeweler wants to send out a series of additional custom design em...
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AT: 04/07/2015 09:31:34 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 06, 2015

EMV: What You Need to Know About Chip-and-PIN Payments

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EMV: What You Need to Know About Chip-and-PIN Payments daily-golden-nugget-1226-97
Today's topic jumps outside the bounds of marketing, SEO, and websites and goes directly to the bottom line of your business. Every retail store owner who accepts credit cards needs to read this.

The deadline to upgrade your credit card processing equipment to the Europay MasterCard Visa (EMV) smartcard standard is quickly approaching. The deadline is October 1, 2015; that's just 178 days from today!

What is an EMV Enabled Payment Card


For a primer on ...
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AT: 04/06/2015 11:03:17 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 03, 2015

Vierk's Fine Jewelry Website Review

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Vierks Fine Jewelry Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1225-64
This is the Friday Website Review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Every week I search for a jewelry store in a random town and review their website. I never know how these are going to turn out, but they are always interesting as I examine website designs, functionality, SEO, and potential customer engagement.

Using Google Chrome in incognito mode to prevent personalized results, I searched for "jewelry appraisals Lafayette, IN." Here's the search results I saw:

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AT: 04/03/2015 12:49:46 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 02, 2015

Build Links When Sponsoring Local Events and Acquiring Customers

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Build Links When Sponsoring Local Events and Acquiring Customers daily-golden-nugget-1224-48
This is the #ThrowbackThursday edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. This week, I'm jumping back to Nugget Number 93 from December 1, 2010. The topic is Trading Links with Local Businesses.

Linking to Avoid


Google has placed heavy penalties on websites that use link building to affect their ranking. The VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 04/02/2015 12:59:01 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 01, 2015

Image Quality As a Factor in Customer Satisfaction and Ranking

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Image Quality As a Factor in Customer Satisfaction and Ranking daily-golden-nugget-1223-39
Apparently Google is turning a few more heads with its recent search engine ranking algorithm changes again. I'm not talking about Mobilegeddon, which will happen on April 21, 2015, but their latest announcement about e-commerce product images.

Google has put a lot of effort into improving how it understands images and the types of images that people would like to se...
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AT: 04/01/2015 09:49:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Can One Blog Be Used to Promote Two Websites?

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Can One Blog Be Used to Promote Two Websites? daily-golden-nugget-1222-74
I received an interesting question the other day from Suzie, a jewelry designer. Well, her name wasn't actually Suzie, but let's just say that it was so it makes this story easier to tell.

For several years, Suzie had an Etsy account where she sold a line of baby toe ring jewelry. This was her fist line of jewelry before she started making gemstone jewelry necklaces. Realizing how different these two lines of jewelry are, instead of using Etsy to sell the necklaces, she opened an e-com...
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AT: 03/31/2015 07:24:30 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 30, 2015

Measured Results After Adding Schema.org Microdata To a Website

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Measured Results After Adding Schema.org Microdata To a Website daily-golden-nugget-1221-24
Whenever Google comes out with a new webmaster guideline, I wonder what they are up to. Every action they take has the potential to aide or disrupt the normal flow of the internet that we all rely on now. Take, for example, the announcement of their mobile-friendliness ranking factor and the potential for disruption that VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 03/30/2015 11:17:52 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 27, 2015

Spinelli Jewelers Website Review

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Spinelli Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1220-81
This is the Friday Jewelry Website Review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Every week, I randomly choose and dissect a retail jeweler's website to see what makes it tick. I never know what I'm going to find each week; sometimes it's something new to learn or a refresher on topics I've previously written about.

To find this week's review candidate, I searched Google for "jewelry stores in Bridgeton, New Jersey" and was given this SERP:

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AT: 03/27/2015 11:41:41 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 26, 2015

Google and Bing Web Page Cached Dates

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Google and Bing Web Page Cached Dates daily-golden-nugget-1219-38
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to Daily Golden Nugget number 218 from March 25, 2011. Back then, Google was generating SERP instant preview images for websites, a feature that was then dropped in April 2013, but it I want to cover a different topic from that Nugget that I never wrote about in detail...

Google Cache and Bing Cache.

Both Google and Bing record the last ...
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AT: 03/26/2015 11:25:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Improve Your Ranking By Lowering Your Website's Data Center Carbon Footprint

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Improve Your Ranking By Lowering the Your Websites Data Center Carbon Footprint daily-golden-nugget-1218-68
No matter your field of study, you have more opportunity to uncover something interesting when you have more data to analyze.

Google Has Mega Data


Google thrives on data, but they also spend an exorbitant amount of time trying to figure out how to read a website and decipher what they find on every site. Websites are nothing more than large text files until you build an understanding of how the words relate tog...
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AT: 03/25/2015 02:07:35 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Landing Pages and Doorway Pages Created for Good Purposes

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Landing Pages and Doorway Pages Created for Good Purposes daily-golden-nugget-1217-89
Popular pages on your website are often called "Landing Pages." That popularity can be measured as the number of people who click on a page while browsing around your site, or the number of people that Google and Bing send to your site.

When you place an ad in the newspaper or send out a direct mail piece, you usually include a website address on that ad. Most of the time, that website address will just be your domain name, like exampledomain.com, in which case the...
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AT: 03/24/2015 11:53:06 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 23, 2015

Browser Usage Statistics for the Retail Jewelry Industry, 2014-2015

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Browser Usage Statistics for the Retail Jewelry Industry, 2014-2015  daily-golden-nugget-1216-13
For as long as the World Wide Web has been around, there has been competition over the most popular web browser. Many web browsers have joined the extinct software list, or at least become endangered as technology changes.

Way back in April 1996, Netscape Navigator had a 89.36% market share, but now it doesn't even register in anyone's tracking. There will a...
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AT: 03/23/2015 11:05:37 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 20, 2015

Delson Jewelry Website Review

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Delson Jewelry Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1215-66
Last week I wrote my weekly jewelry website review while I was waiting for my flight to France in Newark Liberty Airport, in Newark, NJ. Because I was sitting in the airport, I had the opportunity to present that review from the point of view of an actual mobile user.

As I usually do, I chose the first organic result from t...
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AT: 03/20/2015 09:05:48 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 19, 2015

Good and Bad Implementations of QR Codes

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Good and Bad Implementations of QR Codes  daily-golden-nugget-1214-92
QR Codes have been a hot topic for several years. In this #ThrowbackThursday Daily Golden Nugget, I'd like to jump all the way back to my second Nugget ever, which was on QR Codes. That was July 27, 2010!

That Nugget was the number one most popular post I had ever made, until I started writing about screen resolution and setup directions for Google M Business. It has since d...
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AT: 03/19/2015 11:26:57 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 18, 2015

You Should Fear Mobilegeddon

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You Should Fear Mobilegeddon daily-golden-nugget-1213-17
Over the last two weeks, I've been detailing why it's important to have a correct mobile setup for your website. Google's decision to use mobile friendliness as a ranking factor has a lot of people worried that...
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AT: 03/18/2015 06:49:38 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 17, 2015

The Use of Ellipses ... in Meta Descriptions

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The Use of Ellipses ... in Meta Descriptions daily-golden-nugget-1212-33
The ellipses are a set of three periods that has different functions depending on how that punctuation is used.

In these Daily Golden Nuggets, I often use this symbol to represent a long pause or a trailing off thought. In text messages, I use them to represent long pauses, or sometimes I even send them alone in a single text message to illustrate a perplexed reaction when I don't know what to say. A stunned silence, perhaps.

The ellipses has turned into one of the most commonly u...
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AT: 03/17/2015 07:24:42 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 16, 2015

10 Ground Rules For Employees When Using Social Media

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10 Ground Rules For Employees When Using Social Media daily-golden-nugget-1211-39
Many retail jewelers still struggle managing the time it takes to promote themselves on social media. Unfortunately, even though you can hire an agency to manage your social accounts, the best way to engage your customers is to establish your brand's own online identity.

It's difficult to allocate the time needed to engage on social media amidst the daily routine needed to run a jewelry store. Instead of doing it all yourself, you could allow your employees to engage soc...
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AT: 03/16/2015 07:10:04 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 13, 2015

Vinhas Jewelers Mobile Website Review

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Vinhas Jewelers Mobile Website Review daily-golden-nugget-12010-96
Welcome to the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Every week, I randomly search for retail jeweler websites to review as an educational exercise. Over the last two weeks, in the wake of Google recent announcement regarding mobile readiness, I've written several VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 03/13/2015 06:40:10 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 12, 2015

Hidden Text On Your Website Can Sometimes Be Used For Good

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Hidden Text On Your Website Can Sometimes Be Used For Good daily-golden-nugget-1209-99
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to May 2, 2011 the Daily Golden Nugget on hidden text on a web page that is not considered Black Hat SEO.

I haven't mentioned Black Hat SEO in a while, so let me briefly explain what that is. Google ranking algorithm was less complicated prior to 2012, and many people figured out simple ways to exploit that simplicit...
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AT: 03/12/2015 09:37:42 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Fix Mobile Usability Issues Found On Your Website

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Fix Mobile Usability Issues Found On Your Website daily-golden-nugget-1208-55
Search engine optimization was once a game of pure guesswork. SEO specialists would simply watch their own efforts of what worked and what didn't work, then simply follow the same steps over and over again.

Companies like MOZ.com and SearchEngineLand.com have communities of users always trying to figure out which supposed SEO techniques work, and which don't. Search Engine Land even published their of VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 03/11/2015 09:44:00 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Avoid the Faulty Mobile Redirect

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Avoid the Faulty Mobile Redirect daily-golden-nugget-1207-5
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'll cover one of the nagging mobile website issues that Google doesn't like any more. Well, I don't know if they ever liked it, but in this video they've clearly pointed it out.

It all started a few years ago when people first started dabbling in mobile websites. It's difficult to retrofit a desktop site to include a mobile version, unless you are willing to redesign the entire site again. Setting up a parallel mob...
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AT: 03/10/2015 07:46:58 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 09, 2015

3 More Important Mobile Website Design Factors

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3 More Important Mobile Website Design Factors daily-golden-nugget-1206-93
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm giving you 3 more important mobile website design factors to complement the 3 mobile design factors I gave you last week.

These mobile recommendations come directly from Google, from this video.

Readable Font Without Zooming


Even if your website is designed to be...
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AT: 03/09/2015 07:53:05 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 06, 2015

Taylor's Gold-n-Stones Website Review

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Taylors Gold-n-Stones Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1205-15
The weather in North America has been quite drastic through this winter. Snowfall and low temperature records have been broken all season long, and we're all counting the days until March 21st, which is only two weeks from now. Thankfully temperatures seem to be on the rise.

On the other hand, two weeks ago, the temperatures in New Jersey were lower than in Fairbanks, Alaska!

I'm certainly not a cold weather person, but many people are. In this week's edition of the Friday website review I'm headi...
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AT: 03/06/2015 07:26:57 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 05, 2015

TBT: Why You Should Get Involved With LinkedIn

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TBT: Why You Should Get Involved With LinkedIn daily-golden-nugget-1204-27
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday I'm jumping all the way back to Nugget Number 101. The topic was getting started on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has tried to reinvent itself a few times since that post on December 13, 2010, so it's time I talk about it again. Ironically, while on a coaching call with one of my jewelers the other day, he asked me how old customers could find him now that he works at, and is in the ...
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AT: 03/05/2015 10:45:43 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 04, 2015

3 Important Mobile Website Design Factors

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3 Important Mobile Website Design Factors daily-golden-nugget-1203-31
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm showing you a few things to watch out for when creating your mobile website. These mobile recommendations come directly from Google from this video.

No Pinch Zooming or Plug-ins


There should never be a need to zoom in on a mobile website. The website content should naturally fit the size of the screen as you see here:

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AT: 03/04/2015 08:45:32 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 03, 2015

Google Announces Mobile Friendliness Will Be A Real Ranking Factor

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Google Announces Mobile Friendliness Will Be A Real Ranking Factor daily-golden-nugget-1202-73
Every year for the last 5 years, many website programmers and marketing guys have tried to say "this is the year mobile websites will take over," but we've all been wrong. I was so wrong when I said 2010 would be the year of the mobile website; back then, it was just the year of the mobile website hype.

Mobile marketing and mobile websites had to go through a few stages of evolution to get to where we are as of today. As smartphones really started...
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AT: 03/03/2015 09:56:13 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 02, 2015

The Benefits of Testimonials on Your Website

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The Benefits of Testimonials on Your Website daily-golden-nugget-1201-67
Testimonials are a wonderful sales tool. They provide the social proof of good products or service that can help close a new sale. Every testimonial you receive should be posted to your website for everyone to see.

Customers are more likely to believe what other people say about you than what you say about yourself. Online directory sites like Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Google+ all provide methods of leaving online reviews. These reviews are good at helping to attract organic website visitor...
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AT: 03/02/2015 08:08:12 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 27, 2015

Google+ Local Now Shows Shopping Mall Information

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Google+ Local Now Shows Shopping Mall Information daily-golden-nugget-1200-63
If you're jewelry store is located in a strip mall or a shopping mall, Google will probably be changing your address, if they haven't already.

In honor of my 1200th Daily Golden Nugget I'm bringing you some updated information about Google+ Local today. Way back 1200 post ago I began these Nuggets with a a post about Google Maps, since then I've carried the tradition or reviewing Google business related changes every 100th Nugget. So here we are again.

During the course of ...
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AT: 02/27/2015 12:49:53 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 26, 2015

Holland Jewelers Website Review

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Holland Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1199-20
Welcome to the weekly website review. Normally this is published every Friday, but it got pulled up one day to make room for a special Nugget scheduled for tomorrow.

The goal of this weekly website review is to shed light on how many retail jewelers out there are still using old website techniques, old SEO methods, and old designs. I search a random city in the USA every week for a jeweler and usually select from the top of the organic listing.

In my experience, given the choice between an older looking and n...
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AT: 02/26/2015 09:49:21 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 25, 2015

How Facebook Chooses Images From Your Website to Use as Status Update Preview Images

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How Facebook Chooses Images From Your Website to Use as Status Update Preview Images daily-golden-nugget-1198-53
Facebook can be very annoying when it doesn't let you select the right preview image for the blog you are trying to share. All of your blog posts should have associated images. They grab attention and help to convey your message, but sometimes Facebook simply ignores the images you use.

Facebook has become a very visual social network and they try to offer all users the best possible shared images from every web...
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AT: 02/25/2015 08:05:14 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Building a Personal Brand For Business Success

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Building a Personal Brand For Business Success daily-golden-nugget-1197-3
A number of years ago, and I was hired to create a website to promote a national marketing campaign for retail jewelers. The website served as the cornerstone for hundreds of jewelers who were using the same set of ads to promote a select number of products that were sold exclusively through those retail jewelry stores.

The goal of the marketing campaign was to establish a nationwide brand identity for the hundreds of participating retail jewelers. Participation in that brand identity woul...
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AT: 02/24/2015 10:18:41 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 23, 2015

Identifying and Dealing With A Hacked Website

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Identifying and Dealing With A Hacked Website daily-golden-nugget-1196-18
During my Throwback Thursday Nugget last week, I dug up the old story of bad neighborhoods and how they could negatively impact your website.

The negative impacts I mentioned included slower website response time, potential for server downtime, and lower Google ranking if too many of your website neighbors involve porn, gambling, or E.D. drug websites.

However, the negative impact I personally worry...
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AT: 02/23/2015 07:58:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 20, 2015

Coffin and Trout Fine Jewellers Website Review

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Coffin and Trout Fine Jewellers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1195-14
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal of today's review is to take a critical look at a random retail jeweler's website in hopes of finding something we can all learn from.

At the start of each review, I launch a new Google Chrome incognito window. This allows me to search for a jewelry store without any influence from my previous search history or personalized results.

Searching Google for "jewelers Chandler AZ" returns these results:
...
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AT: 02/20/2015 08:44:00 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 19, 2015

Bad Website Neighbors

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Bad Website Neighbors daily-golden-nugget-1194-65
For this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I found a Daily Golden Nugget about Bad Neighbors that you can read here.

It was Nugget Number 149 back on February 17, 2011, four years ago this week!

On the internet, a Bad Neighbor is a Google penalized website that is hosted on the same IP address as your website. This happens when you are host...
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AT: 02/19/2015 07:22:22 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Product Photography Example and Analysis

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Product Photography Example and Analysis daily-golden-nugget-1193-61
In this Daily Golden Nugget, I'm going to analyze the photography of a popular e-commerce jewelry site. In this exercise, I hope to reveal some aspects of photography that you can apply to the photography on your own jewelry website.

For this exercise, I'm going to search Google for the Verragio style INS-7074R. This is a very popular engagement ring style and it's easy to find many different website selling it. What I hope to find is a website that took its own photos instead of using the photos ...
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AT: 02/18/2015 12:06:39 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Modern Customers Want to See Product Photos and Product Information on Your Website

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Modern Customers Want to See Product Photos and Product Information on Your Website daily-golden-nugget-1192-17
The internet has become a very visual place, especially on social media. While blog content may thrive with well written information, as of today, on Facebook and Google+ you won't get noticed without some type of visual. This is especially a complete change for Facebook because in 2013, they lowered the visibility of status updates with images because they were combating meme over usage.

Product photography posts...
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AT: 02/17/2015 08:30:19 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 16, 2015

Simple SEO Instructions for Employees Who Update Your Website

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Simple SEO Instructions for Employees Who Update Your Website daily-golden-nugget-1191-59
With all my writing about content recently, it's easy to forget that the reason for all of that is to improve your search engine optimization (SEO) and thereby increase the number of people visiting your website.

SEO isn't a short term ...
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AT: 02/16/2015 12:38:18 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 13, 2015

Paula's Fine Jewelry Website Review

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Paulas Fine Jewelry Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1190-22
If you believe the (mostly North American) superstitions, Friday the 13th (today) is supposed to be an unlucky day. Perhaps it will be unlucky for some couples that breakup before tomorrow, Valentine's Day, arrives. I prefer the optimistic point of view and would rather believe that love is in the air today.

This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, and to honor Valentine's Day I decided to search for a jewelry store in or near a town with "love" in the name. This was not as easy a...
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AT: 02/13/2015 12:32:35 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 12, 2015

Use Storytelling to Build Valuable Website Content

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Use Storytelling to Build Valuable Website Content daily-golden-nugget-1189-36
Throwback Thursday is the name of a weekly internet trend where participants repost photos from the past. This is especially popular on Instagram where users tag their photos with the #TBT hashtag.

Truthfully, you can "throwback" anything that happened in the past. It could be a social media post, a photo, a blog post, or yes, even a Daily Golden Nugget!

Honestly, this is my first participation in a TBT, but what the heck; let's do it with a slightly different spin...
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AT: 02/12/2015 01:38:48 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Understanding The Different Types Of Search Intent

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Understanding The Different Types Of Search Intent daily-golden-nugget-1188-87
Evolution, it's nature's way of subtly changing things so the next generation will continue to survive and thrive. But it's not just nature that changes things for the better, it's how we all live, learn, and change things around us for the better.

The engineers over at Google are constantly trying to improve and evolve their search engine algorithm to better understand what information is being published online and how that information will be used. Sometimes the information we...
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AT: 02/11/2015 09:18:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Blog Post Timestamps and How They Appear to Google

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Blog Post Timestamps and How They Appear to Google daily-golden-nugget-1187-54
Every week, I receive at least one question from my readers through Facebook, Twitter, comments on jwag.biz, and even direct emails. Sometimes I reply privately, but sometimes I use those questions as source material for future Nuggets, like this one.

Here's a question that arrived via email about a week or so ago:
Regarding Blogging... Can post-dating a blog that you "should've" written months ago help you now if you date it the date from before (i.e. it's Feb and...
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AT: 02/10/2015 01:37:17 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 09, 2015

The Value of Content Creation and Content Curation, Part 3

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The Value of Content Creation and Content Curation, Part 3 daily-golden-nugget-1186-34
What's your favorite type of content? Given that content includes written articles, videos, podcasts, photography, and every other type of creative digital experience. There's a labor cost associated with creating a digital experience for your customers, a cost that's not easily understood by small business owners.

There's also a competing value of the content that swings between the long term value to attract quality customers and the short term value of getting a lot of attention. S...
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AT: 02/09/2015 02:11:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 06, 2015

Ornamentum Jewelry Gallery Website Review

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Ornamentum Jewelry Gallery Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1185-73
Welcome to the Friday retail jewelry website review. In this week's review, I'll be searching for a random website candidate to critique in the hopes that we can all learn something useful to implement on our own websites.

To start this week's review I started searching for jewelers in Hudson, NY. Specifically, I used the Google search query "jewelers in Hudson ny."

Here's a screen shot of what the Google SERP looked like:
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AT: 02/06/2015 12:07:57 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 05, 2015

The Value of Content Creation and Content Curation, Part 2

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The Value of Content Creation and Content Curation, Part 2 daily-golden-nugget-1184-93
What is the real value of the content you produce? Should you be creating your own content or hiring someone to do it for you? What about content curation?

This is part 2 of my in-depth answers to those questions. I've identified 6 levels of content and list them here in order of their most valuable to least valuable:

1. Business Owner Creates Content
2. Business Owner Curates Content
3. Business Owner Socially Engages
4. Hire Content Creator or...
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AT: 02/05/2015 09:42:48 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 04, 2015

The Value of Content Creation and Content Curation, Part 1

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The Value of Content Creation and Content Curation, Part 1 daily-golden-nugget-1183-78
Over the last two days, I've provided you with some content creation cost guidelines and how to use content curation as an alternative to creating your own. In this Daily Golden Nugget, I'm explaining how y...
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AT: 02/04/2015 11:18:26 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 03, 2015

Understanding And Establishing Your Own Content Curation Channel

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Understanding And Establishing Your Own Content Curation Channel daily-golden-nugget-1182-1
In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget, I proposed a few scenarios on how you could create content needed to attract customers to, and convert customers on your website.

Content marketing is a large part of the modern day business strategy, but the creation process is so long and expensive, that many business owners are ready to give up after t...
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AT: 02/03/2015 12:59:25 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 02, 2015

Content Marketing Costs Will Change Based On The Target Need and Who Creates It

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Content Marketing Costs Will Change Based On The Target Need and Who Creates It daily-golden-nugget-1181-56
I'll be the first to admit the website content creation difficultly level is pretty high. Content includes infographics, photos, podcasts, PDFs, videos, testimonials, and, of course, the written word. It takes hours to prepare each of those types of content but the return on that time investment come in the form of several years of attracting customers throu...
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AT: 02/02/2015 09:53:20 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 30, 2015

Watkins Jewelers Website Review

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Watkins Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1180-97
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Today, I'm going to perform an incognito Google search for a random jewelry store candidate in Blackstone, Virginia, then review their website.

The goal of this weekly website review is to learn something new, or at least to see an implementation of something good or bad that you never knew.

When I used the search query "jewelry stores in blackstone va" I was given these results:

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AT: 01/30/2015 08:58:12 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 29, 2015

Don't Waste Time Waiting For Your Website Reports to Change

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Dont Waste Time Waiting For Your Website Reports to Change daily-golden-nugget-1179-74
The word "organic" is used to indicate something happening naturally in its environment, without outside influence that is deemed to be artificial or controlled. A quick look at the organic page on Wikipedia and you'll see that there are 28 different phrases for organic used in the English language.

All of the phrases refer to some type of natural growth or living thing that is grown according to certain standards. Orga...
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AT: 01/29/2015 09:23:17 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Maybe You Need More Conversions Rather Than More Visitor Traffic

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Maybe You Need More Conversions Rather Than More Visitor Traffic daily-golden-nugget-1178-29
So it turns out that your home page is good at attracting visitors, but not turning them into customers. It's a fact that the most visited pages of your website are really bad at convincing people to stay, or to go further towards turning into customers.

Good calls to action are what drive people further into your website. Without them, your website just flounders. Sadly...
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AT: 01/28/2015 08:05:01 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Reasons Why Your Bounce Rate Might Be High

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Reasons Why Your Bounce Rate Might Be High daily-golden-nugget-1177-33
Success often leaves footprints. If you want to achieve higher success rates in your business, you can attempt to copy the strategies that similar businesses are using to achieve their apparent success.

As a retail jeweler, you would have to closely examine what your local competitors are doing, particularly if you feel they are more successful than you are. You could study their websites and marketing, but many times the success of a store also depends on the customer service provided by all the staff.

One of ...
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AT: 01/27/2015 12:22:50 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 26, 2015

Website Navigation Should Be Easy To Understand; Don't Confuse Customers

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Website Navigation Should Be Easy To Understand; Dont Confuse Customers daily-golden-nugget-1176-36
There are a few standard pages needed on all websites, like the Home, About Us, and Contact Us pages. Other pages become important depending on the business; a Directions/Locations page is important for a business with a physical location but it's probably useless if your business is 100% e-commerce.

Other common pages for retail jewelers include:
* List of Designers
* Services
* Staff

Once we get past the 7 pages I've already mentioned, the need...
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AT: 01/26/2015 08:13:26 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 23, 2015

Gold City Jewelers Website Review

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Gold City Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1175-46
Welcome to the Friday jewelry website review where I randomly select and review the website of a retail jeweler. The goal is to dissect their online accounts to see how they might be ranking highly, and what they might be doing right, or wrong, with their online identity.

I use Google's Chrome browser in incognito mode when searching; otherwise the search results will be skewed based on my personalized search results and the top ranked sto...
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AT: 01/23/2015 10:45:59 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 22, 2015

How Can I Get Number 1 Ranking on Google?

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How Can I Get Number 1 Ranking on Google? daily-golden-nugget-1174-76
It astounds me that people still offer first place Google ranking service. Every day I still receive at least one spam email which offers me to get first place ranking on Google if I hire them to improve the SEO of any of the domain names I manage.

I started writing these Daily Golden Nuggets more than four years ago and even before then, Google posted warnings saying how first place ranking could not be achieved by simply hiring someone. Their warning is VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 01/22/2015 01:09:10 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 21, 2015

How Jewelers Should Mitigate Security Risks from Google Business View

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How Jewelers Should Mitigate Security Risks from Google Business View daily-golden-nugget-1173-65
A few years ago, Google undertook an extremely ambitious project to extend its Street Mapping technology inside buildings. Specifically, they created a way that Google Maps Street View could reach inside individual retail stores to create virtual walk throughs of those businesses. These virtual tours are called Google Business View, and the businesses taking advantage of this technology are reporting more engaged customers and higher sales.

The Business View virtua...
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AT: 01/21/2015 12:29:52 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 20, 2015

When It's the Right Time to Rebrand a Business Name in Google+ Local

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When Its the Right Time to Rebrand a Business Name in Google+ Local daily-golden-nugget-1172-87
I was recently analyzing the Google+ Local account for a new jewelry store. The owners bought the previous bead store that was at that location and remodeled it into a new jewelry store. My analysis discovered a situation I'd not yet seen, or in fact, even envisioned. Of course, that makes it a perfect topic for a Daily Golden Nugget!

It's obvious that every new business needs to design their store and stock their shelves with merchandise. Before you even get to that...
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AT: 01/20/2015 10:35:13 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 19, 2015

Jewelry Designers Have Unrealized Power to Control Google Image Results

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Jewelry Designers Have Unrealized Power to Control Google Image Results daily-golden-nugget-1171-54
Google Image Search made a few advancements over during 2013 and 2014 that has led to ever-increasing consumer usage. As more e-commerce sites emerge across all industries, there are millions of new product photos that are being absorbed into Google's Image Engine.

Although every e-commerce website might have their own unique database identifier, it seems like all websites are also publishing the manufacturer's part number as well. A few years ago, this was fro...
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AT: 01/19/2015 08:29:15 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 16, 2015

C. Aaron Penaloza Jewelers Website Review

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C. Aaron Penaloza Jewelers Website Review  daily-golden-nugget-1170-70
Welcome to the Friday website review. The goal of these weekly website reviews to learn something that can better your own website by analyzing someone else's live website. Every week I simply do a Google search in a random town or city throughout the U.S.

This week I'm looking for a review candidate in Terrell Hills, Texas. Using Google Chrome's incognito mode I searched for "jewelry stores in Terrell Hills, Texas" and was given this SERP:

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AT: 01/16/2015 07:57:29 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 15, 2015

2014 Holiday Keyword Data from Google Image Search

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2014 Holiday Keyword Data from Google Image Search daily-golden-nugget-1169-47
Google Image search has really started to mature. Not just in its ability to find and surface images, but also with the way that people are using it.

In fact, if you look at this Nugget from last week, you'll see that 75% of the search impressions are generated through Google Image Search and 57% of actual organic visitors come from Google Image Search too.

The image searc...
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AT: 01/15/2015 09:39:38 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 14, 2015

2014 Holiday Keyword Report for Repairs, Watches, & Services

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2014 Holiday Keyword Report for Repairs, Watches, & Services daily-golden-nugget-1168-52
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'll provide some research based information about mobile keyword search data collected during the 2014 Holiday Season.

Cross reference your own sales figures and website analytics against this data, and use it to improve your future marketing. The findings here should be useful to you all year long, but especially as you start planning your website content and marketing for the 2015 Holiday Season.

My analysis today will focus on a ...
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AT: 01/14/2015 08:21:04 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 13, 2015

jWAG Celebrates 5 Years of Freely Writing Stuff That Really Matters

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jWAG Celebrates 5 Years of Freely Writing Stuff That Really Matters daily-golden-nugget-1167-70
January 10, 2015 marked the 5th anniversary of the Jeweler Website Advisory Group, lovingly known as jWAG.

On January 10, 2010 at 1:10pm, this philanthropic endeavor was launched with a very long live web show event where we presented a lot of research based information about jewelry websites.


Typical jWAG Approach


As the founder of jWAG, I've made sure that all the information presented in seminars, webinars, blog posts, and Daily Golden Nuggets c...
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AT: 01/13/2015 08:23:10 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 12, 2015

2014 Holiday Keyword Report for Jewelers, Jewelry, and Jewelry Stores

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2014 Holiday Keyword Report for Jewelers, Jewelry, and Jewelry Stores daily-golden-nugget-1166-83
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm exploring keyword data collected between November 1 and December 31, 2014 from many retail jeweler websites.

I collected a large amount of keyword data from people using Google's desktop search, mobile search, and image search. The mobile search data is very interesting. Last week, I presented th...
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AT: 01/12/2015 10:02:43 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 09, 2015

Marry Me Jewelry Website Review

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Marry Me Jewelry Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1165-16
Welcome to the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The purpose of this review is to examine a live retail jewelry website in search for the good and bad traits. There's always something interesting to learn from in every week's review.

For this week, I started with a search using the Google Chrome browser in incognito mode. I stay incognito while searching for a review candidate so my own browser history will not influence the search results I see. Through your search history, Google has a way of knowing which websi...
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AT: 01/09/2015 01:05:40 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 08, 2015

2014 Holiday Diamond and Engagement Ring Mobile Search Report

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2014 Holiday Diamond and Engagement Ring Mobile Search Report daily-golden-nugget-1164-16
When using Google Webmaster Tools, you can view which search queries will trigger your website to appear in search results. In the past when we SEO guys would spew the phrase "search queries" it was just a fancy name for saying "keywords." In fact, you can say "search queries," and "keywords," and "search phrases" and mean the same thing.

Regardless what you called it, all you wanted to do was put the right words on your website that correspond to what people search for in the dif...
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AT: 01/08/2015 09:54:29 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 07, 2015

November and December 2014 Web Keyword Data for Retail Jewelers

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November and December 2014 Web Keyword Data for Retail Jewelers daily-golden-nugget-1163-36
Throughout 2014, Google made several advancements in their search engine and gave us some new reports in Google Webmaster Tools to see the results of those advancements.

Specifically, from within Webmaster Tools you can easily see when your website appeared in web search results, images search results, and mobile search results. During the first quarter of 2014, I started noticing retail jewelry websites appearing in image results more than ever before, and the Webmaster Tools ...
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AT: 01/07/2015 12:27:16 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 06, 2015

U.S. Retailers Must Install EMV Chip Card Terminals at Point-of-Sale by October 1, 2015

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U.S. Retailers Must Install EMV Chip Card Terminals at Point-of-Sale by October 1, 2015 daily-golden-nugget-1162-3
In 2015, there will be required shifts of credit card technology in the United States that will impact your financial liability and your PCI DSS compliance validation requirements. These changes will affect your website and your in-store point-of-sale purchases.

The credit card industry in the United States has been under fire for several years because of its continued use of the antiquated magnetic and signature verification process...
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AT: 01/06/2015 08:12:24 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 05, 2015

Regin: A Real Threat For Anyone Outsourcing

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Regin: A Real Threat For Anyone Outsourcing daily-golden-nugget-1161-87
Many Hollywood action spy movies portray government agencies with amazing computers that can access unlimited computer systems, security cameras, computer networks, and more beyond our imaginations.

You usually have to suspend belief with movies like Mission Impossible and Eagle Eye because government agencies can't activate a cell phone's camera or activate the cell phones of everyone standing around you, right?

Well, maybe they can, or someone can, and they might have been doing it since 2008.

Pay att...
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AT: 01/05/2015 08:00:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 02, 2015

Clinton Jewelers Website Review

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Clinton Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1160-88
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal for today is to review a random website in order to learn something good, or bad, from someone else's work.

Review Candidate & SERP


To find my review candidate, I normally choose a city at random and search for local jewelers, however, this week I wanted to find a winter themed town name with a nearby jeweler. Using Google Maps I found the unincorporated community of Snow in Clinton County, Kentucky.

Using the "Search Nearby" feature within G...
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AT: 01/02/2015 07:43:39 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 01, 2015

How Many 2014 Predictions Came True?

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How Many 2014 Predictions Came True? daily-golden-nugget-1159-75
Welcome to 2015! Before we forge ahead into the New Year, we need to look back on the predictions and changes from 2014.

Here's a quick review of my 2014 Predictions from a year ago.

2014 Prediction Review



Facebook Becomes More Worthless for Jewelers


Prediction: "Facebook will become more worthless for jewelry stores that are unwilling to pay for ads."

This prediction turned out to be 100% true. Facebook ...
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AT: 01/01/2015 09:54:59 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Website Session Stats from 2014 Holiday Season

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Website Session Stats from 2014 Holiday Season daily-golden-nugget-1158-30
With the 2014 Holiday Season at an end, let's take a look at some website tracking results from the Thanksgiving week through Christmas.

The following data was recorded through more than 100 jewelry related websites. This includes a combination of retail jewelers and e-commerce sites. Results shown here only apply to the jewelry industry.

Holiday 2014 Sessions


Here's a screen shot of my Google Analytics tracking across the retail jewelry websites I'm tracking:

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AT: 12/31/2014 01:52:45 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Email Marketing Stats From 2014 Holiday Season

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Email Marketing Stats From 2014 Holiday Season daily-golden-nugget-1157-38
The 2014 Holiday Season has come to a close and it's time to review your marketing strategies and record the results for next year's season.

I've compiled some email details that you can use as a benchmark for your own strategies.

I've subscribed to hundreds of email newsletters from retail jewelry stores, large and small e-commerce jewelry sites, and a few chain stores. This is a graph showing the quantity of emails I received from all those senders from November 1, 2014 through December 26, 2014:
...
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AT: 12/30/2014 08:03:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 29, 2014

2015 Predictions

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2015 Predictions daily-golden-nugget-1156-31
As the final hours of 2014 tick on by, I would like to share some of my predictions for 2015.

1. Content Marketing Will Become More Important for Jewelers

In order to understand why this will be important, you first need to understand what Content Marketing is. "Content" is anything that you publish online with the intention of influencing a customer's buying decisions. Written content is usually absorbed into Google and Bing and returned in search results, while all other content (photos, graphics, videos) are shared socially.

Instead of focusing on a s...
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AT: 12/29/2014 09:20:45 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 26, 2014

Harby Jewelers Website Review

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Harby Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1155-27
In keeping with my Christmas themed week of Daily Golden Nuggets, for today's website review I searched and searched for a retail jeweler located in a "Santa" related town or location. That task wasn't easy! I started by using Google Maps to search neighborhoods near this list of Santa named towns. Since all of the names on that list weren't really towns, I couldn't use my usual method of searching to find today's website review candidate.

My search eventually took ...
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AT: 12/26/2014 10:58:53 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 25, 2014

Wake Up With the Same-Sex Engagement Ring Market

by
Wake Up With the Same-Sex Engagement Ring Market daily-golden-nugget-1154-6
According to this marriage proposal survey 45% of marriage proposals for the year will take place on Christmas Eve (last night) and Christmas Day (today), but as a jeweler you probably already know that.

Can you count how many engagement rings did sell over the last 3 months? How many nervous boyfriends did you help through the process of learning about the 4C's of diamonds and the difference between an SI1 whose inclusion is di...
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AT: 12/25/2014 07:32:22 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 24, 2014

'Twas The Jeweler's Night Before Christmas...

by Matthew Perosi and George Blair IV
'Twas the night before Christmas, and time to close doors
after a long four weeks, the time still soars.
Did you break record sales with engagement rings sold?
Hope she says yes tomorrow; the future's untold!

While it's usually children dreaming the morning's delight;
the guys that you helped are filled with horrible fright.
You're the town's best jeweler; the men come to you;
your jewelry's the best at getting an "I do."

The times, they have changed, and there's much online chatter,
you've to to keep up, or else you won't matter.
You made mistakes then, when your website used Flash,
but you took steps; improvement when sales came to a crash.

Your jewelry designs always win Best in Show,
but your website's sad ranking had fallen too slow.
With new learning, you hoped an answer'd appear...
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AT: 12/24/2014 08:30:38 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Researching Keywords for your Content Marketing

by
Researching Keywords for your Content Marketing daily-golden-nugget-1152-68

You probably already know that Christmas is the most popular day of the year for a marriage proposal. No doubt you've been helping with the selection process for the past few months leading up to tomorrow's inevitable day of celebration for many couples.

According to this marriage proposal survey, the most popular day of the year for popping the question is still Christmas Eve, followed by Valentine's Day, then Christmas Day...
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AT: 12/23/2014 01:51:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 22, 2014

Jewelers Would You Rather Sell Bridal Jewelry or Engagement Rings?

by
Jewelers Would You Rather Sell Bridal Jewelry or Engagement Rings? daily-golden-nugget-1151-59

No matter your best efforts, your customer simply do not care about your bridal line. For them, you might as well be the Invisible Man.

You probably think I'm nuts when I say that, especially since you sell engagement rings all the time. The fact is that most jewelers are incorrectly trying to target "bridal" customers when they should be targeting "engagement rings." Even the phrase "wedding ring" is better than "bridal" or "bridal ring."

Google shares plent...
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AT: 12/22/2014 08:00:24 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 19, 2014

Sam's Fine Jewelry Website Review

by
Sams Fine Jewelry Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1150-52Today is the Friday Daily Golden Nugget website review. Normally I search a random town name in the United States in search of a website review candidate. But for today, I decided to add a little holiday cheer and look for a town with a holiday related name.

I started with this list of holiday towns, but it turns out that most of those are "populated places" or ghost towns. It seems like many forefathers were willing to name towns after Christmas, but over the dec...
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AT: 12/19/2014 10:18:12 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 18, 2014

2014 Holiday Season Website Statistics

by
2014 Holiday Season Website Statistics daily-golden-nugget-1149-70
Here are the website tracking statistics from mid-November through mid-December 2014. As usual, these results are pulled from the group of 100+ retail jewelry websites that I monitor and the results might not apply to any other industry.

4-Weeks of Holiday Data


Here's the graphical representation of the sessions I've been tracking:

2014 Holiday Season Website Statistics 1149-google-analytics-sessions-overvie...<br />
							<span class=VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 12/18/2014 08:10:01 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Holiday Season Email Marketing and Landing Page Review

by
Holiday Season Email Marketing and Landing Page Review daily-golden-nugget-1148-17

The 2014 Holiday Season is flying by. Hanukkah began last night and Christmas Eve is one week from today.

Holiday decorations are everywhere, even on Google's search results...

Holiday Season Email Marketing and Landing Page Review 1148-google-holiday-serps-97 VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 12/17/2014 08:05:12 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Prenuptial Agreements With Your Online Agency - Part 2

by
Prenuptial Agreements With Your Online Agency - Part 2 daily-golden-nugget-1147-82
Managing the online identity for your business is time consuming. Although you might have found the best agency to build your website and help your marketing online, the relationship you have with them probably won't last forever.

Eventually, you will have to divorce your marketing agency.

This is the conclusion of the Daily Golden Nugget I began yesterday detailing how your agency should be setting up your business accounts and what you need to do to guarantee you always have login acce...
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AT: 12/16/2014 08:12:22 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 15, 2014

Prenuptial Agreements With Your Online Agency - Part 1

by
Prenuptial Agreements With Your Online Agency - Part 1 daily-golden-nugget-1146-88
Jewelers are in the business of helping couples get to the moment when they profess their love and vow "til death do us part."

Few relationships are intended to last forever, or even a lifetime, but when you get into bed with a business partner, you are rarely thinking about the day when you will break up. When you're in business for yourself, you should be making forward steps to improve your business, but also prepare yourself to different possible future outcomes.

Even though a busines...
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AT: 12/15/2014 12:13:23 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 12, 2014

Jewelry Website Reviews in Malibu, California

by
Jewelry Website Reviews in Malibu, California daily-golden-nugget-1145-39
This is the Friday jewelry website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. This week I'm snooping around the interwebs of Malibu, California in search for a great jewelry store.

My hope is that I'll find a store whose website will lure me in and get me to visit them in person. I never know where these reviews will go when I start, but the hope is that we'll all learn something from it.

I start my search using the Google Chrome browser in incognito mode to prevent my own search history from providing pe...
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AT: 12/12/2014 12:10:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 11, 2014

Keyword Rank Analysis and Improvement Methods

by
Keyword Rank Analysis and Improvement Methods daily-golden-nugget-1144-98
As I mentioned in yesterday's Nugget, you can't use brute force SEO procedures to get your website ranked any more. This means you can't pay someone to set up a lot of inbound links to your site, and you can't set up several pages which overuse specific word phrases so you can rank for them.

As of today, the recommended strategy by Google is to create content and post it as blogs to your website an...
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AT: 12/11/2014 10:33:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Internet Marketing Agencies - Changing With Technology

by
Internet Marketing Agencies - Changing With Technology daily-golden-nugget-1143-44
The internet has seen many changes over the last 4 years since I started writing these Daily Golden Nuggets. Undoubtedly, a lot of that change was informed by Google, but really there are a lot of other factors involved.

Through the Great Recession, a lot of easier and less expensive technology emerged that now allows us to access information from anywhere at any time. You could argue that the technology companies forced fancy new mobile devices on us; or you could say that the technology devel...
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AT: 12/10/2014 08:20:17 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 09, 2014

How To Avoid Business Decline During a Website Redesign

by
How To Avoid Business Decline During a Website Redesign daily-golden-nugget-1142-17
The request has come far too often. I get a phone call from someone wanting to redesign their website. They tell me that their website is old, hasn't been updated, and they just want to start over.

Along with the request to redesign a website, I'm also usually told that they don't want to tell their current web programmer that they will be canceling service. Some business owners have decided that they want to file for a surprise divorce of their programmer.

While I can appreciate diss...
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AT: 12/09/2014 09:56:41 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 08, 2014

Jewelry Photography Pointers for Great Results

by
Jewelry Photography Pointers for Great Results daily-golden-nugget-1141-80
Your e-commerce website will thrive or starve based on your jewelry product photography. This is a tough topic that I've spoken about at the Las Vegas JCK show, at MJSA Expos, and have even given presentations to students at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC.

Even though I'd like to teach the entire industry about the best methods to take jewelry photography it seems like there's still a huge ...
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AT: 12/08/2014 10:43:54 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 05, 2014

Mauzie's of Colorado Website Review

by
Mauzies of Collorado Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1140-6
Let's imagine that there's a special gift giving day coming up soon and I need to buy a gift. Assuming that I live in Englewood, Colorado I might do a Google search for "buy jewelry gifts in Englewood Colorado."

Today is the weekly website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal of this review is to randomly search Google for a retail jewelry store and learn something from scrutinizing how they manage their website and online identity. There's always something to learn from these reviews, whether it's learning from someth...
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AT: 12/05/2014 08:16:04 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 04, 2014

Internet Tax May Not Seem Fair but E-Commerce Sites Are Already Responsible

by
Internet Tax May Not Seem Fair but E-Commerce Sites Are Already Responsible daily-golden-nugget-1139-63
There's a heated debate over internet tax happening in the United States Senate this month. Whether or not to collect sales tax from e-commerce websites has been argued for several years along with a proposed federal law, called the Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013.

According to the new reports from today's Google search on the topic, it's unlikely that further debate about internet tax will yield any results before the end of December 2014.

Now t...
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AT: 12/04/2014 09:35:31 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 03, 2014

2014 Website Activity for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and November

by
2014 Website Activity for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and November daily-golden-nugget-1138-68
Here are the website tracking statistics from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday in 2014. As usual, these results are pulled from the group of 100+ retail jewelry websites that I monitor and the results might not apply to any other industry.

November 2014 Sessions


Let's first take a look at this chart from Google Analytics:

2014 Website Activity...<br />
							<span class=VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 12/03/2014 12:59:17 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 02, 2014

Reporting The Number of Black Friday Related Emails in November 2014

by
Reporting The Number of Black Friday Related Emails in November 2014 daily-golden-nugget-1137-resized-99
It's time to kick off my yearly report of email subject lines throughout the holiday season. This is my breakdown of "Black Friday" emails throughout November 2014.

As part of my email tracking, I'm subscribed to hundreds of different email lists. Every month, I monitor trends and techniques to see how email marketing is evolving. During the month of November, I received almost 1000 emails building towards the launch of the holiday season. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 12/02/2014 12:33:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 01, 2014

How To Drive Website Traffic and Sales on Cyber Monday

by
How To Drive Website Traffic and Sales on Cyber Monday daily-golden-nugget-1136-28
As the internet and online shopping have become more popular over the last few years, today, the first Monday after Thanksgiving and Black Friday, has earned the designation as Cyber Monday. This is the day when many e-commerce websites have 24 hour sales to lure shoppers to spend their money online instead of shopping in local stores.

Every year comScore.com reports the sales figures for different shopping days through the holiday season. Although the calendar date of Cyber Monday changes ever...
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AT: 12/01/2014 08:06:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 28, 2014

Mathew Jewelers Website Review

by
Mathew Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1135-25
In honor of Thanksgiving, I decided to look for some town names related to the American holiday. Turkey and cranberries are among the many traditional dishes served at an American Thanksgiving meal. Although I found that there's a Turkey, Texas, it seems like Cranberry, Pennsylvania might have a better chance of locating a review candidate for today's Daily Golden Nugget, Friday Review.

Off to Cranberry I go, with a search for "jewelry stores in cranberry, pa." But the results you see here were not as satisfying as I expected:

VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 11/28/2014 10:34:26 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 27, 2014

Reason Why Online Ad Costs Increase During the Holiday Season

by
Reason Why Online Ad Costs Increase During the Holiday Season daily-golden-nugget-1134-45
It's the Thanksgiving Holiday in the United States. For many years, this day marked the official point on the calendar as the start of the holiday season in the US. Not too long ago, you wouldn't see a single Christmas Tree or holiday decorations in a store until the Friday morning after Thanksgiving. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade would march down the streets of New York and not a word about Christmas was mentioned until Santa Claus went by on that last float, giving us the go-ahea...
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AT: 11/27/2014 08:51:06 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Google Shopping and Double Management of Your Inventory

by
Google Shopping and Double Management of Your Inventory daily-golden-nugget-1133-61
I've seen a lot of chatter online recently and in business magazines about the management of store inventory and how it relates to online advertising. Many of the conversations stem from the requirements for the new online advertising system called Google Shopping and how it will help online sales for this holiday season.

For today, the eve of Thanksgiving in the United States, I wanted to briefly cover the topic of online inventory, inventory uploads, and how that works with Google Shopping.<...
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AT: 11/26/2014 09:43:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Understanding How-To Be A Profitable Business

by
Understanding How-To Be A Profitable Business daily-golden-nugget-1132-93
What do you think makes a profitable company?

Ask that question to a room filled with 100 business owners and you'll probably get 100 different answers based on their own experience and how they perceive their own profits. In truth, profit is a measure of all the money left over after you deduct expenses from the money you make from sales.

This equation has been around for as long as businesses have been around:

Sales - Expenses = Profits

Although the equation seems simple, most small busines...
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AT: 11/25/2014 09:04:14 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 24, 2014

More People Are Switching To Smartphones and Crave Up To Date Information

by
More People Are Switching To Smartphones and Crave Up To Date Information daily-golden-nugget-1131-21
I'm often asked how I keep up with all the internet changes because people feel overwhelmed. It really is true; the technology companies that control key factors of the internet make some type of change every day. Even though the internet is made up of millions of computers and billions of wires, it's the search engines and social networks that really control how we use it daily. In reality, the search engines and social networks are just software programs.
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AT: 11/24/2014 01:48:55 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 21, 2014

A. Scott Rhodes Jeweler Website Review

by
A. Scott Rhodes Jeweler Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1130-16
This is the Friday website review where I dissect a random retail jeweler's website to find the good and bad that we can all learn from. Although I write about website design, search engine optimization, and online marketing every day, sometimes all that stuff doesn't make any sense unless you see exactly how it applies to a real website.

That's why I dedicate one day every week to these reviews of randomly selected jewelry stores.

Normally I ask someone on my team to give me a random city name, but this week's review c...
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AT: 11/21/2014 11:04:51 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 20, 2014

How to Fix Google Manager Invitations That Don't Send

by
How to Fix Google Manager Invitations That Dont Send daily-golden-nugget-1129-8
In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget, I explained how you can invite someone to help manage your Google business account. An email is sent to notify the person who's being invited to manage the Google account. That email invitation is the only way that the person will know they've been invited, there's no other notification.

This is what the email looks like:

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AT: 11/20/2014 09:21:38 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Google My Business: Managers

by
Google My Business: Managers daily-golden-nugget-1128-0
This is the last part in my 7-part Daily Golden Nugget series on Google My Business. The links to the first 6 parts are at the bottom of today's edition.

As the Google services have become more complicated, the user interfaces to manage them have become equally complicated. Many users have given up on managing their accounts while others have screamed for help. Google hears those screams and is working through their different services to give business owners a way to share editing rights to consultants that you hire to help.

These are the s...
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AT: 11/19/2014 07:38:08 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Google My Business: AdWords Express Reporting

by
Google My Business: AdWords Express Reporting daily-golden-nugget-1127-81
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm going to review the latest AdWords Express functionality that you'll find within your Google My Business account. This is slightly different than the last time I explained it in this previous Nugget.

Today's Nugget is part of my ongoing series explaining the new features within the Google My Business dashboard that allows you to control all of your Google related business...
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AT: 11/18/2014 10:19:49 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 17, 2014

Paying Someone To Blog For You Should Be Expensive

by
Paying Someone To Blog For You Should Be Expensive daily-golden-nugget-1126-0
For the past several years, Google has been telling website owners to write quality content for their website in order to rank higher in search results and to satisfy customers. This directive of theirs has spawned an entire industry of freelance writers that produce content just to satisfy Google's directions.

The optimist in me wants to say that Google has spurred the creation of a new generation of writers, but the pessimist in me looks at the type of content that's generally created and sighs in discon...
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AT: 11/17/2014 07:55:00 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 14, 2014

Coastal Jewelers Website Review

by
Coastal Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1125-84
This is the Friday website review where I take a look at a random retail jewelry store website and dissect it to discover all the good and bad things we can all learn from.

For today's review, I started with a search for "jewelry stores in Kennebunkport, Maine" and was given this Google SERP result:

Coastal Jewelers Website Review 1125-jewelry-stores-kennebunkport-me-serp-64VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 11/14/2014 07:50:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 13, 2014

Using Google Analytics Segmenting To Analyze Local Social Network Traffic

by J. Thomas Jewelers
Using Google Analytics Segmenting To Analyze Local Social Network Traffic daily-golden-nugget-1124-66
Do you know where your best customers come from?

Have you ever even really thought about that question?

If your business is 100% e-commerce, then it would be easy to run a few reports in Google Analytics and figure out which Acquisition/Channel brings the most visitors. You could also use the Conversions/Attribution to see when people first discovered you and what eventually turned them into buyers.

Retail stores have a more difficult time kn...
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AT: 11/13/2014 10:10:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Steps to Change Your Business Online When Your Store Moves

by
Steps to Change Your Business Online When Your Store Moves daily-golden-nugget-1123-56
I was recently asked a really good question that doesn't come up very often...

How do you change your address in a business Google account?



The first thing you'll have to do is make sure you have access to your Google My Business account so you can edit your business address<...
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AT: 11/12/2014 07:44:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Evaluating an Unsolicited SEO Proposal

by
Evaluating an Unsolicited SEO Proposal daily-golden-nugget-1122-72
Your website's contact form is both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because you can protect yourself from unwanted mass email spam by hiding your email address, but it's a curse because you still get unsolicited offers of all kinds.

The typical unsolicited emails can come from random jewelry vendors, especially those trying to offer you a new source for diamonds and gemstones. You'll also get a lot of unsolicited emails from people offering you different online marketing services.

Since I own more than a dozen ...
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AT: 11/11/2014 10:18:34 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 10, 2014

Choose a Website Design Because You Should

by
Choose a Website Design Because You Should daily-golden-nugget-1121-69
Just because you can... doesn't mean you should.

I recently gave a seminar about website design and SEO to a local group of entrepreneurs in New Jersey. Although the presentation was mostly about what to watch out for when hiring a search engine optimization agency, there were a lot of questions about good website content versus bad website content.

One of the attendees started explaining her recent difficult experience with website design and a WordPress template. She's an established copy writer and content c...
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AT: 11/10/2014 07:58:14 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 07, 2014

After Midnight Jewelers Website Review

by
After Midnight Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1120-78


This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. For this week's review, I'm heading over to South Burlington, VT in search for my retail jeweler review candidate.

I entered the search phrase "jewelers in south burlington vt" into Google and was given this result:

After Midnight Jewelers Website Review 1120-jewelers-in-south-burlington-vt-41VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 11/07/2014 07:41:12 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 06, 2014

Dealing with Instagram Spam Accounts

by
Dealing with Instagram Spam Accounts daily-golden-nugget-1119-67
Spam is everywhere!

Originally just known as unsolicited and unwanted email junk, now spam exists in new multiple forms. Sometimes it's in the guise of blog posts that are unreadable, or useless blog comments, full websites loaded with junk content and video memes out to lure you into some scam service or pop-up nightmare.

In recent years, the idea of spam has included attempts at social engagements that I've directly experienced on Twitter, Facebook, Meetup, and Instagram. I'm sure every social network has spam and fake ...
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AT: 11/06/2014 12:11:23 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 05, 2014

Social Signal Ranking Factors

by
Social Signal Ranking Factors daily-golden-nugget-1118-29
If you ever get into a conversation with a search engine optimization professional (aka SEO), they usually bring up the topic of how Google ranks your website and that there are "more than 200 different signals" that Google uses for their ranking algorithm. It's Google's standard message that they are using more than 200 signals, but they've been saying the same thing for more than 10 years now.

Surly they must be using more than 200 signals now, but they'll never admit it.

From time to time, I'm able to measure the effects of certain t...
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AT: 11/05/2014 12:22:33 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 04, 2014

Google My Business: Insights Reports - Part 2

by
Google My Business: Insights Reports - Part 2 daily-golden-nugget-1117-17
This is Daily Golden Nugget part-2 explaining how to read your Google "My Business Insights." Take a look at yesterday's Nugget to get up to speed before reading this one.

Insights Engagement Reports



Here's a screen shot of the Insights Engagement report:
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AT: 11/04/2014 12:29:26 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 03, 2014

Google My Business: Insights Reports

by
Google My Business: Insights Reports daily-golden-nugget-1116-95
This is the fourth entry in my Daily Golden Nugget series explaining how to manage your Google business account through the Google My Business interface. I've included links to the first three parts at the bottom of today's edition.

Today's My Business topic is the reading and understanding the Insights app within the Google My Business interface. Once you log into your account, you need to click the box-cluster icon on the top right of your browser window as shown here:

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AT: 11/03/2014 11:48:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 31, 2014

TR Jewelers Website Review

by
TR Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1115-17
Today is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, and it's a special one too! In honor of Halloween, I decided to search for a jeweler that would be in, or nearby any town with a Halloween themed name. Naturally the first part of this adventure was to locate some towns with Halloween related names. I found these...

The first one I found was Scary, West Virginia. No jewelers in that town but I did find a store called Elizabeth's Attic within about 5 miles. Honestly their website is downright scary, VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/31/2014 06:59:40 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 30, 2014

How-to Use Google My Business Reviews

by
How-to Use Google My Business Reviews daily-golden-nugget-1114-17
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'll show you how you can use the interface within your Google My Business account to monitor your business reviews from around the internet.

This is the 3rd part of a multi-part series on using and editing your business account through the new Google My Business interface. Part 1 of this series was a basic orientation of Google My Business and Part 2 went into details of VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/30/2014 11:26:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Understanding and Editing Google My Business

by
Understanding and Editing Google My Business daily-golden-nugget-1113-41
This is part 2 of a multi-part Daily Golden Nugget series explaining how to edit your Google My Business listing. Please refer to this previous Nugget to see how to access your business information within Google's system.

Once you get into your account, you need to review and update any information that they have on file. It's important to log into your account and verify your information every once in a while. It mig...
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AT: 10/29/2014 07:09:32 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 28, 2014

The Timely Watch Promotion

by
The Timely Watch Promotion daily-golden-nugget-1112-16
Around this time every year, my local fire department hangs out their "Change your clocks, change your smoke detector batteries" sign. It doesn't rhyme at all, but they want to make sure you get into the habit of associating a required action with a life saving action that we all would otherwise forget about.

Since daylight savings time is on everyone's mind, this is also a good opportunity to tie in some type of watch promotion. Selling watches isn't as glamorous as selling diamond covered jewelry, but it's still a sale that shouldn't be overlooked...
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AT: 10/28/2014 09:38:03 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 27, 2014

Getting The Proper Invoice From Your Google AdWords Agency

by
Getting The Proper Invoice From Your Google AdWords Agency daily-golden-nugget-1111-64
Winds of change are coming for agencies that manage Google AdWords. The changes will be a big eye opener for business owners.

From my point of view, there are a lot of agencies that prey upon small businesses who don't know how Google AdWords works. Companies like DrivenLocal, ReachLocal, and even YellowPages all sell a good story but offer a limited paid advertising service.

Over the years, retail jewelers have called me after receiving an in-store visit from their local YellowP...
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AT: 10/27/2014 07:46:30 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 24, 2014

Romm Diamonds SERP Review

by
Romm Diamonds SERP Review daily-golden-nugget-1110-70
This is the Friday Jewelry Website review where I randomly find a retail jeweler's website from a random city to dissect and review. When I start this journey every week, I never know if I'm going to find a great looking website, a poorly functioning website, or something that's embarrassing to even look at.

Every review has a chance to touch upon topics of SEO, SEM, aesthetics, and usability. These reviews are usually not too in-depth, but just a cursory review that usually only reveals the most obvious issues.

The conclusions of evaluations...
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AT: 10/24/2014 08:27:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 23, 2014

Google Penguin Update After More Than A Year

by
Google Penguin Update After More Than A Year daily-golden-nugget-1109-73
I typically don't write about current trends in the search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) industry, but today's topic is both a reassessment and a follow up to a previous Nugget about Google Penguin.


Penguin Basics


In April 2012, Google started fighting online spam in a big way. Prior to that month, one of the most common methods of achieving high Google search ranking was to pay a company to create links to your website. A single fee of $79 could get you thousands of l...
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AT: 10/23/2014 06:58:10 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Google Analytics Benchmarking Channels Report

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Google Analytics Benchmarking Channels Report daily-golden-nugget-1108-45
Have you ever wondered how your jewelry store's marketing compares to other jewelers? Well, wonder no more because there's a way you can view that comparison in Google Analytics.

It's called the Benchmarking report, and it's available under the Audience -> Benchmarking -> Channels menu as shown here:

Google Analytics Benchmarking Channels Report 1108-ga-benchmarking-channels-menu-57VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/22/2014 08:43:32 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Google Analytics Users Flow Report

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Google Analytics Users Flow Report daily-golden-nugget-1107-48
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm going to show you one of the more visually interesting reports inside Google Analytics. It's the User Flow report, and with it, you can see how your website visitors are moving through your website.

At the time of this writing, the first report you see when logging into your Google Analytics account is the Audience Overview. From that report, you simply click on the User Flow link on the left menu as shown here:

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AT: 10/21/2014 11:13:15 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 20, 2014

Referral Websites That Work for Retail Jewelers

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Referral Websites That Work for Retail Jewelers daily-golden-nugget-1106-2-66
We're now in the last two weeks of October and a lot of holiday promotions are about to launch. You've probably already completed your own marketing and all the publication dates have been set. In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'll go over some last minute online marketing referral sources that you still have time to set up this week.

Your customers will find you through many online sources. Some of those sources will be your own paid marketing, while other people arrive through organic tra...
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AT: 10/20/2014 12:24:11 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 17, 2014

Fabri Fine Jewelry Website Review

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Fabri Fine Jewelry Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1105-71
Welcome to the Friday website review, where every week I randomly review the website of a local retail jewelry business somewhere in the US. The goal is to find something good, or bad, that we can all learn from and apply to our own business.

For this week's review, I'm heading over to Washington state and searching for "fine jewelry stores bellevue wa." When doing these searches, I always use the Google Chrome browser in incognito mode. This allows me to see non-personalized search results.

In case you don't know, Google trac...
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AT: 10/17/2014 11:32:58 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 16, 2014

Most Popular Landing Pages For Mobile Users to Retail Jewelry Store Websites

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Most Popular Landing Pages For Mobile Users to Retail Jewelry Store Websites daily-golden-nugget-1104-1
We know from yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget that people who browse jewelry websites prefer the iPhone over the Android. In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm investigating exactly what mobile visitors are searching for.

During the month of September 2014, I collected and analyzed all the landing pages for mobile visitors across m...
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AT: 10/16/2014 01:47:17 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Most Popular Smartphone Resolutions for September 2014

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 daily-golden-nugget-1103-31
What role will smartphones play in the lives of the everyday average consumer during the 2014 holidays? The mobile audience is becoming more important in marketing as mobile devices become more ubiquitous in everyone's daily lives.

Everyone has a different opinion of which smartphones are better. Many software developers prefer the Android devices because they provide more flexibility, whereas the Apple devices are designed to be more user friendly for the non-technically oriented.

As a follow up to yesterdays report of VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/15/2014 09:22:38 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Most Popular Desktop Screen Resolutions for 2014

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Most Popular Desktop Screen Resolutions for 2014 daily-golden-nugget-1102-55
In this Daily Golden Nugget, I'm showing you the most popular desktop screen resolutions for September 2014 and spanning back 3 years.

Knowing the most popular screen resolutions is great to know if you are redesigning your website, but 'tis not the season to be launching into a redesign. My hope is that this will help you put the final touches on your holiday online marketing.

About This Data


The data presented here was tracked across more than 100 retail jewelry websites. This is com...
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AT: 10/14/2014 08:57:24 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 13, 2014

Google Analytics: Segmenting Mobile Traffic

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Google Analytics: Segmenting Mobile Traffic daily-golden-nugget-1101-95
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'll bring to a close a multi-part series of holiday marketing for the 2014 season. This is the 11th part of the series all based around the unified topic of marketing for the 2014 season.

In this series, I started with explaining how to organize your marketing, then showed you how to set up tracking of that marketing, and concluded with a few posts showing you how to read the tracking results.

I've including the previous 10 related posts at the bottom, but you don't...
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AT: 10/13/2014 11:25:03 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 10, 2014

Introduction to Google My Business

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Introduction to Google My Business daily-golden-nugget-1100-6
Time flies and another one hundred Daily Golden Nuggets have passed. This is the 1100th edition of my 5-day a week newsletter, and to commemorate that milestone, I'm returning back to my favorite topic: how Google drives customers to your door, literally.

Google's free business listing service has morphed over the years from its original simple name of Maps, to Local, to Places, to +Local, and Places for Business. In April 2014, Google finished migrating all business accounts from the "Places" interface to the "Places for Business" inte...
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AT: 10/10/2014 12:47:22 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 09, 2014

Hiring Freelancers and Paying Them on 1099

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Hiring Freelancers and Paying Them on 1099 daily-golden-nugget-1099-33
Today is the 1099th Daily Golden Nugget!

There have been a few special number nuggets so far, like the 100, 200, 404, the 505, the 970, 1000, and now the 1099. What's so special about 1099? Well in the United States, that isn't just a number; it's also the tax form you give to your freelancers and subcontractors at the end of every year instead of a W2.

Although the US employment rules say you should hire employees and put them on payroll, there are times when you might want to only hir...
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AT: 10/09/2014 06:06:39 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 08, 2014

Village Jewelers Website Review

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Village Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1098-48

I'm changing up my usually schedule this week. I have two special Daily Nuggets for Thursday and Friday this week which pushes my weekly review to today.

For today's website review, I'm heading back down to Nashville, Tennessee in search of a jeweler. Here's the Google SERP when I searched for "jeweler Nashville, Tennessee":

Village Jewelers Website Review 1098-jewelers-nashville-tennessee-serp-99 VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/08/2014 11:23:19 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 07, 2014

Google Analytics: Reading Campaign Reports

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Google Analytics: Reading Campaign Reports daily-golden-nugget-1097-9In a recent Daily Nugget, I presented a marketing tactic that would allow you to use domain names to track print media ads. I followed up that post with another that gave specific examples of how to set up UTM variables in your URLs that can be tracked in Google Analytics....
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AT: 10/07/2014 06:57:09 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 06, 2014

Examples of Scrollmap Usage

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Examples of Scrollmap Usage daily-golden-nugget-1096-78In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'll show you how to use a scrollmap to help analyze a product page. A scrollmap is a created by monitoring the up and down scrolling of your website visitors to reveal which part of the page are viewed most often. The brightest areas show what users have seen the most, while the darker areas show what has been viewed the least.

Although you can read today's Nugget as a single post about scrollmap usage, this is a continuation of a longer series designed to help you with your 2014 hol...
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AT: 10/06/2014 07:13:05 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 03, 2014

Champaign Jewelers Website Review

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Champaign Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1095-10
One of the common errors in the English language is the confusion between the words Champagne and Champaign.

Champagne is a region in France where the sparkling wine, champagne, comes from. Those French "regions" are similar to states in the US. Although there are vineyards all over the world that produce sparkling wine, it's not "champagne" unless the grapes were grown, and the wine was produced in that region of France. The capital city of Champagne is Epernay, which I visited a few years ago. I've include...
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AT: 10/03/2014 06:20:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 02, 2014

Google Analytics: Exit Page Report

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Google Analytics: Exit Page Report daily-golden-nugget-1094-6
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'll show and explain the Exit Page report in Google Analytics.

Although this edition can stand alone as a single Nugget, it's actually part of a larger series on holiday marketing and how to analyze that marketing. This is the 8th part to that series. I've included the first 7 in a link list at the bottom of this Nugget.

Google Analytics Exit Page Report


Let's take a look at the Exit Pages report in GA. This is similar to the VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/02/2014 07:01:54 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 01, 2014

Google Webmaster Tools: Top Pages Report

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Google Webmaster Tools: Top Pages Report daily-golden-nugget-1093-10
In today's edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'd like to show you how to find the keywords that people are using to find particular pages of your website.

Although this Nugget does stand on its own, it's actually part of a series of post I've written for the 2014 holiday season. This is part-7 in that complete series. I've included links to the first 6 parts at the bottom of this post.

Today we'll be looking at Google Webmaster Tools, so if you don't already have your account set up and ve...
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AT: 10/01/2014 09:06:28 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 29, 2014

Google Analytics: Landing Page Report

by
Google Analytics: Landing Page Report daily-golden-nugget-1092-89In today's Daily Nugget, I'll show you how to read one of the important Google Analytics reports that will help you understand how people found you during the holiday season.

Although this Nugget can stand on its own, this is actually the next part in a longer joined series of topics to prepare online advertising content for the holiday season. Launch it, then track it. I've included links to the previous Nuggets at the end of today's newsletter.

Today I'm starting with the Google Analytics Landing...
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AT: 09/29/2014 01:19:58 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 29, 2014

Planning the Online Tracking Needed to Help Sell Your Products

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Planning the Online Tracking Needed to Help Sell Your Products daily-golden-nugget-1091-23
Throughout all of last week, I've been laying the groundwork for a complete holiday 2014 marketing plan that you can use to promote a chosen suite of items.

Here a recap:

1. You need to select some items that you'll use in your holiday promotions. Read this to find out how to select the best items.

2. You then need to plan your o...
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AT: 09/29/2014 08:52:49 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 26, 2014

Roth Jewelers & LR Jewelers Website Review

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Roth Jewelers & LR Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1090-72
Welcome to the Friday retail jewelry website review. Every week, I select a random location around the United States in search of a review candidate. The object of this review is to learn something that might be able to help you with your own website.

I always try to write the review with an unbiased point of view, and I especially hope that the jewelers reading this will use these reviews to better their online presence.

For this week, I'm using the search phrase "jewelry stores Waterlo...
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AT: 09/26/2014 06:11:23 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 25, 2014

Domain Names Used to Track How You Sell Your Products

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Domain Names Used to Track How You Sell Your Products daily-golden-nugget-1089-50
Over the last three days, I've given you some specific marketing tactics that, as a whole, would equate to a large marketing campaign for the holiday season. I began with a discussion on choosing the right products for the campaign, then explained how to VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 09/25/2014 08:43:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Online Marketing Campaigns To Sell Your Products

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Online Marketing Campaigns To Sell Your Products daily-golden-nugget-1088-60
This is the third part of my Daily Golden Nugget series outlining a potential marketing plan for the upcoming holiday season. The first part explained how to select the items to promote during the holidays. The second part detailed how to set up your newspa...
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AT: 09/24/2014 06:18:19 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Offline and Email Marketing Campaigns To Sell Your Products

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Offline and Email Marketing Campaigns To Sell Your Products daily-golden-nugget-1087-57
This is the second part of my Daily Golden Nugget series outlining a potential marketing plan for the upcoming holiday season. The first part I began yesterday explained how you should select a specific set of jewelry items and then write blogs, take photography, and make videos for those items.

Today, I'll go into some detail about launching the ...
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AT: 09/23/2014 06:34:59 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 22, 2014

Building a Marketing Campaign To Sell Your Products

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Building a Marketing Campaign To Sell Your Products  daily-golden-nugget-1086-68
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm outlining a potential marketing plan for the upcoming holiday season. My example will focus on specific items which we will build content around and share socially.

What I've written out in this guide will be good for anyone looking for a different approach to marketing for this upcoming holiday season. There's a lot of detail for the setup, implementation, and then the post-analysis of the entire campaign. You'll do the setup...
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AT: 09/22/2014 07:36:51 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 19, 2014

Berning's Fine Jewelry Website Review

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Bernings Fine Jewelry Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1085-32
Welcome to the Friday retail jewelry store website review. For this week's review, I'm searching for "jewelers Tempe, Arizona" using Google Chrome in incognito mode.

If this is the first time you're reading my reviews, then let me explain that I review a different random retail store website every Friday. These are sites have no relation to me or the website agency services my company provides. These are just straight forward, cursory reviews of what a website looks like, how it functions, some SEO analys...
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AT: 09/19/2014 11:06:04 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 18, 2014

Massive Product Databases and Online Marketing of Products

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Massive Product Databases and Online Marketing of Products daily-golden-nugget-1084-11
Let's talk products.

Do you have them on your site? I'm not talking about links to offsite vendor catalogs, or even iframe widgets either. You need to have an honest-to-goodness product catalog on your website that you control.

During the days of the Internet Bubble of the late 90s, everyone would flock to your website to see what you sold. There were many early attempts at e-commerce and online shopping, but setting up an e-commerce system yourself is co...
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AT: 09/18/2014 09:46:26 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Setting the Preferred Domain for Your Website

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Setting the Preferred Domain for Your Website daily-golden-nugget-1083-29
For today's Daily Nugget, I'm answering a direct question that came in from one of my readers. Did you know you can send me questions? Submit them through the contact form on the jWAG site, or send them to me through Google+ or Facebook.

The answer to this question is a little technical, but this brings together a few different topics.

Here's the question:
My nephew's been enjoying his SEO...
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AT: 09/17/2014 07:26:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Google Updates The Usefulness of Business Directory Websites

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Google Updates The Usefulness of Business Directory Websites daily-golden-nugget-1082-35
I've always believed that a local business should pay attention to how their company appears online. There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of random business directories where public business and store information can be found.

These business directories often get their start by purchasing lists of business names to populate into their sites. Databases of company names, addresses, owners, phone numbers, and business types are all available for purchase thr...
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AT: 09/16/2014 09:31:17 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 15, 2014

Optimizing Images for Google Image Search in 2014 - Important Image SEO Steps

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Optimizing Images for Google Image Search in 2014 - Important Image SEO Steps daily-golden-nugget-1081-61
When Google Image Search was redesigned in January 2013, it introduced a modern way of looking at images across the web. Images were presented larger, with the ability to view just the image or jump to the website where the image was found.

I remember having a lot of trouble understanding the redesigned user interface for Image Search, but after a few months I finally got used to it.

A lot of SEO professionals VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 09/15/2014 06:29:20 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 12, 2014

John Ross Jewelers Website Review

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John Ross Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1080-86
Today is the Friday Review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal of this review is to analyze a website for its good qualities, and bad, and to learn from it. Every week I choose a location in the United States from which to pluck a review candidate from.

This week I'm heading over to Albany, Georgia. What I remember most about my own visits to Georgia is the unstoppable kudzu. But today I'm less concerned with vines that grow 1 foot per day because I'm in need of a quality jewelry store.

So I'm ...
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AT: 09/12/2014 08:42:57 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 11, 2014

Website Redesign Case Study

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Website Redesign Case Study daily-golden-nugget-1079-88
The other day, I was helping a business colleague of mine review a website design his customer gave him. For storytelling simplicity, I'll refer to my colleague as Joe and his customer as Sue. Although Joe doesn't work in the jewelry industry, the early steps in designing a website are very similar across all industries, and I bet all website programming companies have the same experience working with their customers.

Sue wants to open a brand new e-commerce store by December 1st. She already owns an old e-commerce store w...
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AT: 09/11/2014 08:24:52 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Share the Content Creation Burden and Then Share Socially

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Share the Content Creation Burden and Then Share Socially daily-golden-nugget-1078-56
Content creation is a continual task for every website owner. It can also be a very challenging task to come up with new content all the time without suffering from mental burnout or writer's block. That burnout will have a bad effect on your long term SEO, so it needs to be prevented.

One way to prevent content creation burnout is to spread the task around between several employees on your sales staff. Remember that website content isn't just blog posts. Content...
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AT: 09/10/2014 07:44:50 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 09, 2014

These Old Daily Nuggets Are Now Rubbish

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These Old Daily Nuggets Are Now Rubbish daily-golden-nugget-1077-98
Seventy-seven week days ago, when I reached the 1000th Nugget milestone, I got the idea that I should write a recap of all the technology that I wrote about that came and went since 2010 when I started this daily newsletter.

Although I really want to be nostalgic, I don't even have the time to look through 1000 posts to create a full list. But I'm going to give it a try and see where this goes, so let's have a little fun... Instead of learning something new today, I'll look at some old topics that I'v...
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AT: 09/09/2014 09:03:03 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 08, 2014

Robots.txt and Meta Robots - A Beginner's Guide

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Robots.txt and Meta Robots - A Beginners Guide daily-golden-nugget-1076-91
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm going to cover a topic that's security related. I'll split it into a non-technical discussion at the beginning and then the technical stuff at the end. Website owners can read the non techie stuff and forward the rest to their web programmer.

The topic is the robots.txt file and meta robots tags.

Basic Explanation ...

Every website must have a robots.txt file in order for Google and Bing to read your website. You shou...
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AT: 09/08/2014 11:12:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 05, 2014

Jewelry Design Center Website Review

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Jewelry Design Center Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1075-18
This is the Friday Retail Jeweler website review. The goal for today is to examine a random jewelry website, pull it apart to see how it functions and evaluate the good and the bad that we can learn from.

Every week my staff gives me a random city in the United States and I use Google Chrome in incognito mode to search for local jewelers there. This week the target city was Spokane, Washington.

My search phrase was "jewelers in Spokane WA"

These are the search results Google returned:
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AT: 09/05/2014 07:53:13 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 04, 2014

Important 2014 Marketing Dates and Sales Headlines

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Important 2014 Marketing Dates and Sales Headlines daily-golden-nugget-1074-45
Over the next 4 months, you'll have several opportunities for social media and email marketing campaigns that can be associated with special calendar events.

A quick look at my own wall calendar and I see these jumping out at me as important US dates that can tie into your marketing campaigns:

September 7, 2014: Grandparents Day
October 13, 2014: Columbus Day
October 31, 2014: Halloween
November 2, 2014: Daylight Savings Time Ends
November 11, 2014: Veterans' D...
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AT: 09/04/2014 11:10:49 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 03, 2014

The Speed of Social Media and Its Influence As A Driving Force on Sales

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The Speed of Social Media and Its Influence As A Driving Force on Sales daily-golden-nugget-1073-54
A few times of the year, a simple turning of the page on the calendar reveals not simply tomorrow's date, but triggers a complete shift of thinking.

Early September heralds the beginning of the fall season in the northern hemisphere. Summer vacations are over and school starts again. It's an overnight shift in thinking from leisurely days into a regimented structure for the next 8 to 9 months.

It's time to pack up those summer clo...
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AT: 09/03/2014 06:35:41 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 02, 2014

Google Beheaded Authorship

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Google Beheaded Authorship 4116-daily-golden-nugget-1072
Google's done it again. Off with the author's head!

Over the past four years I have written about many online marketing topics and website procedures that are no longer valid. Social networks, review websites, and SEO techniques are forever in flux.

Facebook has changed or removed many of the features I've written about, but not nearly as many times as Google has changed since my Daily Nuggets began.

Most of the time, Google quietly changes their search algorithm features without telling anyone. But there...
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AT: 09/02/2014 11:49:20 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 01, 2014

Upgrading Your Website Without Losing Organic Ranking

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Upgrading Your Website Without Losing Organic Ranking 1154-daily-golden-nugget-1071
Two weeks ago I wrote a Nugget about the potential decline of your website's ranking when you launch a new website. The scenario proposed in that Nugget assumed you transferred all your existing content and SEO settings to the new website, but you changed your URL structure, causing the decline. Preventing that decline requires the setup of 301 redirects so ...
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AT: 09/01/2014 12:49:32 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 29, 2014

Review of 3 Hayward Jewelers

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Review of 3 Hayward Jewelers 4913-daily-golden-nugget-1070
My journey today began with a search for "jewelry stores Hayward CA." You see, I'm pretending to be a real customer searching for a local jeweler in Hayward. My goal is to examine how the local jewelers in that town stack up in Google search, take a look at their websites, and see what can be learned by the experience.

This is my weekly retail jeweler website review, but this week I'm changing up the format a little bit.

Here's a snapshot of the business listing I saw in the Google SERP for that search:
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AT: 08/29/2014 12:42:15 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 28, 2014

Off-Site SEO for Retail Jewelers

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Off-Site SEO for Retail Jewelers 2145-daily-golden-nugget-1069
This week I've been explaining the differences between Technical SEO,On-Site SEO, and Off-Site SEO.

While the technical aspects of search engine optimization include a lot of analysis and analytical thinking, the on-site optimization requires a creative flair for writing, photography, and customer satisfaction that...
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AT: 08/28/2014 09:24:10 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 27, 2014

On-Site SEO for Retail Jewelers

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On-Site SEO for Retail Jewelers 3669-daily-golden-nugget-1068
In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget, I began a discussion about the differences between Technical SEO, On-Site SEO, and Off-Site SEO, and I detailed several very important, but sometimes boring aspects of what I refer to as the technical side of SEO.

Technical SEO is certainly something that computer scientists and programmers do best. Even though the technical SEO procedures are important, I don't often not...
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AT: 08/27/2014 10:42:26 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Technical SEO, On-Site SEO, and Off-Site SEO

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Technical SEO, On-Site SEO, and Off-Site SEO 4166-daily-golden-nugget-1067
In its simplest terms, search engine optimization is the process of doing something for your website that will help it to rank higher in search engines. Google maintains its dominance over the entire search engine industry because it keeps its users happy.

Users... Those are the everyday people of this world, like you and me, who keep returning to Google because it offers the best search results no matter which device you use. Google pays attention to what we all look for, how we use ...
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AT: 08/26/2014 09:12:26 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 25, 2014

Understanding Uptime Availability and How Google Reports It

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Understanding Uptime Availability and How Google Reports It 1092-daily-golden-nugget-1066
According to Wikipedia, uptime "is a measure of the time a machine, typically a computer, has been working and available."

Interestingly enough, the Wikipedia page only explains Uptime in relation to the physical computer servers that run just about everything in the world now, but not about websites.

Last week I mentioned uptime in my Nugget about VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 08/25/2014 12:47:46 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 22, 2014

Cooks Jewelers Website Review

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Cooks Jewelers Website Review 4395-daily-golden-nugget-1065
Welcome to the Friday jewelry website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal for today is to examine a random retail jeweler's website and learn from something they did right or wrong.

I don't plan these reviews out, and I usually write these reviews as I work through the discovery of each site, documenting my first thoughts as well as how different stuff fits together.

This week, I searched for "jewelry stores Kirksville, Missouri" and was given this Google SERP:

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AT: 08/22/2014 11:09:41 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 21, 2014

Why Did Organic Traffic Drop After Launching A New Site?

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Why Did Organic Traffic Drop After Launching A New Site? 3941-daily-golden-nugget-1064
The Scenario:

The day has finally come when you've decided to upgrade your website to the latest and greatest content management system and website design. It's a big decision to make that leap considering how much time it will take and the cost to do it. It might be months before the new site is live.

You're going to have a lot of things to worry about during the process of setting up the new site. Difficult design issues, photography concerns, ...
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AT: 08/21/2014 01:42:51 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Improve Your Website's Success With These 3 Methods

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Improve Your Websites Success With These 3 Methods 1664-daily-golden-nugget-1063
In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget, I gave a list of four things that could improve the success of your website and how you use the internet.

Here's a quick refresher of those four:
1. Anticipate customer needs...
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AT: 08/20/2014 02:03:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Improve Your Website's Success by Anticipating Your Customer's Needs

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Improve Your Websites Success by Anticipating Your Customers Needs 9565-daily-golden-nugget-1062
It seems like every day I see not one, not two, but perhaps more than a dozen different online marketing campaigns that make me scratch my head wondering why they bothered.

I'm not only referring to the jewelry industry either, but all types of online marketing. It just seems like so many businesses don't understand the larger view of how intertwined the internet is to everyday life and the expectations of their customers.

The business...
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AT: 08/19/2014 02:04:36 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 18, 2014

Don't Hire a Social Media Management Agency While Blindfolded

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Dont Hire a Social Media Management Agency While Blindfolded 773-daily-golden-nugget-1061
Although I'd like nothing more than for every jeweler to manage their own social media accounts, the truth is that many business owners don't, or can't do it. I'm told many reasons why they can't, like not having enough time, or not knowing where to start, or how to do it, or even which social network they should be using.

And which social network should you be using VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 08/18/2014 10:48:40 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 15, 2014

Reviews of Jewelers in Arlington, Virginia

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Reviews of Jewelers in Arlington, Virginia 4899-daily-golden-nugget-1060
This is the Friday website review where I randomly look for a jewelry website to dissect so we can all learn something new. This week I'm taking a slightly different approach to locating a review candidate. I'm going to search in a county instead of a specific town.

To start the process, I always open an incognito window with Google Chrome. This step allows me to do searches in Google without any personalized results affecting what I see. Google has several ways to identify your compute...
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AT: 08/15/2014 02:06:17 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 14, 2014

Google Analytics: Understanding the Audience Overview Report

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Google Analytics: Understanding the Audience Overview Report 3564-daily-golden-nugget-1059
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm going to show you how to read one of the most popular reports in Google Analytics. In my opinion, retail jewelry store owners should know the basics of how good or bad their website is doing, and what might make it better.

When you first log into your Google Analytics account, you will be brought to your Audience Overview page, so let's start there. Here's a snapshot of one of my accounts:

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AT: 08/14/2014 10:21:55 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Reading Your SEO Reports: Google Webmaster Tools

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Reading Your SEO Reports: Google Webmaster Tools 9581-daily-golden-nugget-1058
Every online marketing company has their own version of reports. It's one of the requirements of any marketing or SEO service. You, as the website owner, want to know what they are doing and what you are paying for.

Some agencies provide their own really nice looking reports with charts and graphs, while others provide lists of pages and keywords with percentage increases and decreases. On many occasions I've found that agencies created reports using reporting software that t...
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AT: 08/13/2014 09:21:22 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Is it Worthwhile to Advertise on a Local Community Website?

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Is it Worthwhile to Advertise on a Local Community Website? 531-daily-golden-nugget-1057
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm going to explain an often overlooked way to advertise your website locally. It comes at a lower cost, and with a higher return, than most other online advertising methods.

It's very easy to get swept away by the hype of online advertising methods like Google AdWords and Facebook Ads, and to buy into the claims of large online advertising agencies. While you can get a lot of good results from agencies, Facebook, ...
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AT: 08/12/2014 09:35:25 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 11, 2014

Proven Results of On-Site Blogging

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Proven Results of On-Site Blogging 8461-daily-golden-nugget-1056
The other day, I presented some historical data showing why it's bad to have an offsite blog instead of a blog on your website.

I'm going to continue this on-site/off-site discussion today with a presentation of measured results for when you do have a blog on your site.

The data I'm presenting today is part of the ...
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AT: 08/11/2014 09:23:45 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 08, 2014

Four Jewelry Store Online Catalog Reviews

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Four Jewelry Store Online Catalog Reviews 2194-daily-golden-nugget-1055
I decided to give myself a little challenge today with this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, Friday Website Review. I'm back in Bordeaux, France today, and in honor of that I decided to search for any town or location within the United States that was named after Bordeaux, France. I only found one, and apparently it's a small settlement in the US Virgin Islands, so I decided to check it out.

Sadly, it really is just a settlement without a large town, and certainly no jewelers. Accordin...
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AT: 08/08/2014 02:17:52 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 07, 2014

Is Off-Site Blogging A Waste Of Money?

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Is Off-Site Blogging A Waste Of Money? 8117-daily-golden-nugget-1054
I'm a big believer in maintaining your blog as part of your website rather than setting up a separate blog on another website. Last year, I was able to present some data that explained why the ons...
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AT: 08/07/2014 10:51:24 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 06, 2014

Who's Using Google Remarketing: Sleazy Reality Slap

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Whos Using Google Remarketing: Sleazy Reality Slap 940-daily-golden-nugget-1053
Google AdWords Remarketing is an online marketing method that allows you to show ads to people who have already visited your website. You and Google control who sees the ads by secretly tagging every visitor to your website, then choosing what ad to show to them around the internet.

I always like to refer to AdWord Remarketing as a separate type of online marketing, but...
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AT: 08/06/2014 02:04:47 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 05, 2014

Imagining Possibilities With Facebook Retargeting and Dark Posts

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Imagining Possibilities With Facebook Retargeting and Dark Posts 4977-daily-golden-nugget-1052
In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget, I detailed the difference between boosting a Facebook post vs. targeting an audience with a specific post or ad. I also provided a strategy to use Facebook advertising more effectively using Google AdWords Remarketing...
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AT: 08/05/2014 09:18:51 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 04, 2014

Jewelers Who Pay to Play on Facebook

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Jewelers Who Pay to Play on Facebook 143-daily-golden-nugget-1051
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm reviewing another section of the seminar I presented on July 27, 2014 at the JA NY show. This segment is about paying for traffic on Facebook; should you be doing that?

Paying for online advertising always has a right way and a wrong way. Typically the wrong way is seriously wrong and it's a complete waste of money. Most businesses, not just retail jewelers, are advertising on Facebook wrong.

Once upon a time, any business could set up a Facebook b...
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AT: 08/04/2014 02:03:38 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 01, 2014

Hood River Jewelers Website Review

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Hood River Jewelers Website Review 2536-daily-golden-nugget-1050
This is the Friday edition of the Daily Golden Nugget where I randomly choose a jewelry store's website to review.

This week I found my review candidate by searching for "jewelers in hood river Oregon" and choosing the top listing shown here:

Hood River Jewelers Website Review 311-1050-serp

This is a case where a jew...
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AT: 08/01/2014 09:25:14 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 31, 2014

Adding and Deleting Content From Your Website

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Adding and Deleting Content From Your Website 8829-daily-golden-nugget-1049
Your business changes every day. Sometimes it's a small change like getting new inventory into your store and sometimes it's a big change like moving to a larger location.

The jewelry industry is highly competitive, and many times it's difficult to rank above your competitors if you don't have enough information on your website. You can't rely on a few educational pages, like the 4C's, and then small product catalog with images and simple descriptions. That's simply not enough in...
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AT: 07/31/2014 09:20:28 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 30, 2014

History and Special Uses of the Website Sitemap

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History and Special Uses of the Website Sitemap 4371-daily-golden-nugget-1048
How deep is your website? The depth of a website is measured by the number of times you would have to click on a navigation link in order to reach the most nested areas of your website.

I've read website design recommendations stating that every page of your website should be reachable within 3 clicks. Anything more than that supposedly won't be of interest by website users.

But when it comes to a product catalog, it's very easy to dive down into 4 levels very quickly. <...
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AT: 07/30/2014 10:56:09 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Sorting Through Variables, ABC's, and a Little Duplicate Content

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Sorting Through Variables, ABCs, and a Little Duplicate Content 1783-daily-golden-nugget-1047
Ever have one of those days where you get mentally slapped with something so obvious that you can't believe you never realized it before?

The other day I was studying one of those infamous SEO reports to diagnose a problem on a website. The report stated that a particular website has 600 products in the online catalog when I knew for a fact that there were only 250. So here I am, staring at this report trying to comprehend why the SEO report was s...
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AT: 07/29/2014 11:41:29 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 28, 2014

Are Yellow Pages Bad For Your Business?

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Are Yellow Pages Bad For Your Business? 5316-daily-golden-nugget-1046
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of presenting a seminar at the JA show in NYC. The seminar was "Should You Pay For Website Traffic? Understanding How and Why."

During the seminar, I detailed what I know about Yelp, Pandora Radio, Google AdWords, and a few others methods of online advertising that can work for or against you.

One of the online marketing methods that generally works against you is Yellow Pages. Once upon a time, it was common for everyone to "let their fingers do the walki...
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AT: 07/28/2014 09:14:09 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 25, 2014

SERP Review of Jewelers Near Elma NY

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SERP Review of Jewelers Near Elma NY 8987-daily-golden-nugget-1045
This is the Friday Review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Every week I analyze the online properties of a jewelry store found during a random search in a random city.

For this week's review, I searched for "jewelers near elma ny" to find this search result:

SERP Review of Jewelers Near Elma NY 5356-1045-serpVIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 07/25/2014 09:26:06 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 24, 2014

How To Find 4 Years of Sustainable Blogging Topics

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How To Find 4 Years of Sustainable Blogging Topics 4541-daily-golden-nugget-1044
On Saturday this week, I'm celebrating another Daily Golden Nugget milestone--it's the 4th anniversary of when I published my first Nugget. Four years, and still going strong.

Blogging can lead to a lot of opportunities for business and in your personal life. I find it extremely rewarding. If you haven't started blogging yet, then read through this s...
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AT: 07/24/2014 01:11:17 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 23, 2014

A Forward Look At Mobile Websites

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A Forward Look At Mobile Websites 8384-daily-golden-nugget-1043
The number of mobile users is still rising, but the rate at which jewelers are intentionally deploying mobile websites is slowing. In the month of June 2014, I tracked 43.12% of visitors to jewelry websites using either a smartphone or a tablet. This is up from the 39.88% I reported in April 2014.

This mobile usage level during the recent slow summer months is now higher than ...
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AT: 07/23/2014 10:21:19 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Examples of Link Building and Bad Blog Comments

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Examples of Link Building and Bad Blog Comments 1122-daily-golden-nugget-1042
It never ceases to amaze me that jewelers are either paying for, or directly engaging in link building schemes that are bad for them. With all the talk of Google Penguin since April 2012, I'm surprised that some businesses still don't understand the difference between good and bad link building.

Here are some basics of potentially good ways to build l...
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AT: 07/22/2014 11:23:25 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 21, 2014

Walk a Mile in Your Customer's Shoes to Understand Their Intent

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Walk a Mile in Your Customers Shoes to Understand Their Intent 1990-daily-golden-nugget-1041
I've been sharing a lot of my secret tips recently and today I'd like to share another. This one's about understanding your customer's intent.

One of the biggest mistakes I've noticed many retail store owners, not just jewelers, make is that they set up their store, create advertisements, and design their website based on what they believe their customers will like, without truly trying to understand what their customer's intent is.

It's easy ...
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AT: 07/21/2014 03:40:53 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 18, 2014

Avalon Park Jewelers Website Review

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Avalon Park Jewelers Website Review 2960-daily-golden-nugget-1040
Five months from today, you will be launching your last minute Christmas advertising campaigns and counting down the last 7 days before the big holiday. Have you started to prepare your website and holiday ads yet?

The other day, I was walking through one of those stores that sells Christmas items all year long and I couldn't help but remember that now is the time for those "Christmas in July" sales events. However, considering that today is Friday, I immediately started to wonder how many towns were n...
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AT: 07/18/2014 12:31:34 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 17, 2014

AdWords Test Budgets Help Discover Keywords

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AdWords Test Budgets Help Discover Keywords 3114-daily-golden-nugget-1039
Google changes the way AdWords works all the time. I'm continually reviewing all their changes just to keep up with the latest features. It's not easy.

Regardless of the new features Google AdWords has, the first thing you need to decide when setting up your new AdWords campaign is the list of keywords to target.

What keywords are best? That's a real tough question to answer since Google hides them from you in your Analytics reports.

According to Google's search engine op...
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AT: 07/17/2014 10:59:55 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Using 404 Error Pages Effectively

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Using 404 Error Pages Effectively 956-daily-golden-nugget-1038
Every website should be configured to return some type of error message when something unexpected happens. If you've recently changed or moved your website page around, you could accidentally create broken links on your site, or accidentally delete a page that is still in your navigation menu. When a page goes missing, is deleted, or a link is bad, the web server should display an error message explaining that something went wrong. This error message is known as a 404 Error.

Although all websites use status c...
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AT: 07/16/2014 08:38:30 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 15, 2014

CAPTCHA: Good and Evil

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CAPTCHA: Good and Evil 1696-daily-golden-nugget-1037
Perhaps one of the most heated website design debates I've read recently was about the use of CAPTCHA on website forms. You know what CAPTCHA is, right? It's that annoying string of characters or words you have to retype before you can submit a website form.

CAPTCHAs are used to prove that a real person is submitting the form on your website rather than a computer program. Spammers use automated programs to send solicitations through your website forms. The reason behind this Nugget in the first place is a recent flurry of s...
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AT: 07/15/2014 09:22:55 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 14, 2014

Wixon Jewelers: 2014 Small Business of the Year

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Wixon Jewelers: 2014 Small Business of the Year 6059-daily-golden-nugget-1036
Small business owners always seem to struggle trying to balance the time they spend working in their store, managing back office paperwork, and growing the business. It's very difficult to achieve the perfect balance of spending time with each of these tasks if no one showed you how to do it correctly in the first place.

Occasionally, you will find a small business success story in the news, and perhaps you wonder how they achieved their success. From my own personal experience,...
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AT: 07/14/2014 09:22:05 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 11, 2014

Alex, Cliff, and Trimarco Jewelers Website Review

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Alex, Cliff, and Trimarco Jewelers Website Review 5469-daily-golden-nugget-1035
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Every Friday I choose a random city and search for a potential jeweler to use as my review candidate.

This week I'm looking in Maplewood, NJ for a local jeweler. I used the search query "jewelers in maplewood nj" and found the results below. There's a lot of detail in the SERP screen shot, so click it to view larger:

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AT: 07/11/2014 02:22:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 10, 2014

Basic SEO: Keywords for Jewelers

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Basic SEO: Keywords for Jewelers 1938-daily-golden-nugget-1034
This short post is part of my "Grains of SEO Gold" series covering basic SEO topics and how to apply them.

Today's SEO Topic: Keywords

Once upon a time, if you wanted your website to rank for a particular keyword, you would simply include that word on your web pages a specific numbers of times in order to get top ranking in the search results.

For many years, it was a competition of keyword density between different websites that wanted to rank higher.

Those web pages with high repetitive...
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AT: 07/10/2014 11:46:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 09, 2014

Basic SEO: Meta Robots Tag

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Basic SEO: Meta Robots Tag 9213-daily-golden-nugget-1033
This short post is part of my "Grains of SEO Gold" series covering basic SEO topics and how to apply them.

Today's SEO Topic: Meta Robots Tag

During a recent website review, I illustrated how duplicate content could be created on your website when using the services from an agency that specializes in creating websites for retail jewelry stores.

Specialty marketing agencies exist in every vertical market (ones to do with g...
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AT: 07/09/2014 09:14:51 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 08, 2014

Basic SEO: Mobile Websites

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Basic SEO: Mobile Websites 8756-daily-golden-nugget-1032
This short post is part of my "Grains of SEO Gold" series covering basic SEO topics and how to apply them.

Today's SEO Topic: Mobile Websites

There's no way around it any more. Your customers want a mobile website and Google is practically demanding that you give it to them.

Back in May 2014, I reported that 40% of users to jewelry websites are using mobile devices, 28% of which ...
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AT: 07/08/2014 03:57:28 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 07, 2014

Basic SEO: Page Titles and Headers

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Basic SEO: Page Titles and Headers 179-daily-golden-nugget-1031
Over the course of the next week or two, I'm going to supply you with a bunch of shorter Daily Golden Nuggets specifically explaining smaller SEO topics. Instead of calling them "nuggets," I should call them "Grains of SEO Gold."

Today's SEO Topic: Page Titles and Header Tags

It used to be that the website's Page Title was easily readable at the top of your web browser window, but now that most web browsers use tabs, it's very difficult to see what the page title says.

Even though it's difficu...
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AT: 07/07/2014 11:47:43 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 03, 2014

How SEO Relates to Retail Store Foot Traffic

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How SEO Relates to Retail Store Foot Traffic 9057-daily-golden-nugget-1029
I recently had a conversation with a jeweler who was worried about the declining foot traffic in their store. Some months ago they hired an SEO agency to work on their website and at the same time the foot traffic to their store started to increase. Then the foot traffic to their retail store started to decline shortly after they stopped paying for the SEO agency.

The assumption was that the SEO agency was the only factor in increasing their foot traffic. It would be every SEO profes...
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AT: 07/03/2014 02:27:40 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 02, 2014

Preventing Writer's Block in Your Freelance Writers

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Preventing Writers Block in Your Freelance Writers 7346-daily-golden-nugget-1028
It's not easy to beat writer's block once you have it. You can sit for seemingly an eternity trying to find the right words. Oftentimes, you might even feel completely defeated.

Thankfully, I learned how to beat my own writer's block a few years ago. This is my 1,028th blog post and I would never have gotten past 100 if I didn't figure out how to solve that problem.

Here are my 2 secrets to preventing my own writer's block:

1. I write the title of my blog p...
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AT: 07/02/2014 09:32:05 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 01, 2014

Link Exchanges That Are More Than Meets The Eye

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Link Exchanges That Are More Than Meets The Eye 8193-daily-golden-nugget-1027
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm going to show you how to analyze, and why you should avoid link exchanges that are offered to you.

Over the last few weeks, one of my customers has been receiving this email through the contact form on their website:

"Dear Webmaster,
I'm the webmaster of http://beyond4cs.com/
Not too long ago, we came across your site http://www.(obfuscated).com/ on the Internet and feel that it would fit perfectly into ou...
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AT: 07/01/2014 12:35:29 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, June 30, 2014

The Evolution of a Swipe File

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 The Evolution of a Swipe File 9041-daily-golden-nugget-1026
Do a Google search for the phrase "there are no original ideas anymore" and you will find 57 million results explaining how the world has run out of ideas.

Can it be true? Has the world truly run dry of new concepts and ideas?

Although I've heard a few people make such statements, I never gave it much real thought until the summer of 2013. There were a lot of big changes that inspired me to write a Nugget detailing how SEO...
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AT: 06/30/2014 09:29:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 27, 2014

Tharoo & Co Website Review

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Tharoo & Co Website Review 8015-daily-golden-nugget-1025
For this week's website review, I'm heading down to sunny Florida in search of a jewelry store in Orlando.

Here's a screen shot of the local results when I searched for "jewelry stores in orlando":

Tharoo & Co Website Review 5617-1025-serp

I'm choosing the top jeweler, Tharoo & Co. Their website is:
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AT: 06/27/2014 03:21:57 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 26, 2014

Google's Policy On Mobile Website Redirecting

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Googles Policy On Mobile Website Redirecting 3614-daily-golden-nugget-1024
Google recently implemented new policies regarding mobile websites that could, and will zap you from the search results if you've implemented a particular setting with your mobile website.

They've changed their smartphone guidelines several times since 2010, but this is the first time that their policy change will penalize you for not implementing a mobile website correctly.

Originally they recommended that you create a mobile website that would be maintained side by side with y...
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AT: 06/26/2014 01:07:31 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Home Page Sliders and Rotators are Bad

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Home Page Sliders and Rotators are Bad 2050-daily-golden-nugget-1023
Website usability is always a point of contention between visual website designers, data analysts, and website owners. The website owner always wants their website to look good, the designer is always trying to satisfy the owner, and the data analysts seems to always be in a losing position of 2 against 1.

Of course, then there's the uncomfortable situation some months later when the website owner is upset that the website is not driving more business the way they had hoped. Usually this is when ...
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AT: 06/25/2014 10:01:47 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, June 24, 2014

When Inspiration Strikes...

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When Inspiration Strikes... 8113-daily-golden-nugget-1022
My job requires the wearing of many hats. Some days I spend all my time analyzing tracking data, some days I'm writing these Daily Nuggets, other days I've reviewing programming code, and then there are those mundane days when I'm spending time with the bookkeeper and insurance agent.

Although all these different duties seem disconnected, they all drive my business forward and it's surprising to me how each one helps inspire ideas for making the others better.

In honor of my recent achievement of 1000 blog posts...
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AT: 06/24/2014 02:11:57 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, June 23, 2014

Popular Screen Resolutions for May 2014

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Popular Screen Resolutions for May 2014 648-daily-golden-nugget-1021
I've written a lot in the past few months about responsive website design and responsive website content, but it's been a while since I went through a simple list of the most popular screen sizes that people are using right now.

I realized my lack of reporting after this past Friday's website review where I explained that N. Fox Jewelers probably never tested their website design on a smaller desktop monitor....
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AT: 06/23/2014 11:02:28 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 19, 2014

Email Subject Lines from Father's Day 2014

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Email Subject Lines from Fathers Day 2014 7885-daily-golden-nugget-1019In today's Daily Golden Nugget, I'm reviewing website traffic and email headlines leading up to Father's Day in the USA, which was June 15 this year.

Organic traffic doesn't usually increase much during the weeks leading up to Father's Day, although this year there was an overall 10.52% increase during the 5 weeks right before the holiday.


During the week of May 19th, I only saw 2 emails mentioning Father's Day with these subject lines:

Find The Perfect Gift For Dad...
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AT: 06/19/2014 10:47:26 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Email Subject Lines from Mother's Day 2014

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Email Subject Lines from Mothers Day 2014 3697-daily-golden-nugget-1018
In today's Daily Golden Nugget, I'm reviewing website traffic and email headlines leading up to Mother's Day in the USA, which was May 11 this year.

Every year, during the three weeks leading up to Mother's Day, the organic customer acquisition patterns repeat themselves. This year that pattern started on Monday April 21, 2014 with a slight rise of traffic. The increase in traffic occured from Monday through Friday followed by the typical dip in traffic over the weekends.

The week ...
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AT: 06/18/2014 12:31:42 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, June 17, 2014

15 SEO and SEM Related Tidbits You Should Know About Blogging

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15 SEO and SEM Related Tidbits You Should Know About Blogging 8726-daily-golden-nugget-1017
A lot has changed in the world of search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) since I first started my daily blogging more than 1000 posts ago.

The most significant SEO changes over the last 4 years are related to Google Panda and Google Penguin, but there are dozens of other notable changes, and hundreds of subtle changes throughout the entire internet.

Although I'd love to write a "then and now" post about all the intern...
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AT: 06/17/2014 03:28:54 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 13, 2014

Don Roberto Jewelers Website Review

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Don Roberto Jewelers Website Review 1030-daily-golden-nugget-1015
For this week's edition of the Friday Website review, I'm searching for "jewelers in Azusa, California" to find my review candidate.

Here's what the top Google organic results look like when using Chrome's incognito mode:

Don Roberto Jewelers Website Review 955-1015-serp-results

I've underlined all...
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AT: 06/13/2014 09:18:37 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 12, 2014

13 Things I Learned About Your Blog Reading Audience

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13 Things I Learned About Your Blog Reading Audience 8855-daily-golden-nugget-1014
Every blogger believes that they have something great to say in their blog and people will beat a path to their website to read it. This is part of the allure of blog writing, but it's also one of the fallacies that bloggers lament over once they realize it.

If you're going to start a blog to get famous, you're probably starting in the wrong place. Here are some of the realities I've learned about a blog reading audience:
  1. It will take a long time for your bl...
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AT: 06/12/2014 09:21:34 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, June 11, 2014

6 Tips To Help You Better Edit Your Blog Post

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6 Tips To Help You Better Edit Your Blog Post 8781-daily-golden-nugget-1013
Blog writing can be fun, educational, rewarding, and a boon for your business over the long term. If you're blogging just for the fun of it, then you might not spend the extra time to edit each blog post before publishing it. A quick read through for spelling mistakes and simple grammatical corrections might be all that's necessary.

Those of you blogging for business should take a slightly more professional approach to your blogging and spend a little more time on the editing proces...
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AT: 06/11/2014 02:41:40 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, June 10, 2014

12 Tips To Improve Your Blog Writing Process

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12 Tips To Improve Your Blog Writing Process 8233-daily-golden-nugget-1012
The process of writing a blog post is more involved than just coming up with an idea and typing it out. Writing has its own set of interesting experiences which were holding me back from my writing creativity until I started to identify them.

What I've itemized below are 12 things that I discovered about the writing process and how to deal with them. Your own writing experiences might differ, but you won't know until you start blogging on your own.

Here are the best tips on my...
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AT: 06/10/2014 09:13:08 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, June 09, 2014

Dealing with Google+ comment spam...

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Dealing with Google+ comment spam... 6413-daily-golden-nugget-1011
In this edition of Google+ Monday Golden Nugget, I need to explain some Google+ commenting etiquette. In fact, the type of etiquette you should be practicing on Google+ is the same type of good etiquette you should be employing on other social networks and when leaving comments on blogs.

Simply said, you should never spam someone's social share. "Spamming" isn't just for emails; it also applies to an unwanted solicitation as a comment on a social post, or on a blog post. This is referred to as "comm...
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AT: 06/09/2014 12:09:23 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 06, 2014

Rogers Jewelers Website Review

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Rogers Jewelers Website Review 9859-daily-golden-nugget-1010
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 India...
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AT: 06/06/2014 09:22:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 05, 2014

8 Tips For Managing Your Blogging Ideas

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8 Tips For Managing Your Blogging Ideas 519-daily-golden-nugget-1009
Good ideas happen at the least opportune moments. When driving, while walking, brushing your teeth, watching TV, and of course the worst time is when you are just drifting off to sleep. You'll never remember that idea in the morning.

After writing more than 1000 blog posts, I came up with a few thoughts of my own for how to make sure I don't forget a good blogging idea when it comes to me.

Here they are:
  1. Blogging ideas will come whenever they want to come to you. You need to fig...
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AT: 06/05/2014 09:09:04 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, June 04, 2014

What I've Learned About Blogging from Writing More Than 1,000 Posts...

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 What Ive Learned About Blogging from Writing More Than 1,000 Posts... 3479-daily-golden-nugget-1008
Blogging is a method of online marketing, but it also has many other personal and business benefits. When I started blogging 4 years ago, it was partially because jWAG was a paid subscription education service and partially because I honestly just had the desire to do it. About a year later, it was decided to deactivate the subscription portal and turn jWAG into a philanthropic endeavor.

I now find it much more enjoyable to write blo...
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AT: 06/04/2014 11:11:25 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, June 03, 2014

How To Plan For A Long Blogging Process

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How To Plan For A Long Blogging Process 1660-daily-golden-nugget-1007
Since I started blogging on July 26, 2010, I've written 1006 Daily Golden Nuggets. This is my 1007th. I'm sure an accomplishment like this is child's play for a daily journalist who is paid to write several news articles in a single day, but I'm not a trained journalist and I don't have an English or Communications degree. I started as a lowly tech geek who suffered from a mild case of dyslexia with degrees in Computer Engineering and Applied Mathematics.

I somehow found the motivation to li...
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AT: 06/03/2014 09:30:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, June 02, 2014

Avoid Spamming Through Google Plus Email Notifications

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 Avoid Spamming Through Google Plus Email Notifications 20-daily-golden-nugget-1006
Each social network has their own notification settings where you control how you should be notified when someone shares content.

On the smartphone, you have the ability to set the social networks to "push" a notification directly to your screen. These pop-up notifications will appear in front of whatever application you are running at the time.

You also have the ability to trigger an email notification to be sent whenever someone mentions your name, or sends a m...
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AT: 06/02/2014 02:10:00 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 30, 2014

Google Places for Business Store Hours Sometimes Get Stuck

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 Google Places for Business Store Hours Sometimes Get Stuck 4218-daily-golden-nugget-1005

Today I'm returning back to my Friday website review format after skipping the last two weeks while presenting the series on Google Places for Business.

Each week I choose a random city then search for one of the most common jewelry store related keywords. I like to choose my review candidates purely based on orga...
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AT: 05/30/2014 10:37:12 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 29, 2014

Understanding the Need for AdWords Negative Keyword Lists

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 Understanding the Need for AdWords Negative Keyword Lists 4455-daily-golden-nugget-1004
Over the last two days, I've briefly explained how to set up a single ad using AdWords Express and then how keyword targeting works within the full version of Google AdWords. In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'll introduce you to the concept of ...
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AT: 05/29/2014 11:57:17 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Comparing AdWords Keyword Targeting to AdWords Express

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Comparing AdWords Keyword Targeting to AdWords Express 2058-daily-golden-nugget-1003

In yesterday's Nugget I explained how to set up a single ad using AdWords Express, the simple ad platform within Google Places for Business. During the Express demo setup, I presented yesterday I chose these keywords:

* jewelry stores
* engagement rings
* jewelry
* diamonds
* diamond necklace

I then created this sample ad:
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AT: 05/28/2014 03:58:13 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Setting up Google AdWords Express

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Setting up Google AdWords Express 8182-daily-golden-nugget-1002

In this Daily Golden Nugget, I'll show you step-by-step setup of Google AdWords Express.

AdWords is Google's online advertising platform that shows paid ads in search results and millions of random websites on the internet. Google makes most of its money through this advertising service, and many businesses experience good jumps in business when using AdWords.

Unfortunately for most businesses though, Google AdWords is really difficult to set up. A few years ago, Google realized the difficulty s...
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AT: 05/27/2014 11:37:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 23, 2014

Honoring the 1000th Nugget with Google Street View

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Honoring the 1000th Nugget with Google Street View 8734-daily-golden-nugget-1000

I made it!

This is my 1000th Daily Golden Nugget. That's 1000 weekdays since I started writing them on July 26, 2010 with the headline "Google Maps can drive visitors directly to your doorstep, literally."

In honor of this achievement, I've spent the last 9 days detailing all the features within the redesigned Google Maps and Google Places for Business dashboard and how jewelers should be using them. I have a few more dashboard details to go over next week, but ...
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AT: 05/23/2014 02:42:15 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 22, 2014

Google Places for Business Settings for Personal Jewelers

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Google Places for Business Settings for Personal Jewelers 3872-daily-golden-nugget-999

The discussion of today's Daily Golden Nugget was requested more than a year ago by a few of my daily readers, but it wasn't until recently that I could provide the correct answer to it.

The topic is how to use Google Places for Business if you are a personal jeweler or a jewelry professional working out of your house. Personal security is usually a bigger factor for these types of jewelers since they will often carry styles with them when visiting clients. ...
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AT: 05/22/2014 10:54:33 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Choosing the Correct Google Places for Business Categories

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Choosing the Correct Google Places for Business Categories 3311-daily-golden-nugget-998

How can Google lead potential customers to you unless they know what type of business you are?

Although Google might spend a ridiculous amount of effort reading and indexing your website to figure out who you are and what you do, they also rely heavily on exactly what you tell them from within your Google Places for Business account.

The screen shot below was taken from a jewelry store's Places for Business account. You can see the list of categories...
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AT: 05/21/2014 03:42:36 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Business Query Data and Other Valuable Insights Inside Google Places

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Business Query Data and Other Valuable Insights Inside Google Places 2020-daily-golden-nugget-997

Ever since Google started hiding keywords from their Analytics reports, it's been harder and harder for marketing professionals and business owners to figure out what keywords customers search for when they find your website.

Within Google Webmaster Tools, you can find the VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 05/20/2014 11:48:42 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 19, 2014

Google Places Business Listing Name Guidelines

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Google Places Business Listing Name Guidelines 65-daily-golden-nugget-996

Google Places can help you get found in local search results, but you'll get into trouble if you disobey the Google Places for Business quality guidelines.

Over the years, I've seen many jewelry stores using a lot of tricks to place higher in Google's ranking results. Perhaps the most common trick is changing your business name to include specific keywords.

Using the jewelry store name Perosi Jewelers, located in Totowa Borough, NJ, here are some examples of what some jewelers ha...
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AT: 05/19/2014 02:04:16 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 16, 2014

Reviews on Google Maps and Places

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Reviews on Google Maps and Places 539-daily-golden-nugget-995

Google Maps will help people locate your business online, but sometimes those online reviews will chase people away screaming, instead of luring them to your door.

The power of the online review is undeniable now. I've read a few case studies about negative online reviews and the affect on a business, and I've had personal experience helping several businesses deal with the aftermath caused by horrible online reviews.

The legitimacy of online reviews has gone through some controversy over the last 4 ye...
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AT: 05/16/2014 02:10:38 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Cleaning Up the Ugly Caused by YouTube

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Cleaning Up the Ugly Caused by YouTube 9725-daily-golden-nugget-993

During the summer of 2013, as part of their product unification process, Google converted all YouTube accounts into Google+ accounts. This resulted in duplicate business pages on Google+ Page for several businesses. Now that Google is transitioning the old Places listings into the combined Google Places for Business and Google+, these same businesses now have a triplicate listing.

This is a bad situation that needs to be corrected and I'll explain why in this Daily Golden Nugget. I'm documentin...
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AT: 05/14/2014 10:49:05 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 13, 2014

How-To Delete a Duplicate Google Places for Business

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How-To Delete a Duplicate Google Places for Business 9258-daily-golden-nugget-992

There might be trouble with your business listing on Google and you don't even realize it. Over the last year, Google has been slowly migrating all Google Places listings created years ago into the new and improved Google "Places for Business" (PFB) systems that's integrated with Google+.

As I explained in the Daily Golden Nugget yesterday, this migration could cause accidental VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 05/13/2014 02:48:42 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 12, 2014

Business listing migration from Google Places into Google Places for Business

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Business listing migration from Google Places into Google Places for Business 2396-daily-golden-nugget-991

"Google Maps will drive visitors directly to your doorstep."

That's how it all began way back on Monday, July 26, 2010 with the first Daily Golden Nugget I wrote. It was only 147 words because, after all, it was only supposed to be a "nugget" of information. Many nuggets are now 10 times tha...
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AT: 05/12/2014 02:20:55 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 09, 2014

Milton's Jewelry & Gifts Website Review...

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Miltons Jewelry & Gifts Website Review... 4346-daily-golden-nugget-990
This is the Friday Website Review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal of this Nugget is to take an unbiased close look at a random jewelry website to see what we can learn from it.

Every week I put my Chrome web browser into incognito mode and search a random town for a local jeweler. This week I chose the city of Uvalde in Texas. Specifically I searched for "jewelers in Uvalde, Texas."

According to this search result there might be 2 jewelers in Uvalde:

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AT: 05/09/2014 09:46:26 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 08, 2014

Latest Organic Search Engine Results

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Latest Organic Search Engine Results 668-daily-golden-nugget-989
In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget, I reviewed the most recent data for the device usage and browser usage with regard to jewelry websites. Today, I'm looking at the organic traffic that brings those users to a retail jeweler's website.

Google is the undisputed champion for search. They provide more than 84% of the organic search traffic referred to jewelry websites. I wanted t...
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AT: 05/08/2014 03:50:10 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 07, 2014

Mobile Device and Web Browser Usage Statistics for Jewelry Websites

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Mobile Device and Web Browser Usage Statistics for Jewelry Websites 5911-daily-golden-nugget-988
The right information can help you make the right decisions in business. I enjoy the process of digesting all the data I track into actionable information for the jewelry industry.

For the last 4 years, I've been running reports on the most popular web browsers and mobile devices every 6 months or so. Although I have browser tracking data that extends back to 2003, the first time I was able to successfully report mobile device usage was in Fe...
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AT: 05/07/2014 09:21:28 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 06, 2014

Problems with bad link cleaning up...

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Problems with bad link cleaning up... 1286-daily-golden-nugget-987

Paying for link building is bad for you business. If you have, then you've probably already attempted some type of Penguin recovery process.

I was recently reviewing the "Links to Your Site" inside Google Webmaster Tools (WMT). You can find this report in your own Webmaster Tools account by clicki...
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AT: 05/06/2014 12:23:05 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 05, 2014

Google+ posting as a profile or page...

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Google+ posting as a profile or page... 2655-daily-golden-nugget-986

In this edition of the Google+ Monday Daily Golden Nugget, I will give you some examples of when to use a Profile vs. when to use a Page on Google+.

Your Google+ Page is where you should establish your corporate identity and your Google+ Profile is where you will be your...
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AT: 05/05/2014 10:37:59 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 02, 2014

Luecke Jewelers Website Review...

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Luecke Jewelers Website Review... 4557-daily-golden-nugget-985

This is the Friday Jewelry Website Review to help you learn more about your own website by looking at a review from another jeweler's real website.

This week I ventured over to Freeport, Illinois in search of a jeweler who sells estate jewelry. Specifically, I used the search query "estate jewelry Freeport, Illinois" and saw these really interesting results:

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AT: 05/02/2014 02:56:22 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 01, 2014

Don't count keywords anymore...

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Dont count keywords anymore... 1629-daily-golden-nugget-984

In my Nugget yesterday, I explained how you need to consider the longterm value of your SEO and SEM efforts to the overall process of building your brand.

That Nugget directly relates to today's topic of Keywords, specifically keyword density.

In yesterday's Nugget I explained how Google will penalize you if you try to game their search results. They are pretty strict about that now since working so hard to improve the w...
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AT: 05/01/2014 10:04:03 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 30, 2014

What's Better? SEO or SEM...

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Whats Better? SEO or SEM... 8783-daily-golden-nugget-983

Everything you add to the Internet will either help or hurt you tomorrow. Every piece of content has a long shelf life.

Your marketing strategy today could be a onetime use, or it could add to the cumulative benefit you create to build your brand awareness.

Typical search engine marketing includes paid ads or paid strategies that only have a value while you're paying for them. That value goes away as soon as you stop paying for it.

This can clearly be seen in any large marketing company service, like Y...
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AT: 04/30/2014 03:22:54 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 29, 2014

File Naming Best Practices for Internet Assets

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File Naming Best Practices for Internet Assets 2779-daily-golden-nugget-982

One of my biggest pet peeves on the internet is how most people name their files and images.

Google reads everything online, and everything is used to help build an index of words with which to match search queries.

Every word used in the content on your website counts. Most of the time, everyone simply thinks the visible written words are all that counts, but there's more to it than that.

Google also read the hidden text on every web page that you add as VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 04/29/2014 10:57:54 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 28, 2014

Google+ Vanity URLs for Business Pages

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Google+ Vanity URLs for Business Pages 7420-daily-golden-nugget-981

Every social network has their own unique way of structuring their URLs.

Foursquare uses a combination of the location name and a long alphanumeric venue code like this:
https://foursquare.com/v/jwag-bordeaux-office/4f01828077c885c33735e610

Facebook uses a combination of the location name, the word "pages", and a long venue number like this:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jeweler-Website-Advisory-Group/250594583277
But they allow you to customize your URL to something shorter like ...
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AT: 04/28/2014 09:57:39 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 25, 2014

SJ Jewelers Website Review

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SJ Jewelers Website Review 1282-daily-golden-nugget-980This is the Friday Jewelry Website Review to help you learn more about your own website by looking at a review from another jeweler's real website.

Every week, I set my Google Chrome browser to incognito mode to find a website review candidate. Normally I search for jewelry stores in a specific town name, but this time I took a slightly different approach and searched for "jewelers in Olmsted County, Minnesota."

Google understood how to interpret Olmstead County as the largest city within in Rochester. I find these sear...
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AT: 04/25/2014 04:14:13 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 24, 2014

Jewelry Website Programming: Jewelry Photography

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Jewelry Website Programming: Jewelry Photography  938-daily-golden-nugget-979Jewelry photography is a topic that's near and dear to my heart because I know it can either make or break the success of a jewelry e-commerce website.

Let's face it; jewelry is all about beauty and style. No one wants to buy something is it doesn't look good in a photograph or match the style they desire. Blurry photos, dirty jewelry, and gray backgrounds do not help with the e-commerce selling process.

Online buyers expect to see beautiful jewelry on your website, and nothing...
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AT: 04/24/2014 03:13:08 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Jewelry Website Programming: Usability Testing

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Jewelry Website Programming: Usability Testing 5139-daily-golden-nugget-978After spending 6 months or so trying to perfect your new e-commerce website, the last thing you probably want to hear is that your development, design, and overall perfection process is just beginning.

I need to make an addendum to the piece I wrote back in October 2013 explaining the five things you need to do on the day you launch your website. I need to add a s...
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AT: 04/23/2014 09:38:30 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Jewelry Website Programming: Internet Sales Tax

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Jewelry Website Programming: Internet Sales Tax 8625-daily-golden-nugget-977The conversation of internet taxes is very complicated.

In May 2013, the US Senate voted in favor of the Marketplace Fairness Act which is supposed to simplify how sales tax is levied on items purchased from the internet. The Act called for a simplified method of free software that each state would have to provide so e-commerce website owners could more easily collect, report, and submit the sales taxes collected from online sales.

The Act contained an exclusion to exempt online...
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AT: 04/22/2014 02:12:28 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 21, 2014

Thoughtful Sharing of Blogs on Google+

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Thoughtful Sharing of Blogs on Google+ 3372-daily-golden-nugget-976In the past, I've expressed my point of view that Google+ seemed to be a more intellectually stimulating social network than its direct competitor, Facebook.

Many users in the early days of Google+ were more technical and built relationships with other technically savvy people. Those relationships were built through +1s and thoughtful commenting on social posts. There were few internet memes and jokes shared on Google+ in the early days.

But that's changed now that the social network has matured ...
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AT: 04/21/2014 02:12:45 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 18, 2014

Sullivan's Jewelers Website Review

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Sullivans Jewelers Website Review 2287-daily-golden-nugget-975This is the weekly Friday Website Review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal is to first find, and then evaluate a random jeweler's website to see how they set it up and what they are doing with it. Sometimes I find good things to talk about, sometimes bad, but always educational and unbiased.

Each week I search a random town for a jewelry store. I always set my Google Chrome browser to incognito mode to prevent my previous personal browsing history from tainting my organic search results.

This ...
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AT: 04/18/2014 06:53:50 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 17, 2014

Jewelry Website Programming: Payment Methods

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Jewelry Website Programming: Payment Methods 9326-daily-golden-nugget-974This is the 3rd in a series of Daily Golden Nuggets explaining the difficulties of setting up an e-commerce website. The previous Nuggets covered security and product pricing and then shipping methods. This edition will explain the payment options that are available for your webs...
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AT: 04/17/2014 06:49:20 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Jewelry Website Programming: Shipping Methods

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Jewelry Website Programming: Shipping Methods 4386-daily-golden-nugget-973In yesterday's Nugget, I explained two important topics about jewelry e-commerce websites, namely continual security monitoring and product pricing. In today's edition, I'm explaining another common issue that often surprise jewelers when they set up their e-commerce sites for the first time.

Shipping

Let me start out by saying this is much easier to figure out i...
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AT: 04/16/2014 08:53:09 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Jewelry Website Programming: Security & Product Pricing

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Jewelry Website Programming: Security & Product Pricing 9076-daily-golden-nugget-972Today is tax day in the USA: the day that many people distain because they have to pay taxes while still others dream of all the things they desire to get with their tax return money.

The US government hopes that the economy will be stimulated by all the people who spend their tax refunds. No doubt that much of that money will be spent through e-commerce websites.

It's therefore fitting that I should review some of the situations surrounding the setup of e-commerc...
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AT: 04/15/2014 10:34:12 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 14, 2014

Google+ Hangouts for Jewelers

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Google+ Hangouts for Jewelers 6422-daily-golden-nugget-971This is the Google+ Monday edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Each Monday this year, I've been explaining different aspects of Google+ and how they can be used in the jewelry industry, and today I'm going to tell you about Google+ Hangouts.

The "Hangout" is Google's live conferencing system that incorporates chat messaging, video conferencing, and even telephone calls. Even though it includes all three methods, it's the video Hangout that has grown most popular. No other social network has a video conferencing system l...
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AT: 04/14/2014 11:23:42 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 11, 2014

Review of Marks Jewelers Virtual Tour

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Review of Marks Jewelers Virtual Tour 9457-daily-golden-nugget-970It's the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The normal goal of these Friday reviews is to look at a website to see what we can learn from it, but this week I found something a little more interesting to review than simply a website.

I took a different approach to finding my review candidate this week. I started with the usually incognito mode of Google Chrome, but I changed my browser search location to Lawrence, KS by clicking the Search Tools button on the option menu and then cli...
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AT: 04/11/2014 11:17:16 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 10, 2014

You Can Manage Most of Your SEO, But Not All Of It

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You Can Manage Most of Your SEO, But Not All Of It 5626-daily-golden-nugget-969For the last few years, I've been telling everyday average business owners that the process of search engine optimization is not hard; it's just time consuming. There are still a few SEO consulting companies out there that will tell you that the process is technical, and it requires continual maintenance. I'd like to dispel some of this thinking.

Indeed there are technical aspects to SEO, but those are usually related to the computer hardware your website lives on, and the initia...
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AT: 04/10/2014 11:17:09 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 09, 2014

Promoting Your Extreme Jewelry Niche on Your Website

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Promoting Your Extreme Jewelry Niche on Your Website 480-daily-golden-nugget-968Talk to any search engine marketing professional and they will say that you need good content on your website in order to rank well search engines, and engaging content on social networks if you want to interact with your existing audience, and gain new followers.

For competitive industries, like retail stores and retail jewelry stores, there's so much stuff being published on the internet daily that your website can fall behind in its search engine ranking for generic phrases unl...
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AT: 04/09/2014 09:20:53 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 08, 2014

Using Animated GIFs To Attract Social Attention

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Using Animated GIFs To Attract Social Attention 447-daily-golden-nugget-967The internet would be a boring place without all the animated cat graphics we see on social media.

Just a few years ago, animated GIFs were thought of as child's play. Facebook didn't support them and many people remember how bad MySpace and older websites looked with the overabundance of blinking, glittery animated GIFs.

For those of you who weren't online in the 90's, let me tell you that animated images were so popular that every website was flickering, moving, waving, or sparkl...
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AT: 04/08/2014 10:52:52 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 07, 2014

Setting Up Google Plus Badges for Your Website

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Setting Up Google Plus Badges for Your Website 7165-daily-golden-nugget-966In last week's Google+ Monday edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I explained how to set up a new Google+ Business page. In this edition I'll show you how simple it is to create a badge for your Google+ Page that you can put on your website.

First off, let me explain what a "badge" is. It's simply the widget that you place on your website which allows people to either fo...
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AT: 04/07/2014 09:16:18 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 04, 2014

Bennett's Gems and Jewelry Website Review

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Bennetts Gems and Jewelry Website Review 7140-daily-golden-nugget-965I like to sit in the window seat whenever I fly. I enjoy looking at the world from 35,000 feet and wondering about the world passing quickly below. When not watching a movie, I like to watch the in-flight map on the screen in front of me in an attempt to relate window view to the locations on the map.

The only landmarks I've ever recognized from that altitude were the Mississippi River and the Grand Canyon, but those are easy.

I especially like the return flights from Europe as the plane fli...
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AT: 04/04/2014 11:53:25 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 03, 2014

Starting Out With A Small Jewelry Website

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Starting Out With A Small Jewelry Website 920-daily-golden-nugget-964Websites have become part of the normal process of establishing a business. It's more important to get your website and social media started before you even open your retail doors. In some cases, you need to get your website launched before you even make the first sale.

I'm not specifically talking about e-commerce website, but consider for a moment that your website needs to be the support system for your business. What's the minimum amount of work you need to put into your website before it will s...
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AT: 04/03/2014 12:15:18 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 02, 2014

Smartphones Make You More Vulnerable To Phishing Scams

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Smartphones Make You More Vulnerable To Phishing Scams 5534-daily-golden-nugget-963You probably already know that email security is a serious thing. We all live with protections against viruses, spam, and random junk built into our email software. There are so many layers of protection that it's easy to let our guard down.

All it takes is one little mistake, and your entire day, week, or even your credit score could be ruined.

Typically, all the layers of protection exist on a desktop computer. There are many different companies that sell anti-v...
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AT: 04/02/2014 09:29:05 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 01, 2014

Choosing the Correct TLD for Your E-commerce Website

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Choosing the Correct TLD for Your E-commerce Website 1576-daily-golden-nugget-962Internet trends within the jewelry industry are slowly moving towards e-commerce. It's second nature now for the everyday average consumer to search, learn, and pre-shop online long before they make the first step into a physical store.

Technologically, the jewelry industry is still lagging behind most other industries. Large jewelry chain stores have only recently figured out how to expand their in-store services into an online presence. Many e-commerce jewelry websites ar...
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AT: 04/01/2014 09:14:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 31, 2014

How-To Create a New Google+ Page for Non-Local Businesses

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How-To Create a New Google+ Page for Non-Local Businesses 876-daily-golden-nugget-961This is the Google+ Monday edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Today I'll explain how you can set up a Google+ Business Page. You will use the procedure explained today if you DO NOT have a brick and mortar store. For those with a B&M store you should refer back to this 2-part Nugget here.

Again, the setup explained in this Nugget is good for businesses without physi...
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AT: 03/31/2014 10:52:43 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 28, 2014

SERP Review of Jewelers in Newport, RI

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SERP Review of Jewelers in Newport, RI 3446-daily-golden-nugget-960This is the Friday Website Review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal of this review is not to single out any particular jeweler or store, but to examine a website for educational purposes. Hopefully we can all learn something from the review

This week I'm searching for a review candidate in Newport, RI. I always use the Chrome web browser in incognito mode to search for a review candidate. I do this to help prevent my personal browser history from interfering with search results given by Goo...
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AT: 03/28/2014 09:27:22 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 27, 2014

7 Techniques Commonly Misunderstood as SEO

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7 Techniques Commonly Misunderstood as SEO 4545-daily-golden-nugget-959Over the last two days I've explained some basic SEO techniques and some more advanced SEO techniques that fall into the category of customer acquisition. I'd like to continue this search engine optimization conversation by reviewing 7 points of website usability that often get mistak...
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AT: 03/27/2014 11:58:35 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 26, 2014

7 Customer Acquisition Techniques for Jewelry Websites

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7 Customer Acquisition Techniques for Jewelry Websites 7216-daily-golden-nugget-958As a continuation of yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget of 7 basic SEO tips, today I'd like to share with you my recent thoughts and experiences of the more advanced search engine optimization tactics.

Instead of diving into highly technical SEO tricks that only a programmer would understand, I've written these tips out based on an interesting array of circumstances. Some...
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AT: 03/26/2014 10:14:41 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 25, 2014

7 Basic SEO Techniques for Jewelry Websites

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7 Basic SEO Techniques for Jewelry Websites 4782-daily-golden-nugget-957In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'd like to share with you my recent thoughts and experiences of the basic search engine optimization factors based on what I see in my daily tracking of many jewelry websites.

On a weekly basis, I mention a few of these during my Friday website reviews. This is by no means an exhaustive list of SEO techniques; just the 7 most important ones that I've noticed in the past several months.

1. Title Tags - Every page of your website must hav...
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AT: 03/25/2014 12:05:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 24, 2014

Introduction to Google Plus Communities

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Introduction to Google Plus Communities 5715-daily-golden-nugget-956This is the Monday Google+ edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Today, I'd like to introduce the Google+ Communities, what they are, how and why to get involved, and eventually what you could do with them yourself.

The Google+ Communities give you an easy way to find other people with similar interests. There are thousands of communities on a many topics, and even multiple communities on the same or similar topics.

Joining one of the communities is like joining a networking group. You should ...
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AT: 03/24/2014 08:26:11 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 21, 2014

CM Buxton Website Review

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CM Buxton Website Review 808-daily-golden-nugget-955This is the Friday Jewelry Website Review to help you learn more about your own website by looking at a review from another jeweler's real website.

I use Google Chrome in incognito mode to search for my review candidate every week. This week I did a search for "antique jewelry Missoula Montana" and saw these results:

CM Buxton Website Review 113-955-serp-antique-jewelryVIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 03/21/2014 09:23:31 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 20, 2014

Using Twitter To Spy On The Competition

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Using Twitter To Spy On The Competition 1019-daily-golden-nugget-954On Tuesday this week I wrote a Twitter introduction for those who didn't know much about the social network. Yesterday, I wrote another Nugget explaining how to use Twitter at a trade show.

In this Daily Golden Nugget, I'll explain how you can use Twitter to spy on your competition.

Perhaps "spy" is the wrong word. ...
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AT: 03/20/2014 10:33:09 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Using Twitter At Live Events

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Using Twitter At Live Events 9121-daily-golden-nugget-953Social networking is supposed to allow you to be more social. When you typically think of social networking, you are probably thinking about ways to connect with your customers, and how to engage them in order to influence their future buying habits.

In all the talk about social networking to marketing your business, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that you can use social networking for your own enjoyment and education.

I reintr...
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AT: 03/19/2014 10:13:43 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 17, 2014

Setting up you Google Plus Profile Introduction

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Setting up you Google Plus Profile Introduction 9393-daily-golden-nugget-951It's the Google+ Monday edition of the Daily Golden Nugget! If you are new to Google+, you should check out every one of my Monday Nuggets since the beginning of 2014 for newbie guidance.

Today, I'd like to give some advice on how to set up your Google+ Profile.

I waited 10 weeks to give you this profile introduction because I wanted you to jump right in and get your feet wet on Google+ with all the other early pointers first.

I don't know about you, but I hate it every t...
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AT: 03/17/2014 05:09:57 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 14, 2014

Ciccarelli Jewelers SERP and Website Review

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Ciccarelli Jewelers SERP and Website Review 7888-daily-golden-nugget-950I've been thinking about it for months and I've finally made the decision. I'm going to pick up an engagement ring today and propose to her this weekend! I have to find a jeweler in my home town, Modesto, California, that will help me out. I need a ring in a hurry!

I do a Google search for "engagement rings in Modesto, CA" and I see this as my first choice:

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AT: 03/14/2014 10:41:43 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 13, 2014

Be True To Your Own Identity in Your Writing

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Be True To Your Own Identity in Your Writing 9433-daily-golden-nugget-949You have to own your identity. One of the jewelry designers sitting around my live Q&A table the other day at MJSA was a little embarrassed by her company name and her website. She chose a business name which perfectly reflects what type of jewelry she designs, but during the current launch process she was starting to feel a little unsure of the name.

To maintain her anonymity, I won't mention the name of the company or the domain name; let's just say that I really made me laugh that she wan...
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AT: 03/13/2014 10:00:38 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Take Action For The Better Or Get Out Of The Way

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Take Action For The Better Or Get Out Of The Way 6850-daily-golden-nugget-948We all deal with issues on a daily basis that hinder our ability to move forward with our personal plans, life goals, and business successes. I'm not talking about money issues, family issues, or things you are aware of, but rather, issues that elude your consciousness but yet waste a lot of time and money.

These are the types of things that, from an outsider's view, would seem silly, but from your point of view they are completely normal. We are often shocked when an outside influ...
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AT: 03/12/2014 07:56:29 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 11, 2014

What's The Best Free Online Marketing Method?

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Whats The Best Free Online Marketing Method? 470-daily-golden-nugget-947It was a pretty exciting day yesterday at the MJSA Expo in New York City. It was my honor to be one of MJSA's Business Experts where I had the pleasure of answering direct questions from jewelry designers, retailer, and manufacturers.

It was a wonderful experience to freely share all the stuff I write about here on jWAG.biz in a face to face setting. One important question t...
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AT: 03/11/2014 07:57:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 10, 2014

Jewelers Should Deactivate Google+ Location Settings

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Jewelers Should Deactivate Google+ Location Settings 9837-daily-golden-nugget-946Last week I reviewed some important security settings for Facebook Tagging which made me realize I should cover some important security settings for Google+ as well.

In this edition of the Google+ Monday Golden Nugget, I'm going to show you how to disable how your smartphone reports your current location so no one can physically track you.

I'm assuming you've alre...
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AT: 03/10/2014 09:29:03 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 07, 2014

SERP Review of Tacoma Washington

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SERP Review of Tacoma Washington 8561-daily-golden-nugget-945This is the special Friday Website Review Edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal of this weekly exercise is to find a random retail jeweler's website that can have both its design and search engine optimization dissected so we can learn from it.

I always use Google's Chrome browser in incognito mode to search for a random jeweler. The incognito mode allows me to do a web search without tainting the search results by my personal browsing and search history. By removing my personal search history, I'm able to ...
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AT: 03/07/2014 11:57:25 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 06, 2014

Facebook Security Settings for Retail Jewelers

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Facebook Security Settings for Retail Jewelers 899-daily-golden-nugget-944Jewelers should be worried about their personal security and how much information they share on social media. There's always that possibility that someone is watching you and planning something really bad.

It seems like everyone has a Facebook account now, and Facebook does not allow you to hide your personal profile anymore either. You can unfriend people and lock all your posts, but there's no way to hide yourself from the public Facebook search.

There are typical security measures...
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AT: 03/06/2014 09:42:20 PM   2 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Facebook Retargeting Run Amuck

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Facebook Retargeting Run Amuck 2497-daily-golden-nugget-943A few years ago, Google AdWords created a feature called Remarketing that allows you to secretly tag a website visitor so you can target them with a specific ad in the future. The premise behind the marketing method is that a customer will likely return to your website if they see an ad that reminds them to.

When designed correctly, those ads would understand what you looked at on the website then show you a corresponding ad on Google search or other content websites. When using this type of marketing, you'll find that...
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AT: 03/05/2014 10:42:35 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 04, 2014

Businesses Always Have to Pay, Always.

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Businesses Always Have to Pay, Always. 5885-daily-golden-nugget-942Something's been happening over at Facebook since December 2013 that affects how the overall methods of how customers see your social posts...

If you carefully examine your own Facebook Insights, you should see what many of my own customers are seeing. Generally speaking, there's a massive decline in the number of your Fans that see the social posts your business is publishing.

Although Facebook doesn't provide statistics on personal accounts, you might have also noticed that while your business s...
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AT: 03/04/2014 09:38:25 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 03, 2014

Understanding How To +Mention Someone in a Google+ Comment

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Understanding How To +Mention Someone in a Google+ Comment 1026-daily-golden-nugget-941In this issue of the Google+ Monday Nugget, I'll explain what you need to know about commenting on Google+ and how it relates to Facebook.

Google+ lets you select your circles of friends to share a post to, or to share it to the public. Unless you disable the ability to comment and reshare, which I'll have to explain in a future Nugget, anyone you share to is allowed to comment on the post. Likewise, you can comment on a post that someone shares with you or to the...
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AT: 03/03/2014 08:43:01 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 28, 2014

Ava Goldworks Website Review

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Ava Goldworks Website Review 3168-daily-golden-nugget-940This is the Friday Website Review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Every Friday I randomly select a destination in the USA and search for unsuspecting retail jewelry stores, then I review their website.

This week I started my search with the phrase "jewelers Hannibal, Mo" and found Ava Goldworks to have both the top organic listing and the top Google+ Local listing.

Here's the website: http://www.avagoldworks.com/; you might want to open it up to follow a...
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AT: 02/28/2014 10:18:43 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 27, 2014

Don't Be Tricked Into Buying Exact Match Domain Names

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Dont Be Tricked Into Buying Exact Match Domain Names 8269-daily-golden-nugget-939The sad truth is that the internet is loaded with scam artists of every shape and size. Every day, there's plenty of possible ways to trick you into spending money that you don't need to spend.

I hope that this Daily Nugget will help some of you from being tricked by one of the latest unnecessary domain name offers.

In my daily job, I'm responsible for managing several hundred domain names. For tech reasons, I'm listed as a contact person on most of those domain names; a...
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AT: 02/27/2014 08:04:49 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 24, 2014

How to Get Started on Google Plus on Your First Day

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How to Get Started on Google Plus on Your First Day 3826-daily-golden-nugget-936Google+ can be a lonely place if you don't have people to follow. For today's Google+ Monday I created a special brand new user account on Google+ to show you how to get started.

To get started on Google+, you should visit this page here https://plus.google.com/u/0/up/start/ to set up your account. I'm not going to explain the steps for the initial account setup, but let me show you how boring Google+ is when ...
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AT: 02/24/2014 10:39:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 21, 2014

Shane Co Website Review

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Shane Co Website Review 1774-daily-golden-nugget-935 This is the special Friday edition of the Daily Golden Nugget where I randomly review a retail jewelry store website to see what we can learn from it. Sometimes I uncover good things, and sometimes bad; either way, there's always something interesting to learn.

This week I'm doing this review from my iPad Air. I'm beginning this review with the Google Chrome browser using incognito mode. I started with a search for "jewelry stores in Seattle, Washington" and this search results screen was returned to me.

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AT: 02/21/2014 05:30:31 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 20, 2014

Avoid the Single Point of Marketing Failure

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Avoid the Single Point of Marketing Failure 32-daily-golden-nugget-934As a computer engineer, programmer, and networking engineer, I have seen my share of technical disasters since I first got involved with computer in, um, 1984. I got my first computer, a Timex Sinclair, in '84 and quickly learned the BASIC programming language.

Early computers were very fragile and their storage ability even more so. You never knew if your program would work the next time you tried to load it after saving it to a tape drive. Early floppy disks were also fragile and could easily be ...
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AT: 02/20/2014 05:15:06 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 19, 2014

11 Potential Ways To Increase Your E-Commerce Business

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11 Potential Ways To Increase Your E-Commerce Business 5381-daily-golden-nugget-933I'm often asked to evaluate ways to increase business on e-commerce websites. In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget I'll review a few of my typical suggestions. Remember that these are just suggestions and you should consider each one individually for yourself, and if they will work.

Content Suggestions

1. Add a blog to your website. Use this blog to build a library of information that Google can index and then bring more people to your site organically...
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AT: 02/19/2014 11:41:38 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Seek Out Ways You Can Participate in Social Networking

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Seek Out Ways You Can Participate in Social Networking 748-daily-golden-nugget-932Social networking is supposed to be, well, social, but many retail jewelers spend a lot of time posting to Facebook and Twitter without ever trying to start a real conversation. Many of the posts I see are photos of jewelry and current store specials with a question at the end that's supposed to help start a conversation.

Common questions I've seen include:
"What do you think of this?"
"Would you wear this?"
"Which of these do you like?"

With this type of post...
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AT: 02/18/2014 04:24:59 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 17, 2014

Giving Google Plus Credit Where Credit is Due

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Giving Google Plus Credit Where Credit is Due 3269-daily-golden-nugget-931In this edition of my Google+ Monday Nuggets, I'm going to cover one of the basic etiquettes that evolved on that social network.

As one of the early adopters of Google+, during those early months I always found myself a little overwhelmed by the amount of different knowledge that was being shared. If you've ever been overwhelmed by one of my Nuggets, you should know what I'm talking about.

Google+ originally opened by invitation-only and those early invitations were sent to the fr...
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AT: 02/17/2014 08:45:20 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 14, 2014

Carter's Jewelry Website Review

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Carters Jewelry Website Review 15-daily-golden-nugget-930This is the Friday Jewelry Website Review to help you learn more about your own website by looking at a review from another jeweler's real website.

For this week, I'm starting my Google search with the phrase "jewelry appraisers Saint Augustine, FL" to find my review candidate. The top 3 results are listings from the Yellow Pages and Yahoo Local, but after that, I see Carter's Jewelry as the top raking in the Google+ Local list.

Here's the website: http://www.car...
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AT: 02/14/2014 02:54:38 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 13, 2014

The Hows, Whys, and Whens of Social Media

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The Hows, Whys, and Whens of Social Media 530-daily-golden-nugget-929Social media is all the buzz, or is it that all the buzz is on social media?

Are you on social media? Facebook? Twitter? Google+? Pinterest? Instagram?

Every day, I hear someone say they don't have time for social media. Sometimes a friend says it to me. Sometimes it's my mother telling me she doesn't have time to check Facebook. Sometimes I hear it from a jeweler I'm talking to on the phone. And surprise of surprises, I even hear myself saying it sometimes! In fact, as of today I'm 50...
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AT: 02/13/2014 02:54:31 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Redefining Your About Us Page

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Redefining Your About Us Page 110-daily-golden-nugget-928Do you have a story to tell? Pull up a chair and tell me your story. I would like to hear why you are the best jeweler in town.

I hope your story doesn't start with something like "In the beginning my great-great-grandfather came home from the French and Indian War and decided to become a jeweler." That doesn't tell me anything other than your great-great-grandfather needed to find a job and he became an entrepreneur instead, and somehow he made it work.

Right not, today, you are all that matters. Somehow you need...
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AT: 02/12/2014 02:53:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Personal Branding Leads to Big Rewards and Personal Risks

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Personal Branding Leads to Big Rewards and Personal Risks 4713-daily-golden-nugget-927Security is a big concern for jewelry store owners. Personal security and store security are a constant thought in the back of your mind. Safety is paramount for you, your employees, and your family. Social media marketing is now a necessary part of your marketing now, but how do you balance the public identity that best helps to build your business is you have all this security to worry about.

There's no simple answer other than to tell you to use extreme caution....
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AT: 02/11/2014 03:46:52 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 10, 2014

Sharing to Specific People on Google Plus

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Sharing to Specific People on Google Plus 2446-daily-golden-nugget-926In this edition of Google+ Monday I'm going to explain the difference between sharing directly to specific people on Google+ and Facebook.

We're starting with the social network you are probably most familiar with... Facebook.

To share one of your Facebook status updates with a specific person, you would have to click the Share With drop down button and select Custom. From there, you click the next drop down option to select the people or lists to share with and select "Specific people or L...
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AT: 02/10/2014 03:42:43 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 07, 2014

John Greenan & Sons Jewelers Website Review

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John Greenan & Sons Jewelers Website Review 2354-daily-golden-nugget-925This is the Friday jewelry website review where I take a look at a random retail jewelry store's website to see what they are doing right or wrong, and use them for real world learning

This week I'm heading to Silver Spring, Maryland in search of a jeweler. Using Google's Chrome Incognito Mode I searched for "jewelers Silver Spring Maryland" and saw these search results:

John Greenan & Sons...<br />
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AT: 02/07/2014 04:16:25 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 06, 2014

Recap of Several Content Creation Strategies

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Recap of Several Content Creation Strategies 7924-daily-golden-nugget-924First, I'd like to apologize to everyone who felt I walloped them over the head with yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget. My suppositions and conclusions were not completely unfounded. I like to research and analyze data before I publish my real findings. Sometimes, like yesterday, I write these Nuggets based on my extensive internet experience, which now spans 21 years on the "web" and 26 years "onli...
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AT: 02/06/2014 06:30:36 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 05, 2014

You Can't Truly Systematize Your Website

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You Cant Truly Systematize Your Website 2414-daily-golden-nugget-923If you're an entrepreneur, you know that the best way to grow your business is to systematize what you do so anyone can follow your directions. This systematization then allows you to move on to the next item on your business master plan so you can continue to grow.

If you own a retail jewelry store but haven't figured out how to systematize your personal daily routine then you are not an entrepreneur, you are simply a small business owner with too many daily duties.

The systematization process ...
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AT: 02/05/2014 04:36:43 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 04, 2014

Effects of Google Hummingbird on Future Website Planning

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Effects of Google Hummingbird on Future Website Planning 2377-daily-golden-nugget-922January 2014 is over and for the next few days everyone in the jewelry industry will be focused on Valentine's Day related sales. And after that, you'll have only 8.5 months to get ready for the next holiday season.

Too soon to think about it?

I don't think so.

Back in September 2013, Google announced their new Hummingbird engine along with their new mobile centric focus. Now, a full 4 months later, I finally have some real data to help understand what e...
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AT: 02/04/2014 05:00:33 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 03, 2014

Using Google Plus Circles for Flexible Sharing

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Using Google Plus Circles for Flexible Sharing 5337-daily-golden-nugget-921For this edition of Google+ Monday, I'm going to show you the different options for sharing information to the public and people in your circles.

Last Monday's Nugget I covered how to find and add people to your Google+ Circles, but I left out some important concepts of how you should be sharing to your circles.

Here's how you do it:

STEP 1.

Go to your Google...
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AT: 02/03/2014 07:25:49 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 31, 2014

A Jeweler's Review

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A Jewelers Review 7426-daily-golden-nugget-920This is not my typical Friday Jewelry website review. I started out the normal way by opening my Chrome web browser in incognito mode, and I searched for the phrase "jewelry stores" followed by a town name.

I found a good candidate for a review, and I even browsed around their website and Facebook page for a while to find out a little more about them before I started to write.

As it turns out, I'm not doing a review of a website today, but I'm going to cover an extremely sensitive topic that was mentioned in their online Google reviews. ...
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AT: 01/31/2014 03:51:24 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 30, 2014

Step-by-Step Content Creation Strategy for 2014 and Beyond - Part 2

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Step-by-Step Content Creation Strategy for 2014 and Beyond - Part 2 3450-daily-golden-nugget-919This is a continuation of the Daily Golden Nugget from yesterday. As a recap, I just finished explaining how you need to use video to document the process of creating a custom jewelry design, and how that video was converted into a written case study and a polished video.

The next step in the content creation process is...
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AT: 01/30/2014 06:35:49 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Step-by-Step Content Creation Strategy for 2014 and Beyond - Part 1

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Step-by-Step Content Creation Strategy for 2014 and Beyond - Part 1 6519-daily-golden-nugget-918In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget, I reviewed a simple method for keyword research that would help you discover clusters of words for content creation.

Using that same technique, I did my own keyword research relating to "custom jewelry design" and came up with this group of phrases:

* custom jewelry design
* custom jewelry {town nam...
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AT: 01/29/2014 06:33:45 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Keyword Research to rank for Website Topics

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Keyword Research to rank for Website Topics 1314-daily-golden-nugget-917 Back on September 10, 2013 I told you that your website needs to target specific topics rather than individual keywords. Eventually other SEO companies started saying the same thing.

The problem with ranking by "topics" rather than "keywords" is that most people still think in keyword...
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AT: 01/28/2014 04:43:01 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 27, 2014

Adding People to Your Circles on Google Plus

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Adding People to Your Circles on Google Plus 1797-daily-golden-nugget-916When Google set out to create a new social network, they wanted to give people a new way to share their favorite things. At the time of Google+'s inception in the late 2010 time frame, Facebook was the most popular social network and they had, in my opinion, some strange policies with how the stuff you shared would be viewed by your friends.

At the time, Facebook's policies on sharing made it very difficult for users to share stuff with their friends without it being seen publicly. This spec...
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AT: 01/27/2014 03:45:23 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 24, 2014

Review: Jewelers in Lowell Massachusetts are Behind

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Review: Jewelers in Lowell Massachusetts are Behind 6929-daily-golden-nugget-915Are you looking to open a new jewelry store but don't know where to do it? There seems to be a good opportunity along the northern border of Massachusetts in the City of Lowell.

According to Wikipedia, Lowell has a population of 106,519, but according to the search I just did in Google, they only seem to have two jewelry stores. Both stores seem to be long established jewelers, but their websites ...
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AT: 01/24/2014 02:50:45 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 23, 2014

It Takes a Village to Raise a Website

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It Takes a Village to Raise a Website 6210-daily-golden-nugget-914It's almost impossible to see the short term effects of content marketing. Most business owners are more interested in seeing immediate results from advertising efforts. With traditional advertising, you can usually measure a change in sales that's directly related to a current or immediately preceding ad campaign.

In the age of the internet, that traditional advertising/measuring method breaks. Those of you who started your business prior to 1999 might still believe that you can throw more money into yo...
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AT: 01/23/2014 05:48:33 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 21, 2014

The Next Generation of Duplicate Content Resolutions

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The Next Generation of Duplicate Content Resolutions 8764-daily-golden-nugget-912Since the last time I mentioned website duplicate content issues Google has made a few significant changes to the way they figure this out. Today I'll explain how their changes are making your life a little easier as a website owner.

The issue I explained in March 2013 was the duplicate content that is created when you have a website that allows visitors to see the same content ...
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AT: 01/21/2014 03:41:07 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 20, 2014

Google Plus Post Sharing Procedure

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Google Plus Post Sharing Procedure 9950-daily-golden-nugget-911In this week's edition of Google+ Golden Nugget Mondays, I'm going to explain how to start sharing content to Google+. Everything you share to Google+ is indexed by Google's Search pretty quickly, so even before you understand all the hows and whys of Google+, and being friends with people on Google+, you can still benefit from sharing content.

You have the ability to share content into Google+ through several different ways. The primary way to do it is by logging into your account and going to your Stream. Yo...
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AT: 01/20/2014 05:06:20 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 17, 2014

Herman Hiss & Company Website Review

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Herman Hiss & Company Website Review 9939-daily-golden-nugget-910This is my Friday Jewelry Website Review where I look at a random retail jewelry store's website in hopes that what I find will help you improve your own website.

Each week I randomly choose a city and do a Google search using the Chrome browser in incognito mode. This is the best way to ensure that the search results I see will be similar to what a random person would see when they search for a jeweler in that same town.

This week's search was "jewelers bay city, Michigan," and these are the top 4 re...
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AT: 01/17/2014 05:14:40 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 16, 2014

Website Device Responsive Content

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Website Device Responsive Content 6090-daily-golden-nugget-909We live in a multi-screen world where people are connected to the internet every minute of every day. The evolution of technology and the internet has grown from what used to be isolated internet access only from your work computer, to the level of wearable devices that are connected all of the time.

According to staggering statistics there are more than 1 billion smartphones on the planet. This rivals the number of desktop computers. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 01/16/2014 02:35:25 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Template for Creating a Landing Page

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Template for Creating a Landing Page 9510-daily-golden-nugget-908In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm returning back to the topic of Landing Pages to give you another easy example of how to set one up.

A "landing page" is usually single web page that you create for a specific purpose. Many times, a landing page is used in online banner ads, shared links to social networks, and pay per click advertising like Google AdWords.

A landing page should be designed to get someone interested in your product or service, but then give them links to additional inform...
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AT: 01/15/2014 04:12:24 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Auto-Play Music is Bad for Your Website

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Auto-Play Music is Bad for Your Website 1540-daily-golden-nugget-907I'm still surprised when I come across a jewelry store website that has auto-playing music on their home page, and throughout their website. The popularity of websites with auto-playing music is certainly declining. One of my recent jewelry website reviews talked about home page music, and even some of my regular clients still request music on their home page.

Auto-playing music is a bad idea for any webs...
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AT: 01/14/2014 03:00:37 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 13, 2014

Getting to Know Google Plus Accounts and Why You Should Use It

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Getting to Know Google Plus Accounts and Why You Should Use It 5666-daily-golden-nugget-906I suppose that if I'm going to dedicate every Monday of my Daily Golden Nuggets to Google+, starting today and continuing into the foreseeable future, then perhaps I should start at the beginning. I should probably not assume you know anything, and hold your hand through the process.

One thing is for sure, the process is ever changing. I can certainly hold your hand and lead you down the path of good Google+ ideas for a jewelry store owner, jewelry store e...
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AT: 01/13/2014 05:10:02 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 10, 2014

Victor Hardy Jewelers Website Review

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Victor Hardy Jewelers Website Review 4983-daily-golden-nugget-905In this edition of the Friday Website review I'm stopping off in Bristol, TN. To prevent my Google Personalization results from getting in the way, I used the Google Chrome browser in Incognito Mode. My search string was "jewelers in bristol tn."

Here's a screen grab of the top SERP results I saw...

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AT: 01/10/2014 04:03:39 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 09, 2014

How-to Clean Up a Google Penguin Penalized Website

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How-to Clean Up a Penguin Penalized Website 789-daily-golden-nugget-904In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget I explained how you could check for, and recover from Google Panda. Today I'll explain the same process for Google Penguin.

As a reminder, Google Penguin is a filter that Google created to detect when your website has too many unnatural links pointing to it. The key word there is "unnatural."

Google's original method of ranking websites was to count the number of pa...
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AT: 01/09/2014 05:58:33 AM   2 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 08, 2014

Recovering From Google Panda

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Recovering From Google Panda 9648-daily-golden-nugget-903I've previously written about Google Penguin and Google Panda and how to remember the difference between them. Both of them are types of filters that Google applies to search results to improve the quality of the results we all receive.

The filters were specifically designed to remove websites that were trying to use sneaky tactics to improve ranking. Those tactics commonly included poorly w...
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AT: 01/08/2014 05:06:08 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 07, 2014

The Benefits of Jewelry Catalogs and Designer Line Pages

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The Benefits of Jewelry Catalogs and Designer Line Pages 5-daily-golden-nugget-902I'm digging deep into some numbers today to show you an easy way to increase the traffic to your jewelry website.

For the past few years I've been continually tracking the increasing or decreasing effect on visitor traffic when two specific conditions are applied to a jewelry site. The first condition is whether or not there's a jewelry product catalog. The second condition is whether or not the website has designer line pages.

For my purposes, the jewelry catalog is a...
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AT: 01/07/2014 04:16:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 06, 2014

Good Reasons to Migrate From Facebook to Google+

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Good Reasons to Migrate From Facebook to Google+ 5329-daily-golden-nugget-901Facebook has been the buzzing social network for several years and it's where all the experts have said you have to be. Through some very creative thinking, Facebook has managed to turn itself into a ubiquitous social network that connects user accounts and interactions across millions of websites around the world.

When Google+ launched in June 2011, many people thought it was going to quickly overtake Facebook as the dominant social network.

That didn't happen.

It d...
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AT: 01/06/2014 04:57:50 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 03, 2014

Case Study of Duplicate Google+ Local Listings

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Case Study of Duplicate Google+ Local ListingsToday I'd like to share a special story about Google+ Local that we can all learn from.

In honor of my 1st Golden Nugget about Google Maps, I now reserve every 100th Daily Golden Nugget to check back in on new advances in Google's local services. Today is my 900th Nugget!

In early November 2013, I was contacted by one of my regular readers for help with solving an unusual problem with his Google+ Local account. At the time, he had 29 very good Google reviews and his 4.7 start rating used to appear next to his store name in Google's sea...
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AT: 01/03/2014 03:07:44 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 02, 2014

Pattons Fine Jewelry Website Review

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Pattons Fine Jewelry Website Review 6859-daily-golden-nugget-899This is a special edition of the weekly retail jeweler website review. It's special because it's on Thursday rather than the normal Friday. The goal of this review is to show you how other retail jewelers are using their website. Sometimes these reviews are good, sometimes really bad. No matter how they work out, the hope is that you'll see something you can use, or fix, on your own website.

To find my review candidate this week I searched for "jewelry stores in baton rouge" using the Google Chrome browser ...
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AT: 01/02/2014 02:51:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 01, 2014

New Year's Resolutions for Jewelers

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New Years Resolutions for Jewelers 2633-daily-golden-nugget-898Yesterday, I gave you my list of predictions for 2014. Those predictions were things that might happen whether you want them to or not. Today, as we start a New Year, I want to give you a list of things that would make good New Year's resolutions for jewelers. Any one of these alone would help improve your business if you stick with it all year long.


1. Resolve to Get Employees Involved With Content Creation

Train all your employees to help with the content creation process. Photos, reviews,...
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AT: 01/01/2014 01:15:54 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 27, 2013

Ciccotti's Jewel Case Website Review

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Ciccottis Jewel Case Website Review 7156-daily-golden-nugget-895This is the Friday Jewelry Website Review where I look at a random jewelry website to give you ideas on how to improve your own website.

I began my search this week looking for "jewelry stores in scranton pa." The top listing in the both the organic and Google+ Local results were for Boccardo Jewelers and their website boccardojewelers.com. Instead of seeing their website, I actually got the "account suspended" notice from Blue Host.

I actually found this earlier in the week when looking for website ...
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AT: 12/27/2013 05:06:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 26, 2013

Final Holiday 2013 Email Review for Retail Jewelers

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Final Holiday 2013 Email Review for Retail Jewelers 398-daily-golden-nugget-894I'd like to officially close out the 2013 Holiday Season with one last review of a few emails I've been tracking. I've lost count with how many email newsletters I've joined since I started tracking this in 2011, but I know it's more than 200 retail jewelers all over the world and in multiple languages.

Some jewelry stores have a regular routine of sending email newsletters for many reasons other than sales or promotional offers, while others only send emails when they want to sell...
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AT: 12/26/2013 04:19:45 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Final Holiday 2013 Website Stats for Retail Jewelers

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Final Holiday 2013 Website Stats for Retail Jewelers 8295-daily-golden-nugget-893It's Christmas Day and the holiday gift buying season has come to a close. Typically this day each year is one of 3 with the lowest website traffic for retail jewelry stores, and the traffic that is searched is usually related to popular brand names and specific style numbers. That type of traffic always makes me wonder if people are searching for details of jewelry they gave as gifts, wanted to get as gifts, or saw someone else open as a gift.

But let's leave the speculation...
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AT: 12/25/2013 01:55:13 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Understanding the True Cost of Website Time and Analysis

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Understanding the True Cost of Website Time and Analysis 450-daily-golden-nugget-892In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget I explained a few ways to track how people use your website. I'd like to expand upon that conversation a little and explain a little more about the costs involved with that user testing.

No matter which method of testing you use, there's always going to be some type of analysis involved. With the session recording services...
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AT: 12/24/2013 04:13:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 23, 2013

Advanced Ways to Track and Improve Your Website Sales

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Advanced Ways to Track and Improve Your Website Sales 5155-daily-golden-nugget-891I use a lot of different methods to gather data about websites and then several tools to analyze that data. Naturally the most popular tool I use is Google Analytics, but there are a few others that really provide amazing business intelligence.

Google Analytics tracking is free to install on your website, but figuring out how to read and use the data it collects isn't as simple as it once was. A few years ago I would have said that any business owner could figure out how to...
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AT: 12/23/2013 05:13:57 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 20, 2013

King Jewelers Website Review

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King Jewelers Website Review 3759-daily-golden-nugget-890For this week's Daily Golden Nugget website review, I'm heading down to Nashville, Tennessee in search of a new watch.

When you search Google for any topic, they will reference your previous search history and websites you've visited to create "personalized search results." As a jewelry industry professional I visit dozens of jewelry store websites every day, and my personalized results would interfere with the accuracy of how I find my review candidate websites every week.

In order to perform a non-personalized se...
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AT: 12/20/2013 03:47:38 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 19, 2013

The Longterm ROI of Content Marketing

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The Longterm ROI of Content Marketing 4923-daily-golden-nugget-889In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget I briefly explained that you need to build various types of content in order to rank well in the new version of Google's search results. Higher ranking in Google Search means more customers will find you.

This is the new world of content marketing, which is much different than direct marketing. With traditional online and offline advertising you have various w...
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AT: 12/19/2013 01:30:47 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Understanding the Need for a Longterm Content Plan

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Understanding the Need for a Longterm Content Plan 5218-daily-golden-nugget-888People search for random phrases during the holiday season. Here's one such random, and very specific search:

"18 karat gold double sided St Christopher medal with a car on one side"

Here's another:

"2 or 3 strand 14k gold bracelets with a center gemstone"

Google is trying to entice everyone to search using more natural questions rather than "search speak," and every month I'm tracking more than 1000 random search phrases just like those two above.

Ge...
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AT: 12/18/2013 10:22:07 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Updating Popular Landing Pages Can Lead to Increased Click Throughs

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Updating Popular Landing Pages Can Lead to Increased Click Throughs 7175-daily-golden-nugget-887Have you ever heard the expression "Content is King?" If you've been trying to achieve top ranking with your website then you've probably come across that expression a few times. Google Search Engine likes to find original content on websites and use that in the search results.

Depending on who you talk to, you will hear some people tell you that you need to update your website often, while even Google says that you can have a really good website...
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AT: 12/17/2013 10:47:34 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 16, 2013

Jewelry Catalog Organic Traffic During the Holiday Season

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Jewelry Catalog Organic Traffic During the Holiday Season 3990-daily-golden-nugget-886I was recently analyzing the long term affects of adding a product catalog to a website. The analysis showed that over a 12 month period, the organic visitor traffic to the website increased 66%. This was a sustainable increase without any other work than adding the catalog.

The catalog has more than 1000 individual items with at least 1 photograph and a description of at least 50 words. Those 1000 products were all from well know designer brand and each product ...
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AT: 12/16/2013 11:39:50 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 13, 2013

Frassanito Jewelers Website Review

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Frassanito Jewelers Website Review 8233-daily-golden-nugget-885It's the holiday season and like most men, I'm going to wait until the last minute to buy my gifts. But I think I'll start looking today. So I open up my web browser and search Google for "jewelry gift for her in Huntington, New York."

The first listing is the Facebook page for "Presents of Mind," but that doesn't seem like a jewelry store to me, so I skip it. I then noticed the SERP listing with 5-starts for Frassanito Jewelers. I check them out...

Someone out there is doing that search this holiday ...
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AT: 12/13/2013 11:56:30 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 12, 2013

How to Create a Landing Page to Support a Marketing Campaign

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How to Create a Landing Page to Support a Marketing Campaign 4516-daily-golden-nugget-884Back in October 2013, I wrote a Nugget about Google AdWords and Landing Pages and then this week I followed that up with some test results explaining how general landing pages are good for AdWords targeting. Today I'll give you an example of ...
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AT: 12/12/2013 12:11:42 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Email Analysis of a Large e-Tail Jeweler

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Email Analysis of a Large e-Tail Jeweler 6729-daily-golden-nugget-883This is the fourth edition of my Daily Golden Nugget series of holiday email reviews. In the previous reviews I showed you emails from early November, then a few emails from Black Friday, last week I explained a few VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 12/11/2013 09:56:05 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Using a Unique Landing Page for AdWords Targeting

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Using a Unique Landing Page for AdWords Targeting 209-daily-golden-nugget-882In September 2013, shortly after Google announced their new Hummingbird algorithm, I decided to set up a special website test to see exactly how organic traffic and paid traffic would differ on a unique landing page.

On one of the website I manage I set up a landing page with 1469 words of content, 16 photos, and 37 links to other pages on the website. Indeed, this was a very complicated page that fully explained the business, all the services they provide, and the products they sold.<...
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AT: 12/10/2013 11:55:39 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 09, 2013

More Keyword Research On Your Own Website

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More Keyword Research On Your Own Website 706-daily-golden-nugget-881In a recent Daily Golden Nugget, I explained how you could use your website page titles as a way to discover keywords on your own website. That method assumes that you've fine tuned your page title tags and written your website pages to the best possible SEO practices.

But there's a more accurate way to acquire keyword data from your website, but it takes a little setup...
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AT: 12/09/2013 11:51:48 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 06, 2013

Ayres Jewelry Co Website Review

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Ayres Jewelry Co Website Review 1590-daily-golden-nugget-880This is the Friday Jewelry Website Review to help you learn more about your own website by looking at a review from another jeweler's real website.

This week I decided to test the latest voice search features in Google's Chrome browser. These features are supposed to allow natural speech requests like what's already available on the Google smartphone apps.

Using the Chrome browser's incognito mode I clicked on the little microphone to the right of the search box and spoke aloud "give me a jeweler in casper wyom...
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AT: 12/06/2013 12:57:34 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 05, 2013

Black Friday Mobile vs. Desktop Engagement Rates

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Black Friday Mobile vs. Desktop Engagement Rates 2123-daily-golden-nugget-879The big shopping dates of Black Friday and Cyber Monday have passed for the 2013 season and the mobile user numbers are in.

Total mobile usage is at 42.74%!!! Compare that to the 40% mobile usage I predicted back in August.

Smartphones alone account for 26.91% of that traffic and these numbers still seem to be climbing for this Holiday Season.

Th...
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AT: 12/05/2013 02:07:32 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 04, 2013

Simple Use of GA Landing Page Report to search for Keyword Ranking Data

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Simple Use of GA Landing Page Report to search for Keyword Ranking Data 8426-daily-golden-nugget-878It's been three months since Google obfuscated keyword information from analytics tracking. The world hasn't ended, and the internet is still functioning just fine.

Perhaps this is exactly what Google expected (the world not ending). Still, so many internet marketing professionals complained when it happened and many non tech-savvy website owners were completely confused why they couldn't see their keyword ranking any more.

Even th...
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AT: 12/04/2013 01:09:55 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 03, 2013

Black Friday and Cyber Monday Email Campaign Mistakes

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Black Friday and Cyber Monday Email Campaign Mistakes 5893-daily-golden-nugget-877According to a report from the National Retail Federation, the number of Americans out shopping during this past weekend was up from 139 million in 2012 to 141 million this year. However, the average amount of money each person spent was down from $423.55 last year to $407.02 this year.

Yesterday, December 2, 2013, was Cyber Monday. This "special" day is designated as the day when Americans replace their weekend shopping with shopping online. This trend started way back fo...
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AT: 12/03/2013 12:04:08 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 02, 2013

Using Goal Flow Reports to Find Problems with Your Checkout

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Using Goal Flow Reports to Find Problems with Your Checkout 5846-daily-golden-nugget-876Today is Cyber Monday, the day when many holiday shoppers start ordering from e-commerce websites, hoping to find the best online deals of the season.

If you own an e-commerce website, this is certainly the day you would expect to make some online sales. But if the day passes by without a single completed purchase from your website then maybe there's something wrong.

Website visitor traffic spikes every year on Cyber Monday, which means this is also a fant...
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AT: 12/02/2013 09:48:31 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 29, 2013

A Review of Two Black Friday Email Ads

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I typically do a website review every Friday but this week I'm changing that up and going to review some recent email marketing that's associated with today: Black Friday 2013.

This was a very busy week for email blasts. On Monday, I received 31 emails from retail jewelers, on Tuesday 37 email, 43 emails on Wednesday, and even 35 emails on Thanksgiving day by the time I posted this. I sign up for new emails all the time and most jewelry stores never send any emails until the holiday season.

In fact, I saw a few emails on Tuesday from retailers I signed up with more than 6 months ago and had never heard from before then.

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AT: 11/29/2013 09:59:42 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 28, 2013

Using Alternative Domain Names in Print Ads

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How many print ads will you have between today and the end of December? Will you be able to track the effectiveness of those print ads?

Every week, because I'm the domain manager for hundreds of domain names, I receive several random domain name solicitations.

There are many companies out there that are trying to make a living by convincing website owners to buy additional domain names because they propose it will be good for Google's search results.

For example, since my office is in Totowa, and since I own the domain name perosijewelers.com, I once received an offer to buy the domain name totowaengagementrings.com. The solicitation specifically said that the exact phrase "Totowa engagement rings" would help with my Google ranking.

To be clear, this technique is NOT VALID ANYMORE. In fact, Google is more li...
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AT: 11/28/2013 09:07:01 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 27, 2013

How Retail Stores Can Combat Showrooming

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It's Thanksgiving Eve in the USA and that means many people are preparing for a huge feast while many more are planning how they will spend their Black Friday. Those of you reading this will probably be working very long hours on Friday.

Even though the forecasts for this season are low ,I'm hoping to see higher sales this Friday and especially Saturday since it's once again promoted as "Small Business Saturday" by American Express. Collectively, I like to refer to this entire upcoming weekend as "Black Weekend."

Even if your jewelry store isn't filled wall to wall with shoppers this weekend, the sales you make will have more to do with the in-person customer service you provide than the sales you are running. Sure, they might come in beca...
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AT: 11/27/2013 12:02:47 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Outline of an Online Marketing Plan Retail Jewelers

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Outline of an Online Marketing Plan Retail Jewelers 3878-daily-golden-nugget-872There's really no way to point at any one type of online service as "online marketing." Google, Microsoft, and Apple have taken all the pieces of the internet and woven them together. Ultimately you should be involved with all social networks, mobile ads, search ads, e-commerce, and a fantastic website.

Achieving all of that is the hard part.

If you started from scratch, this is how it would work:

1. Set a long term business goal

This could be to s...
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AT: 11/26/2013 09:45:20 PM   0 COMMENTS
Sunday, November 24, 2013

SEO Concerns When Using the Word Inch or the Quote Character

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SEO Concerns When Using the Word Inch or the Quote Character 6644-daily-golden-nugget-871A few weeks ago one of my customers asked me a very intriguing question that I wanted to share as a Daily Nugget.

While trying to work out the proper SEO for his website he asked:

Is (8") or (8 inch) the proper naming scheme for the title of a product?


He was worried about uniformity and what the most popular keyword would be, but there's a deeper issue at play here...

In a case like that, it has more to do wi...
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AT: 11/24/2013 09:48:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 22, 2013

Simmons & Clark Jewelers Website Review

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Simmons & Clark Jewelers Website Review 3064-daily-golden-nugget-870The latest Google app for the Android and iPhone is supposed to have a little more understanding of common language queries. Instead of typing out something simple like "jewelers Detroit mi" I should be able to verbally request something more natural.

Turning to my iPhone, I opened the latest Google App (version 3.1.0) and spoke "Okay Google... jewelers with the best Yelp review in Motor City."

The first result was for Motor City Casino, which was obviously wrong, but the second result was from ...
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AT: 11/22/2013 11:39:00 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 21, 2013

How to Remember the Difference Between Google Panda and Google Penguin

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Google Panda and Google Penguin are two filtering mechanisms that Google uses to block websites from appearing in SERP results when they've disobeyed with Google's website guidelines.

There's plenty of confusion between what each of the filters do and how to figure out if you've been affected by one. I'm going to try to clear up some confusion with that today.

The Panda filter helps Google's search algorithm figure out the difference between good quality content and bad quality content on websites. Good content refers to anything that is well written, interesting, adds value to your website, and is not duplicated on another website.

What counts as good content? Google's goal is to get you to write high enough quality to be published in a book or a magazine.

Bad quality content is typically anything that ...
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AT: 11/21/2013 10:22:05 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Using Gift Certificates as a Reputation Management Tool

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Using Gift Certificates as a Reputation Management Tool 3137-daily-golden-nugget-868During this time of year, many local charities are organizing their fundraisers and asking local businesses for support. In my hometown area, many charities organize dinner parties where they also sell raffle tickets. The raffle prizes come from local businesses that have donated services or products.

If you are approached by a charity, for example your local church, police league, fire department, you should offer them a gift certificate from your store. A $20 or $50 ...
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AT: 11/20/2013 10:03:52 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Early 2013 Holiday Season Website Traffic Could Be Confirmation Of Lower Sales Forecast

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In yesterday's Nugget I showed you the current bounce, duration, and pages per visit for jewelry website visitors from the first 16 days of November 2013. Today I'm going to quickly compare those numbers to the same period from the 2012 Holiday Season.


Early 2013 Holiday Season Website Traffic average-bounce-rate
Bounce Rate for Nov 1-16
<...
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AT: 11/19/2013 09:41:31 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 18, 2013

Early 2013 Holiday Season Mobile vs. Desktop Engagement Rates

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The month of November is already half over and the mobile user numbers are in.

Total mobile usage is at 37.36%. Compare that to the 35.85% mobile usage I reported for July-August 2013.

Smartphones alone account for 24.77% of that traffic and these numbers are on the rise as expected for the Holiday Season.

Websites that are not equipped to handle smartphones create a lower level of customer satisfaction. Even though you might have a mobile optimized site, it might not actually be working correctly according to Google's standards. Google maintains a list of common mobile programming mistakes<...
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AT: 11/18/2013 09:34:52 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 15, 2013

Website Review: Local Color, Key West, FL

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Website Review: Local Color, Key West, FL 3480-daily-golden-nugget-865I'm traveling all the way down to Key West, Florida today to (virtually) visit a local jewelry designer and store. I started off my trip with a quick Google search for "key west jewelry stores" and found Local Color in the number 1 spot on in the Google+ Local listings.

Here's the website: http://www.localcolorkeywest.com; you might want to open it up to follow along as you read this review.

Having done a little bit of travelin...
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AT: 11/15/2013 06:46:53 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 14, 2013

Holiday Season 2013 Email Marketing Review

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The 2013 Holiday Season is off to a running start with many large and small retailers starting their advertising already. I've heard many different news outlets say that the holiday season is shorter this year, but it's still the same number of days between today and Christmas.

Actually, it's really only the US market that is looking at this year as a "shorter" season because we have a self inflicted border on the calendar (Thanksgiving) that sends everyone into a shopping frenzy the next day.

I've been tracking email marketing campaigns for the last 3 years and every year I'm seeing "holiday" emails earlier and earlier. This year the "holiday super sales" and "doorbuster" emails were already hitting my inbox at 4:24 AM on November 1st.

WHEW, I'm pretty sure some people were just getting home from Halloween parties ...
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AT: 11/14/2013 09:04:25 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Reviewing the Importance of Google Analytics Engagement Reports

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Reviewing the Importance of Google Analytics Engagement Reports 9583-daily-golden-nugget-863Depending on the nature of your website, you might want visitors to stay and browse through 12 pages, or you could be happy with them looking at a single page. It all depends on your business goals, and what you hope to accomplish with your site.

Reviewing the Importance of Google Analytics Engagement Reports VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 11/13/2013 10:09:40 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Google In-Depth Articles Are The Perfect Platform For Subject Experts

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How are your writing skills? Every week someone asks me how I can come up with so much to write about, but it's really easy for me because there's simply so much to keep up with. Figuring out how the basic functionality of the internet, and new technology, is going to fit into the jewelry industry is a constant challenge.

On the other hand, much of the basic information in the jewelry industry doesn't change. Sure, styles come and go, but through the years the industry provides possibilities for broad topics like rings, diamonds, gemstones, birthstones, and gold qualities.

You may consider these broad topics to be of lesser value because you yourself know these topics like the back of your soldering iron. But for your customers, this isn't their every day topic of conversation, so you have to expect that for them, it's a...
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AT: 11/12/2013 06:59:13 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 11, 2013

Understanding How and Why To Use Hashtags

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Understanding How and Why To Use Hashtags 1210-daily-golden-nugget-861Hashtags are used in all the popular social networks, well, except LinkedIn. What's a hashtag? The simplest description is any word or phrase preceded by the symbol #.

What do you call the symbol #?

Depending on where you are in the world you will call that a "number sign," or a "pound sign," or simply a "hash."

According to Wikipedia there are many uses of the # symbol. If you live in the United States, when y...
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AT: 11/11/2013 08:27:31 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 08, 2013

Lee Michaels Website Review

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Lee Michaels Website Review 1272-daily-golden-nugget-860This is the Friday Jewelry Website Review to help you learn more about your own website by looking at a review from another jeweler's real website.

I found today's review candidate by searching for "jewelry stores in san antonio tx" in the Chrome browser using incognito mode.

Here's the website: http://www.lmfj.com; you might want to open it up to follow along as you read this review.

Upon landing on the Lee Michaels home page, I was greeted with the typical anim...
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AT: 11/08/2013 10:48:42 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 07, 2013

This is How Jewelers Are Using Social Networks

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This is How Jewelers Are Using Social Networks 9192-daily-golden-nugget-859The Second Annual MJSA ConFab Conference was held at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City on November 3, 2013. The conference was attended by jewelry design students, aspiring jewelry designers, and seasoned jewelers who already design their own jewelry. There were 5 sessions on topics that would help attendees increase their profits. I was...
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AT: 11/07/2013 06:24:29 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 06, 2013

Using Google Analytics Location Maps To Analyze Marketing Methods

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Using Google Analytics Location Maps To Analyze Marketing Methods 7673-daily-golden-nugget-858Do you wonder where your next customer will come from? Without any special work, Google Analytics can tell you where your visitors are coming from.

Here's how it works...

Log into your Google Analytics account and, on the left side, navigate your way over to:

Audience -> Geo -> Location


On this page, you'll see the world map shown in various shades of blue to represent the number of people who h...
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AT: 11/06/2013 08:31:22 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 05, 2013

What are the Goals of Your Website? Set Them Today.

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What are the Goals of Your Website? Set Them Today. 3234-daily-golden-nugget-857Have you ever considered what the real purpose of your website is?

You built it. You work on it (daily I hope). You expect it will bring you business.

People find the site somehow and you probably spend a lot of time thinking about building content to bring people to the site.

This is all sounds normal, right? What happens then? Your website is a driving force for your business, and you should use a slightly advanced setting within Google Analytics to see exac...
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AT: 11/05/2013 10:01:02 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 04, 2013

Setting up GA Views and Filters to Track All Your Promotions

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In this installment of the Daily Golden Nugget I'm going to explain how to correctly set up your Google Analytics account structure to correctly track your marketing activity.

Almost as if they knew I was planning this topic for today, Morgan Stanley reported last week that that we would see the weakest Holiday Season since 2008. One of the reasons they cited in their report was that "increased promotional activity likely inhibits 2013 Holiday sales."

It seems like they are referring to the idea that too many promotions will cause people to buy less. Of course that almost seems like a paradox unless you are aware of all the consumer studies that measure choices vs. sales. This topic is widely e...
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AT: 11/04/2013 10:18:35 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 01, 2013

Ray's Jewelry Inc Website Review

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Rays Jewelry Inc Website Review 2122-daily-golden-nugget-855I'm taking a quick trip down to Florida this week for this edition of the Friday Review. Just west of Miami to a city called Hialeah.

As usual, I started off my search for the term "jewelers hialeah fl" using the Chrome browser in incognito mode.

Oddly enough, the first jeweler listed in the results is ABC Jewelry with their Yelp profile and a 4-star rating. But they don't have a website. Moving on...

The Second jeweler in the organic listing is Ray's Jewelry Inc. They also appeared in the #1 spot for...
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AT: 11/01/2013 10:34:05 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 31, 2013

How to Avoid Business Disasters on Your Busiest Retail Day of the Year

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 2716-daily-golden-nugget-854Happy Halloween!

Today I'd like to tell an interesting story about websites and customers service that you might be able to learn a thing or two from. It's not about jewelry, but about websites and business in general.

And honestly, it's a business disaster.

There's a costume and magic shop not too far from my home in New Jersey. It's been there for at least 35 years. My mom took me there as a young boy and bought me lots of fun magic tricks, professional quality, like bags that make things disappear and scarves that change color, oh and card tricks that would ch...
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AT: 10/31/2013 05:23:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 30, 2013

9 Tips to Energize Your 2013 Holiday Season Sales

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For those of us working in retail, or those of us who provide services to retail businesses, we know the day after tomorrow is when we can official start promoting the Holiday Season. True, we will still get flack for "skipping Thanksgiving," or for beating the first snowfall (maybe!) to the punch, but after Halloween, it's finally fair game. Holiday movies start playing on TV, and new holiday albums came out today is the US, which will start to affect the iTunes charts this weekend.

The USA is one of the few countries that celebrates Halloween in such a big way, and that day now represents the dividing date between "Fall" advertising and Holiday advertising. Not too long ago, that dividing date was Thanksgiving.

Of course, I'm only referring to the USA. Other countries that don't celebrate or commercialize Halloween in...
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AT: 10/30/2013 09:40:05 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Conversion Attribution Methods Specific for Jewelers

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Conversion Attribution Methods Specific for Jewelers 2357-daily-golden-nugget-852How good is your overall marketing plan? Seriously, do you know which parts of your overall marketing are working well, what they are used for, and how to make them better?

Your marketing plan includes everything you do that somehow tells people that you are open for business. This includes handing out business cards at a local networking event, advertising in local newspapers, email marketing, billboards, SMS, radio... this list is endless, but everything is part of your mar...
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AT: 10/29/2013 08:25:00 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 28, 2013

6 Google Analytics Dashboards for Jewelers

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You probably love your jewelry store and your career. If you're like most passionate business owners, you would love to spend all day helping your customers. Let the bookkeeper do their job and the bench jeweler do their job so you can work one-on-one with every customer that walks in the door.

Of course customers won't walk in the door unless you advertise. You could dabble in their own marketing or you could hire an agency to do all the hard work while you happily do what you do best.

A marketer's job is to look at the dynamic of your industry and figure out what messages will get the attention of your customers. It's not good enough to just pay for an ad and send it out, you actually should be figuring out where your customers are so you can put your ads in front of them. The marketer should be able to figure that ou...
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AT: 10/28/2013 09:58:21 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 25, 2013

LaRog Brothers Website Review

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LaRog Brothers Website Review 6218-daily-golden-nugget-850The typical jewelry store usually displays happy couples, brides, or jewelry photos on their home page. But not this jeweler.... They show a photo of a lumberjack!

It all started with my search for "jewelers portland or" to find a candidate for today's website review. Let's take a look at LaRog Brothers...

Here's the website: http://www.larog.com/; you might want to open it up to follow along as you read this review.

LaRog Brothers is the official jeweler...
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AT: 10/25/2013 10:17:23 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 24, 2013

Security Gap That Could Lose You All Your Google Analytics Data

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Security Gap That Could Lose You All Your Google Analytics Data 2421-daily-golden-nugget-849Google is serious about protecting your identity. They have very strict privacy policies in place to protect people who use their services and protect all of us from having our Personally Identifiable Information, or PII for short, getting accidentally exposed to the public.

The policies they have in place are very strict, and those breaking them are likely to lose their Google Accounts. Their privacy policies are governed by local and international laws...
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AT: 10/24/2013 04:52:45 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Google Doesn't Like Flash or Flash Intro Pages

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Google Doesnt Like Flash or Flash Intro Pages 9985-daily-golden-nugget-848During the summer of 2012, more than 12 months ago now, Google dropped support for Flash websites in its Android 4.1 OS. Did you know that?

Actually, it was Adobe that decided not to support the Android OS, and Google just followed their lead. By default, this means that you can no longer see any type of Flash video or website widget on an Android smartphone or tablet. (Steve Jobs said years ago that Apple was never going to allow the iPhone to see Flash videos, which has remained true al...
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AT: 10/23/2013 11:38:19 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 21, 2013

Halloween Headlines and Halloween Ideas for Jewelers

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Halloween Headlines and Halloween Ideas for Jewelers 5915-daily-golden-nugget-846Even though Halloween is 10 days away, you are probably heavily planning your Holiday Season advertising without really considering any last minute Halloween ads. You don't have to plan too much to whip up some last minute marketing for Halloween. Your website's home page, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and any email marketing over the next 10 days could use a dash of Halloween humor.

Here are some of the products that are popularly advertised for Halloween and some headlines an...
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AT: 10/21/2013 05:46:03 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 18, 2013

Wixon Jewelers Website Review

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Wixon Jewelers Website Review 8963-daily-golden-nugget-845For this Friday Jewelry Website Review I'm jumping over to Google Chrome's incognito view to search for "jewelry store bloomington mn." The premise of this Daily Golden Nugget is to learn more about your own website by looking at a review from another jeweler's real website.

The Google SERP page returned a list of 7 jewelers for me, and I'm choosing the first one: Wixon Jewelers.

Here's the website: http://www.wixonjewelers.com; you might want to open it u...
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AT: 10/18/2013 05:07:33 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 17, 2013

Insights into AdWords Keyword Bidding and Landing Pages

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Google has been a busy little bee with all their recent changes. They've made major changes to Google+, Google Search, Google Analytics, and Google AdWords in the last 30 - 40 days. Personally I been walloped by the changes because I work with each of these systems every day. I should feel like a kid in a candy store with all the exciting shiny new features, but instead I feel like a kid trying to understand that 2+2=4.

I'm only mentioning this so you understand that there are times when even the professionals need to re-learn what they take for granted.

Back in 2008, I was teaching a course on Google AdWords, but today most of the things I taught in that course became eventually useless. The class I once taught was to show jewelers how they could create and manage their own AdWords campaigns. I take it all back now; un...
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AT: 10/17/2013 04:04:15 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 16, 2013

How to correctly build content and internally link when using Silo Structures

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Now that I've given you the basic understanding of the silo structure as explained yesterday, I want to dive a little deeper into internal site linking between pages of the website.

Achieving higher website credibility for your website now has a lot to do with making your website very user friendly. Although website "user friendly" topics usually talk about the website design and navigation, there's another very important factor that both helps your visitors and should gain higher ranking for you.

This important factor, of course, is internal linking between pages of your website. I'm not actually referring to normal side or top menu navigation linking, but rather the linking between pages of your site from wi...
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AT: 10/16/2013 04:56:03 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Using Silo Website Architecture on a Jewelry Website

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Two weeks ago today I explained how jewelers could deal with tracking issues now that most keywords appear as "(not provided)" in Google Analytics.

What I mentioned in that Nugget was to create different groupings of pages on your website that all represent the same topics and link together. I mentioned "Silo Structure" in that previous Nugget but I didn't fully explain what that was. Today's Nugget is dedicated to explaining what this is and how you would correctly design your jewelry website using it.

The Silo Structure is best thought of as website information architecture, or how you choose to organize your pages and the content. This wonderful VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/15/2013 05:01:06 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 11, 2013

Nina Jewelry Website Review

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In honor of the fall season and the bright colored leaves in the region, I'm taking us to Manchester, Vermont in search for good jewelry store. My hope is that I'll find a website that we can learn from.

Using the Chrome browser in incognito mode I searched for "jeweler manchester vt."

I was presented with 2 organic results followed by the typical layout of Google+ Local listings. I chose the first one on the list: Nina Jewelry

Here's the website: http://www.ninajewelry.com/; you might want to open it up to follow along as you read this review.


Usability Issues:

* On the home page I was first drawn to the blue box stating "Shop & Compare - Highest Prices Paid," which, even though I immediately knew it was referring to buying gold, th...
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AT: 10/11/2013 04:21:34 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 10, 2013

Breaking Down SEO and SEM Related Activities (part 2)

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This is the second part of a follow up to my reevaluation of SEO vs. SEM.

My goal here is to provide some simple understanding that it takes a lot of manpower to fit all the pieces of a Search Engine Marketing plan together. It's a continual process that you need to budget for.

In yesterday's Nugget, I presented the two lists shown below and explained all the details of the 5 items shown under Basic SEO Stuff. Please refer back to yesterday for those full details. Today I'm explaining the items in the second list.

So h...
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AT: 10/10/2013 03:48:54 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 09, 2013

Breaking Down SEO and SEM Related Activities

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After yesterday's reevaluation of SEO vs. SEM I want to provide some simple guidance so jewelers understand how a Search Engine Marketing plan works.

The first part of the SEM Plan is to make sure your website is set up properly for the basic optimization stuff.

Basic SEO Stuff:

1. Page Title rewriting
2. Meta Description rewriting
3. URL cleanup
4. Content bulking
5. Topic separation

The more difficult part of the SEM Plan is to properly represent everything you do in the store, and all your offline advertising, on your website.

Complicated SEM Stuff:

A. Writing full details about your services
B. Keep your online identity updated with daily changes in your store
C. Writing comp...
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AT: 10/09/2013 04:48:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 08, 2013

SEO is Dead! Long Live SEM!

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I've never been a fan of long term search engine optimization services where a small business is expected to pay large sums of money for some type of online work that's suppose to increase your website ranking. So much of the SEO industry was built on scams and false claims that it's hard for anyone to really trust someone who says they can do the job. SEO scam artists used to give you long lists of technical jargon to explain what they were going to do for you and most people blindly trusted them because they were "the experts."

My personal philosophy has always been one where the bulk of the basic SEO work is handled immediately and then the website owner is trained how to maintain it on their own without having to perpe...
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AT: 10/08/2013 06:16:36 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 07, 2013

How to Merge Your Online and Offline Marketing with Your USP

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Rosser Reeves was an American advertising executive from the 1950s, who changed the way the world thought about advertising. He had a style of writing sales copy that drew people in and made them think about themselves rather than the product.

He's credited to many tag lines that are still well known today, like "it melts in your mouth, not in your hands."

His view of marketing was that you always need to state your "Unique Selling Proposition," or USP. He coined that phrase which so many online marketer use today without understanding where it came from or what it actually means. Reeves' philosophy was to state your USP over and over again until people remember you for it.

Now that ranking fo...
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AT: 10/07/2013 06:13:39 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 04, 2013

M. Rahal Jewelers Online Review

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M. Rahal Jewelers Online Review 649-daily-golden-nugget-835As the Holiday Season quickly approaches, I wanted to use today's online jeweler review to demonstrate how a customer could discover a local jeweler when you search for a designer's name, even when that jeweler has the worst website.

For this week's review I used the Chrome browser in incognito mode and searched for "pandora jewelry glens falls ny."

The search results mostly included a mixture of listings from ForLocations.com, StoreLocator.com, JewelryStoresInfo.com, and even Craigslist.org which hinted that there was a store in t...
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AT: 10/04/2013 05:26:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 03, 2013

3 Important Things To Do Shortly After Launching a Jewelry Website

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3 Important Things To Do Shortly After Launching a Jewelry Website 627-daily-golden-nugget-834In Yesterday's Nugget, I gave you 5 important things to do on the day you launch your website and today I want to follow that up with what needs to be done shortly after your website is launched. Today's Daily Golden Nugget assumes that you have read and set up everything mentioned yesterday.

Make Sure Google Analytics is Tracking
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AT: 10/03/2013 05:19:12 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 02, 2013

5 Important Things To Do On the Day You Launch a Jewelry Website

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5 Important Things To Do On the Day You Launch a Jewelry Website 5894-daily-golden-nugget-833So the internet changes very often. It's downright scary how much time it takes to keep up with the nuances of how things work between social networking, content building, and organizing your website.

Although I keep up with the changes in the internet, I know it's not realistic for you to. This is my job and my responsibility, whereas you are running a jewelry store and need to pay attention to daily operations there. But that doesn't mean you should be a complete ...
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AT: 10/02/2013 05:04:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 01, 2013

Importance of Sitemap Files on Your Website

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Importance of Sitemap Files on Your Website 4632-daily-golden-nugget-832A review of past Nugget topics has revealed that I've never specifically talked about the different types of Sitemap pages you can have on your website and what their uses are.

In the early days of the internet, the sitemap page was one of the simple methods of linking all your pages together. Sitemap pages became more important as websites grew and larger companies figured out how to divide up their content between subsecti...
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AT: 10/01/2013 05:22:42 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 30, 2013

How Jewelers Can Deal With Google Analytics "(not provided)" Keywords

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Two years ago in October 2011 Google crushed the SEO industry when they announced that they would be withholding keyword search phrase information from Google Analytics whenever someone searched a phrase while logged into the Google Account. Their reasoning at the time was to increase privacy protection for their registered users by forcing them to use an encrypted login. The encryption blocks keyword information.

Google Analytics keyword traffic reports would never be the same after that. The appearance of--the now infamous--phrase "not provided" started appearing in all SEO reports and businesses that live and die by their ranking in search results became infuriated.

Today, two year later, Google is further crushing the SEO industry by encrypting all search results in the USA, even if you are not logged in. This chang...
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AT: 09/30/2013 04:10:01 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 27, 2013

Josephs Website Review

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For this week's jewelry website review, I'm venturing over to Des Moines, Iowa. The goal of this website review is to find different things that you can learn from to improve your own jewelry website.

I started my search this week in Google with the phrase "jewelers des moines," witch returned a local list of 7 retail stores. I chose the first one on the list: Josephs Jewelers

Here's the website: http://www.josephsjewelers.com; you might want to open it up to follow along as you read this review.

I felt very conflicted by my initial reaction to the home page and 3 things I found there.

1. The main title of the page starts with "Without Question, Josephs," which turns out to be their slogan. I'd like to say that, without question, the first 2 words...
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AT: 09/27/2013 09:44:44 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 25, 2013

A Peek Into Google Analytics Social Reports

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A Peek Into Google Analytics Social Reports 7555-daily-golden-nugget-828Google Analytics provide an easy to use report of all the online social activity that brings people to your website. Today I'm going to briefly explain this report.

Log into your Google Analytics account and in the left column navigate over to Traffic Sources > Social > Overview.

This screen will show you many different social networking websites that have brought visitors to your site. The social networks you might find listed on this page include Facebook, Google+, Yelp, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Yahoo! An...
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AT: 09/25/2013 04:54:10 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 20, 2013

Trice Jewelers Website Review

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Trice Jewelers Website Review 7937-daily-golden-nugget-825Today's city stop along the road of website reviews finds us in Denver, Colorado where I did a quick search for "jewelers denver" to see our review candidates.

Every Friday, I take a random look at a jewelry store's website to find the good and the bad that you can learn from and apply to your own website. Here's how this week turned out.

The results for "jewelers denver" returned Trice Jewelers as the #1 organic result showing above the 7 business listings from Google+ Local.

I thought it was odd that Trice VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 09/20/2013 03:57:58 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 19, 2013

Save Yourself From This Google+ Local Situation

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Save Yourself From This Google+ Local Situation 7892-daily-golden-nugget-824In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget I'm going to share a short case study about a recent experience with Google Places and Google+ Local. If you've ever edited and verified your own Google Places listing then this is a must read. If you've never edited your Google Places or Google+ Local then it's even more important that you read this.

I'm pretty strict about verifying Google Places accounts and maintaining that information for my clients. Over the years I've had to verify them with post cards...
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AT: 09/19/2013 03:23:31 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Let's Have A Facebook Timeline Contest! It's Party Time!

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Lets Have A Facebook Timeline Contest! Its Party Time! 5734-daily-golden-nugget-823From what I've seen since 2009, the methods of running contests on Facebook have been so difficult and misunderstood that many business gotten themselves into real trouble without even knowing what hit them. People have been locked out of their accounts and pages were deleted all due to guideline violations. Meanwhile other people and pages attracted thousands of fans through the same violated guidelines without so much as a whisper of a scandal.

Contests were the biggest problem. Until ...
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AT: 09/18/2013 03:37:31 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Facebook's Cover Photos Have a Small Visible Safe Zone

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As a continuation to yesterday's Nugget where I gave you 5 templates for creating Facebook Cover Page images, today I have a few specific suggestions for how to use your Facebook Business Page cover photo.

Page Cover Photos usually draw a lot of attention in the News Feed which means you can capture some extra attention if you change them on a regular basis.


Do you have an upcoming store event? Special sale? Big announcement? You can use your cover photo to announce any one of these, but just make sure to keep that announcement within the 100% Safe Zone I'm showing you.


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AT: 09/17/2013 02:32:42 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 16, 2013

Marketing Area Guidelines for Facebook's Cover Photos

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Back in February, I reported that Facebook changed their Advertising Guidelines to limit how much space in your cover photo could be used for text. This guideline quickly became known as the 20% Rule my many Facebook marketers and it seriously limited how you could use Facebook to quickly attract attention of your page fans.

To the delight of many Facebook marketers, this 20% Rule was removed on July 1, 2013. This is great news that allows us to use our cover photos for ads, notifications, and calls to action... Facebook gave us back the permission they took away from us when they launched the 2012 major layout redesign, back when we only had tall Profile Pictures in the left margin.

Today I'm going to revisit the same ...
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AT: 09/16/2013 04:17:45 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 13, 2013

The Real Mother Goose Website Review

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The Real Mother Goose Website Review 9489-daily-golden-nugget-820I was introduced to a website during the last week that turned out to be a really good candidate for my Friday Website Review. In addition to selling jewelry, they also have a collection of art and furniture from local American artists. My hope is that you will find something in this review that helps you to better your own business.

Here's the website: http://www.therealmothergoose.com; you might want to open it up to follow along as you read this review.
...
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AT: 09/13/2013 03:26:04 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 12, 2013

Domain Names With A Hyphen and QR Codes

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Domain Names With A Hyphen and QR Codes 2255-daily-golden-nugget-819In today's Daily Golden Nugget I'm going to explain an important shift in offline advertising and how something very specific, and simple, is making the jump from offline back to online much easier for the average person... Hyphenated domain names.

Since the beginning of the internet there's been an ongoing debate whether or not to use a hyphen in your domain name or not. I clearly remember, back in the mid 90s, having conversations with customers who wanted to know if it was better to have their domain name, for examp...
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AT: 09/12/2013 03:14:51 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Planning Landing Pages Based on Specific Events

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Planning Landing Pages Based on Specific Events 8766-daily-golden-nugget-818Today is Patriot Day in the United States--the day America thinks back to, and in some ways relives, the infamous events on September 11, 2001. Twelve years have passed.

Being only 15 miles from Ground Zero and living through the unfolding events of that day and months after was... well... I now assume it was akin to how many Americans felt after the attack on Pearl Harbor. I'm not a historian by any account, but I have to imagine that the attack on Pearl Harbor lived on in the memories of millions o...
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AT: 09/11/2013 06:59:25 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 10, 2013

How Google Tracks Your Search History

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How Google Tracks Your Search History 7986-daily-golden-nugget-817This edition of the Daily Golden Nugget isn't really about how your website works, but rather a little explanation of how Google search technology work now across all platforms.

I'd like to say it's common knowledge that your web browser keeps a history of all your visited websites, but let me explain how this works just in case you don't... On any Windows computer you can open up your web browser and press Ctrl+H to open your recent history of pages you've visited. The keyboard shortcuts on a Mac are not standardized and ...
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AT: 09/10/2013 06:57:47 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 06, 2013

Martin's Jewelers Website Review

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Martins Jewelers Website Review 7667-daily-golden-nugget-815If you're looking to open a new jewelry store in a city with little competition then take a serious look at Walla Walla, WA! I just did my typical "jewelry stores walla walla, wa" search and found only 2, maybe 3 jewelers in that city. The first 2 jewelers, Martin's and Falkenbergs, have websites, but the 3rd only has a Google+ listing.

Martin's Jewelers website is http://www.martinswallawalla.com/ and Falkenbergs Jewelers website is http://falkenbergs.com/. It looks like Falkenbergs gave up their website in November 2008 and the Ma...
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AT: 09/06/2013 05:15:50 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 05, 2013

Content Prep for the 2013 Holidays

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Content Prep for the 2013 Holidays 7065-daily-golden-nugget-814Today is the 9th Nugget in a row with valuable statistics showing past performance of jewelry websites and actionable ideas on what you should be doing with your site today.

In two recent Nuggets I showed you the most popular landing pages that seem to attract visitors to your site. T...
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AT: 09/05/2013 04:28:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 03, 2013

Website Referral Stats from Holidays 2010-2013

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Website Referral Stats from Holidays 2010-2013 816-daily-golden-nugget-812Now that we're beginning the school year again every jeweler has their sights set on the upcoming holiday season and planning their merchandise and advertising.

Before you know it, every local newspaper, radio, or community group will be knocking on your door asking for holiday advertising--if they haven't already.

Before you buy any holiday advertising you should make sure that you are getting the best value for what you paid. Many local newspapers have online versions of the ads you place in print. ...
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AT: 09/03/2013 04:37:23 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 02, 2013

The Most Popular Pages On Retail Jewelry Store Websites (part 2)

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The Most Popular Pages On Retail Jewelry Store Websites (part 2) 5027-daily-golden-nugget-811On Thursday last week I presented the top 6 landing pages for retail jewelry websites other than the home page. In reality, the home page accounted for 62.96% of the landing page traffic for the sites I monitor. Other than the home page I tracked 27 other pages of significance, giving you the top 6 in that previous Nugget.

Knowing which landing pa...
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AT: 09/02/2013 04:05:15 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 30, 2013

Butterfield Jewelers Website Review

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Butterfield Jewelers Website Review 8187-daily-golden-nugget-810I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque... Well, actually, like Bugs Bunny, that's where I went this week to find my candidate for the latest website review. The goal of this review is to shed some light on how another jeweler built their website and perhaps learns something from them.

Here's the website: http://www.butterfieldjewelers.com; you might want to open it up to follow along as you read this review.

Usability Issues:

*...
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AT: 08/30/2013 04:57:49 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 29, 2013

The Most Popular Pages On Retail Jewelry Store Websites (top 6)

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The Most Popular Pages On Retail Jewelry Store Websites (top 6) 8767-daily-golden-nugget-809A 'Landing Page' is what we call the first page that people see when they arrive on your website; in other words, this is the page they 'land' on.

Most people believe that their main landing page is the Home Page of their site. Truthfully this is not always the case because the landing page is actually any page that someone sees in the search engine results. Since those results change depending on what keywords are searched for it's very likely that Google will not retur...
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AT: 08/29/2013 04:42:58 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Referral Websites are a Must for Retail Jewelers

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Referral Websites are a Must for Retail Jewelers 2440-daily-golden-nugget-808Every website I track has its own set of unique referral sources. Even so, there are a few referral websites that always appear in the list of common referral sources.

The last time I took a close look at the common referral website numbers was March 2012 and I'm including them here for your cross reference. This is my list of the most common referral websites to send visitor traffic to jewelry websites and the percentage of the referral traffic as a whole.

Yellowpages.com
August 2013: 34.44...
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AT: 08/28/2013 03:23:09 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 27, 2013

2 Year Comparison of Organic Search Statistics

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2 Year Comparison of Organic Search Statistics 3228-daily-golden-nugget-807I've opened up my vault of collected data again to see what's new with organic results from search engines. Although I started collecting search engine data back in 2003, I didn't keep it organized until 2010. The table below shows five sampled month of data spanning back through October 2010.

These are measurements of how people are organically referred from search engines to retail jewelry store websites.

20122013Percentage Change
Smartphones
Search Engine VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET

AT: 08/27/2013 03:10:02 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 26, 2013

Safari is the Mobile Browser Winner, with Android in Far Second

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Safari is the Mobile Browser Winner, with Android in Far Second 228-daily-golden-nugget-806The Safari web browser is the clear winner when you look at the usage of all web browsers as presented in this 2 year comparison of browsers, but there's more to the 31.12% as shown in that Nugget than just browser usage. There's a lot of mobile usage.

The last time I reported VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 08/26/2013 06:05:38 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 23, 2013

Palas Jewelers Website Review

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Palas Jewelers Website Review 135-daily-golden-nugget-805 In this edition of the Friday Jewelry Website Review I'm targeting jewelers in Atlanta, GA to find a good example of a website we can all learn the good and bad from. Using Google's Chrome browser in incognito mode I searched for "jewelry stores atlanta ga" and was presented with 7 options for local jewelers. I selected the 3rd jeweler in the list because they were clearly an independent retail jeweler like most of my readers.

Here's the website: http://www.palasjewelers.com; you ...
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AT: 08/23/2013 04:49:43 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 22, 2013

2 Year Comparison of Web Browser Usage Statistics

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2 Year Comparison of Web Browser Usage Statistics 5418-daily-golden-nugget-804As the end of August approaches, jewelers are starting to think more about their holiday planning and marketing. Hopefully this includes online marketing.

I've once again tapped into my tracking resources to see the latest popular web browsers people are using to visit jewelry websites. The table below shows the statistics from the VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 08/22/2013 04:34:50 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 21, 2013

The Problems that Come From Successful Online Offers

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The Problems that Come From Successful Online Offers 2948-daily-golden-nugget-803The US economy is coupon and discount crazy and it seems like no one is willing to buy from major retailers unless there are sales to shop or coupons to redeem. JCPenney's business almost collapsed when it instituted Fair and Square pricing in 2012 and which led to its withdrawl in early...
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AT: 08/21/2013 02:38:12 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Managing Your Online Reputation and Complaints

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Managing Your Online Reputation and Complaints 6098-daily-golden-nugget-802The internet is an interesting place. You can find a lot of random stuff online, including things you never expected. While conducting some research for mobile usability I found the 2012 Consumer Complaint Survey Report published by the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) on July 31, 2013. The focus of this report is to give consumers extra knowledge ...
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AT: 08/20/2013 06:54:09 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 19, 2013

Who Failed, The Owner or The Responsive Site?

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Who Failed, The Owner or The Responsive Site? 7534-daily-golden-nugget-801This debate between a dedicated mobile website and a responsive website rages on. The winner has not yet been announced and I'm pretty sure it will be a few years more before we know for sure.

At the moment I'm still partial to the dedicated mobile website. In reality it doesn't matter if you have a responsive design or not, but rather how you use it and manage the content.

Every day...
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AT: 08/19/2013 01:23:30 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 16, 2013

Google Maps Drives Customers to Your Door, Again

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Google Maps Drives Customers to Your Door, Again 1985-daily-golden-nugget-800Today is Daily Golden Nugget number 800! Daily Nugget #1 was a basic introduction to Google Maps on a smartphone and every 100 nuggets since then, jWAG has revisited Google Maps and how it works at that time.

Over the last 3 years we've seen many changes to how Google Maps functions, and we seen a few name changes too. "Maps" became "Places" but then "Places" became "Local." When using Google on a desktop you will find that Places has been merged into Google+ Pages. The whole technology is a little...
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AT: 08/16/2013 11:52:26 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 15, 2013

4 Website Reviews as Seen on a Smartphone

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4 Website Reviews as Seen on a Smartphone 515-daily-golden-nugget-799Every Friday I randomly choose a retail jewelry store and I review their website for SEO value, usability, and a general overall evaluation. The goal of each review is to learn from the mistakes of others. Tomorrow is my 800th Daily Golden Nugget, and in keeping with tradition I will review the latest happenings with Google Maps.

So I bring you this week's review installment today instead of tomorrow. To further keep with my Google Maps tradition I'm going to review how several websites appear when viewed through Go...
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AT: 08/15/2013 11:12:37 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Differences between Local Results in Google Maps vs. Google Search

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Differences between Local Results in Google Maps vs. Google Search 8277-daily-golden-nugget-798It's happen ending even if you don't realize it, and if you realize I sure hope you are taking steps to accept it and use it for your benefit.

The internet is changing rapidly and it's because of mobile technology. You should be aware of the subtle differences between mobile technologies so you can continue to compete in this new age of business.

It's the evening of Saturday August 10, 2013 as I write this. I'm actually VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 08/14/2013 10:03:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 08, 2013

How To Tell if Your Website is Hacked

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How To Tell if Your Website is Hacked 2370-daily-golden-nugget-794Microsoft and their Windows PC software have long been the target of virus and trojan attacks. Computer hackers find security holes in the software and write the virus programs that spread so easily throughout the internet through email and hacked websites. Without antivirus software on your own computer, you will easily fall prey to even a novice hacker's first attempt at mayhem or phishing.

There are also hackers that exploit security holes in well known website softwares, especially WordPress. According to VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 08/08/2013 11:23:24 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 02, 2013

Dunay Jewelers Website Review

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Dunay Jewelers Website Review 9843-daily-golden-nugget-790This is the Friday Jewelry Website Review. The goal of this review is to show a retail jeweler how they should objectively look at their own website to find needed improvements. Instead of random SEO and design theory, you can see it directly in a live example.

Here's the website being reviewed today: http://www.dunayjewelers.net,
you might want to open it up to follow along as you read this review.

Dunay Jewelers is located in Wilkes Barre, PA. The website only has 8...
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AT: 08/02/2013 10:46:19 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Are Exact Match Domains Worth It?

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Are Exact Match Domains Worth It? 7749-daily-golden-nugget-788A simple, but very good question was asked in my office the other day: What's better, buying lots of domain names to match the exact keyword you want to target, or creating multiple pages on one single-domain website to target individual keywords.

I have to assume that the person asking would expect to focus all the content on each website to match those specific domain names.

This is a topic of much discussion among business owners as they begin their initial education in search engine optimization. There's a lot of inform...
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AT: 07/31/2013 11:11:31 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 30, 2013

4 Reasons Why Your Website Might Be Running Slow

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4 Reasons Why Your Website Might Be Running Slow 4098-daily-golden-nugget-787I might have to do some knocking on wood, or even banging on wood to ward off any type of bad magic that will befall my computer equipment after writing this Nugget. I manage two small data centers for all the for jewelry websites that my company services and hosts and today's post gives you some insights and reasons of why you should replace your web server, or web hosting account every 2 years.

Computer hardware usually has...
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AT: 07/30/2013 09:30:52 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Using IP Addresses to Measure Offline Ad Response Rates

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Using IP Addresses to Measure Offline Ad Response Rates 5841-daily-golden-nugget-786I never set up a website or an online advertising campaign without attaching some type of tracking. Without tracking,you simply never know if you are wasting money on marketing or improving your business. With normal, everyday online marketing you can usually rely on Google Analytics to provide all the tracking data that you would need to measure results. However, there are times when Analytics simply fails to give you the answers you need.

In this Daily Golden Nugget I'm going to shar...
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AT: 07/30/2013 09:03:25 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 26, 2013

Gumer and Co Jewelry Website Review

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Gumer and Co Jewelry Website Review 4910-daily-golden-nugget-785Today I'm peeking into Louisville, KY to find a local jeweler for a website review. The idea is to find someone who's making a few mistakes with their website that you can learn from. Follow along and hopefully you'll find this website review insightful and useful.

Here's the website: http://www.gumerjewelry.com/
you might want to open it up to follow along as you read this review.

What I Didn't Like About the Site:

* First of all I was surpri...
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AT: 07/26/2013 08:55:35 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 25, 2013

How Content Marketing Ties into Paid Advertising

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How Content Marketing Ties into Paid Advertising 9745-daily-golden-nugget-784Over the previous three days I explained how to choose the right vendors for your inventory, how to create content based on their press kits, and how to curate news articles a...
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AT: 07/25/2013 07:43:39 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 24, 2013

How to Set Up a Content Curation Page on Your Website

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How to Set Up a Content Curation Page on Your Website 3010-daily-golden-nugget-783In yesterday's Daily Nugget I explained the "creation aspect" of the online content marketing method. Today's Daily Golden Nugget will explain how you can organize the information that other people created and use it for your own content marketing.

Within the internet marketing industry the words "curating" and "curation" represent the organization of online information into a single loca...
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AT: 07/24/2013 10:10:19 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Creating Content Marketing from a Press Kit

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Creating Content Marketing from a Press Kit 1654-daily-golden-nugget-782In yesterday's Nugget I explained the importance of carefully choosing which vendors and designers to carry in your store based on their willingness to help you with the marketing for their product line. The suggestion I presented yesterday was that the vendor should have a press kit with photos of their products, finished ads, write-ups in magazines, designer bios, stories about the making of the j...
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AT: 07/23/2013 12:47:47 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 22, 2013

Choosing Jewelry Vendors Based on Their Content Worthiness

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Choosing Jewelry Vendors Based on Their Content Worthiness 3863-daily-golden-nugget-781How many sterling silver lines should you carry in your store? Over the last few years the increased price of precious metals had all fine jeweler wondering that same question. The answer is probably as many as it takes to satisfy the desires of your local customers. The sterling silver jewelry from Frederic Duclos is known for forward thinking new styles whereas Thistle & Bee VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 07/22/2013 02:06:12 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 19, 2013

Amidon Jewelers Website Review

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Amidon Jewelers Website Review 2430-daily-golden-nugget-780This is the Friday Jewelry Website Review to help you learn more about your own website by looking at a review from another jeweler's real website.

I receive the Amidon Jewelers email on a regular basis and decided to look at them with an objective eye for today.

Here's the website: http://www.amidonjewelers.com, you might want to open it up to follow along as you read this review.

What I Liked About Their Email Marketing:
They hired an email marketing c...
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AT: 07/19/2013 08:07:18 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 18, 2013

Emails that Look Like Scams, but Aren't

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Emails that Look Like Scams, but Arent 2213-daily-golden-nugget-779Assuming everything works according to plan, once a year you will receive a scary looking email that looks like a very well planned out phishing email--but it's not...

During the early days of the internet, if you wanted a domain name you had to register it through a company called Network Solutions. Using the trade name InterNIC, they had a monopoly on all domain name registrations until 1998. The early years of the internet were very confusing for domain name owners. There were no control panels and no fancy websites...
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AT: 07/18/2013 11:36:27 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 17, 2013

4 Important Barriers to Conversion

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4 Important Barriers to Conversion 6888-imageIn yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget I presented 6 steps that you need, to refine your website for organic traffic and customer conversion.  Today I want to elaborate on what I stated for step #4: "Discover problems with the site that prevent people from converting from simple visitors into customers."

That discovery process is commonly referred to in more simple terms as "Barriers to Conversion."  Today I'm going to explore these 4 common barriers that send people running away from your w...
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AT: 07/17/2013 08:44:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 16, 2013

How-To Hire an SEO Agency

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How-To Hire an SEO Agency 79-daily-golden-nugget-777Eventually the day will come when a jewelry store owner realizes that they've spent a lot of money on development but the website isn't bringing in the customers they expect it to. What happens next is a story I've heard several times: They complain to someone and that someone asks them if their website is optimized for search engines. Then reality sets in as they realize that they spent all that money on building a website only to find out that now they need to spend money monthly on some type of online advertising.

Online advertising can either be P...
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AT: 07/16/2013 09:27:43 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 12, 2013

Silverado Jewelry Website Review

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Silverado Jewelry Website Review 8215-daily-golden-nugget-775Every once in a while a random question or comment is yelled across the office. Earlier this week I yelled out "I need a random city and state!" The reply I got was "Newton, Iowa!"

So this week's Friday Jewelry Website Review candidate was found by searching for "jewelry stores newton iowa." The goal of this review is to help you learn more about your own website by looking at mistakes made by one of your peers.

The Google results for that search surprised me because it didn't include a list of stores or a map. In fact the...
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AT: 07/12/2013 11:32:04 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 11, 2013

Who's Responsible For Your Website? (Part II)

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Whos Responsible For Your Website? (Part II) 8057-daily-golden-nugget-774This is a continuation of my outlined differences of the responsibilities between running a physical store and running and e-commerce website, and who should be in charge of them. The first part of this can be read in yesterday's Nugget. Today I'll cover:

* Customer Engagement
* Customer Satisfaction
* Insurance
* Bookkeeping
* Operations
* Jewelry Repairs

Only jewelry repair is unique...
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AT: 07/11/2013 09:59:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Who's Responsible For Your Website? (Part I)

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Whos Responsible For Your Website? (Part I) 454-daily-golden-nugget-773Are you the chief cook and bottle washer in your store? Truthfully, if your retail jewelry store only has a few employees then you probably are managing many daily tasks ranging from cleaning the toilet to jewelry repair.

Today I'm going to outline different responsibilities between running a physical store and running and e-commerce website, and who should be in charge of them. Here's my short list of responsibilities I'll cover today:

* Merchandising
* Security
* Marketing
* Customer Engagement<...
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AT: 07/10/2013 05:51:32 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 09, 2013

Your Website Doesn't Have A Check Engine Light

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Your Website Doesnt Have A Check Engine Light 7029-daily-golden-nugget-772I guess I should just admit to myself that no matter how many Daily Golden Nuggets I write and no matter how much industry exposure I achieve, the importance of all this internet marketing website stuff is just not understood by the masses.

Okay. Fine. I get it. Many website owners do not have the time or the inclination to learn about the technical things that will make a website better. We each have our own limitations. Although I'm an engineer with a technical understanding of mechanics, the only thi...
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AT: 07/09/2013 10:46:08 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 05, 2013

Devon Fine Jewelry Website Review

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Devon Fine Jewelry Website Review 8528-daily-golden-nugget-770This is my Friday website review where I dissect parts of a random retail jewelry website to help you understand more of the ins and outs of your own website.

To find this week's review candidate I searched Facebook for "jewelry stores" and found more than 48 local listings. I randomly chose the first jeweler on page 3 of the Facebook search results then clicked on their About Us information to find their website.

Here's the website: http://www.devonfinejewelry.com<...
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AT: 07/05/2013 11:05:17 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 28, 2013

Adam's Jewelry Website Review

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Adams Jewelry Website Review 3819-daily-golden-nugget-765This is the Friday Jewelry Website Review. By looking at the mistakes other jewelers make, you can learn some great things about your own website.

For this week's review I searched "jewelry stores near me" on my Android phone while spending time in Stroudsburg, PA. The Google Places results included Kay Jewelers, Piercing Pagoda, and 4 local jewelry stores. I chose the first local jeweler in the Places list: Adam's Jewelry.

The web address shown in Google's results is h...
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AT: 06/28/2013 09:46:19 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 27, 2013

Why Your Website Has Low Sales With High Visitors

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Why Your Website Has Low Sales With High Visitors 4257-daily-golden-nugget-764Usually a website with a high number of visitors is an indicator that the retail store also has at least a satisfactory level of sales. Those sales could be online or they could be in-store but the website is certainly contributing to those sales.

So what's a high number of visitor traffic for a retail jewelry store? Independent retailers should strive for 1100 visitors per month. It might take a while to get there, but you should see a good change in sales once you do, well, assuming you are doin...
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AT: 06/27/2013 09:17:39 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, June 26, 2013

How To: Segmentation in Google AdWords

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How To Segmentation in Google AdWords 8398-daily-golden-nugget-763Over the last 2 days I've given you some ideas on how to accomplish your keyword research and write blog posts to specifically target people interested in Le Vian jewelry. The steps I explained can be applied to any jewelry designer when you want to use content marketing to attract customers.

"Content marketing" is the process of adding lots of information to you website in hopes that search engines will rank you highly for specific keyword phrases. But sometimes content marketing isn't enough because you are left to th...
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AT: 06/26/2013 08:58:49 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, June 25, 2013

How Do You Target Blogs To Specific Customers Intent?

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How Do You Target Blogs To Specific Customers Intent? 7234-daily-golden-nugget-762In today's Daily Golden Nugget I want to explain how you can take a bunch of keyword phrases and expand upon how you attract customers who are interested in buying. This is a type of customer targeting and even customer segmentation.

I'm going to start with this keyword list for Le Vian jewelry that I build in yesterday's nugget:

* le vian engagement rings
* le vian chocolate diamonds ...
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AT: 06/25/2013 08:37:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, June 24, 2013

How To Do Basic Keyword Research

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How To Do Basic Keyword Research 6821-daily-golden-nugget-761In today's Daily Golden Nugget, I want to explain how you can make your website appear in the search engine results for any keyword phrase. I'll give you some steps to break it down.

I'm going to use the designer Le Vian as my example, but you can use any designer name as you follow these steps.

Step 1:
Assume that you have the designer line Le Vian in your store, but your website doesn't appear in the search engines for that name. A Google search for "Le Vian" along with your town name produces zero results for you. The...
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AT: 06/24/2013 07:49:38 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 21, 2013

Bailey Banks & Biddle Website Review

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Bailey Banks & Biddle Website Review 5945-daily-golden-nugget-760WOW! There certainly are a lot of jewelry stores in Houston, Texas! I Googled "jewelry store Houston" and the map shown in the search results page was littered with red dots. Although there were 7 jewelry stores in the list of Places, I decided to select the first organically listed store below that for this week's website review.

The goal of this Friday Jewelry Website Review to help you learn more about your own website by looking at a review from another jeweler's real website.

Here's the website: VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 06/21/2013 10:42:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 20, 2013

Explaining Search Engine Marketing

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Prior to computers and sophisticated tracking methods, it was difficult to organize your customers into groups. With the advent of computers and the internet it's much easier to group your customers and target your marketing, but most people incorrectly assume that only your internet advertising can be specifically segmented and targets.

In the last 3 Daily Golden Nuggets, I provided ideas on how you could use segmentation to increase the response rates of your traditional media in hopes that I could dispel the myth that segmentation is only for digital advertising. In today's Nugget I'll briefly explain the idea of "Search Engine Marketing" (SEM) and why so many online marketing guys use it as one of their buzz words.

Let me first give you an overview of what Search Engine Marketing is... It's basically the overall catc...
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AT: 06/20/2013 11:33:40 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 14, 2013

Readers Fine Jewelers Website Review

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 5242-daily-golden-nugget-755This is the Friday Jewelry Website Review to help you learn more about your own website by looking at a review from another jeweler's real website.

To find the candidate for this week's website review I searched Google for the phrase "jewelry store santa monica" using the Chrome web browser in incognito mode. The top 3 organic results were Yelp and a KABC news story about a local robbery on April 15, 2013. I chose the first listing of the 7 local jewelry stores Google showed in their Places list.

Here's the website: http://www.re...
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AT: 06/14/2013 11:35:38 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 07, 2013

Summerlin Jewelers Website Review

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Summerlin Jewelers Website Review 1185-daily-golden-nugget-750This is the Friday Jewelry Website Review to help you learn more about your own website by looking at a review from another jeweler's real website. This is the second week that I've chosen a jeweler from the Las Vegas are in honor of the JCK Show: Summerlin Jewelers

I did a quick Google search for "site:summerlinjewelers.com" to see how many pages were indexed by Google and found 2,410 results. That's a fairly good start for a jewelry website with a product catalog... as long as their SEO is also set up well.

I was a littl...
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AT: 06/07/2013 11:34:34 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 31, 2013

The Jewelers of Las Vegas Website Review

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The Jewelers of Las Vegas Website Review 3656-daily-golden-nugget-745This is the Friday Jewelry Website Review to help you learn more about your own website by looking at a review from another jeweler's real website.

In honor of the JCK Show in Las Vegas I decided to search for "jewelry stores las vegas" to see who was in the area. The first jewelry store in the Google+ Local list was MJ Christensen Diamonds. I was a little wowed when I look at their site because they are doing everything right. Not much to learn from their mistakes so I had to move on to the next jeweler in the +Lo...
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AT: 05/31/2013 07:52:19 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 27, 2013

4 Tactics to Boost Clicks from Facebook Posts

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4 Tactics to Boost Clicks from Facebook Posts 9994-daily-golden-nugget-741I'd like to share a dirty little secret with you today... It doesn't matter how many people follow your Facebook Business Page; what matters is how many of your followers will convert to customers.

I recently shared some of my findings on the best times to post to social networks in order to get people to click back to your website. I compiled that information from 6 months worth of tracking data. ...
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AT: 05/27/2013 10:56:36 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 24, 2013

Richter & Phillips Co Website Review

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Richter & Phillips Co Website Review 4239-daily-golden-nugget-740This is the Friday Jewelry Website Review to help you learn more about your own website by looking at a review from another jeweler's real website.

For this week's review I randomly chose to search for a jewelry store in Cincinnati, Ohio. Specifically I searched for "jewelry stores cincinnati area" and found 7 potential stores to review. I chose the first one shown in the Google Local results.

Here's the website: http://www.richterphillips.com, you might w...
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AT: 05/24/2013 09:28:31 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 23, 2013

Measured Results from 6 Months of Social Sharing

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Measured Results from 6 Months of Social Sharing 4461-daily-golden-nugget-739Tracking, tracking and more tracking... most of what my team and I do for retail jewelers is tracked, and everything posted to the jwag.biz website is tracked. Results come very slowly because visitor traffic to website owned by independent retail jewelry stores is very low compared to big brands or chain stores. It sometimes takes months before clear user patterns emerge from the data.

Slow data collecting is the reason why search engine optimization and online marketing can't simply be measured ove...
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AT: 05/23/2013 04:42:37 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 17, 2013

Elegance Jewelers Website Review

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 8284-daily-golden-nugget-735This is the Friday Jewelry Website Review to help you learn more about your own website by looking at a review from another jeweler's real website.

Here's the website: http://www.elegancejewelers.com, you might want to open it up to follow along as you read this review.

At first glance this website looks very nice. There are 4 images across the top of the page, a clean looking menu, large phone number, and even the store hours. There's even a nice "Welcome" banner in the middle of the page.

Overall, it has a nice "firs...
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AT: 05/17/2013 02:08:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 15, 2013

4 Ideas to Increase Visitor Scrolling

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4 Ideas to Increase Visitor Scrolling 5420-daily-golden-nugget-734A quick look in my screen resolution tracking tells me that there are 804 different screen sizes actively measured in the last 30 days. With that many screen sizes it's virtually impossible to design a website to please every user. In yesterday's Daily Nugget I explained how you can use scrollmapping to measure what parts of your web page are most frequently viewed. With that measurement you can get a better idea of how to des...
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AT: 05/15/2013 05:40:22 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Ideas for Jewelers to Lower Bounce Rates

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Ideas for Jewelers to Lower Bounce Rates 6814-daily-golden-nugget-732Today I'd like to go over some specific ways you can achieve a bounce rate for your jewelry store website that is lower than the 47% average that I've measured. The ideas here are come directly from websites that have consistently had lower than average visitors bouncing.

Idea One: Increase the number of return visitors to your site.

Getting people to come back to your site again and again is achievable if you simply share pages or product from your website to any of the social networks. Over the last few we...
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AT: 05/14/2013 11:52:49 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 13, 2013

Understanding Your Bounce Rate

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Understanding Your Bounce Rate 8031-daily-golden-nugget-731What do the following things have in common: kangaroos, shock absorbers, Silly Putty, ping pong balls, checks, and Tigger? The answer is that they all bounce. Kangaroos bounce off the ground, checks bounce off your bank account balance, and Tigger, well he bounces off everything. Of course then there's the "bounce rate" for your website.

A website bounce rate is the percentage of people who found your website in search results, clicked over to your site, but then left your website without clicking on a second page.

Here are som...
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AT: 05/13/2013 07:45:05 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 10, 2013

Sergio's Jewelry Website Review

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Sergios Jewelry Website Review 5027-daily-golden-nugget-730This is the Friday Jewelry Website Review to help you learn more about your own website by looking at a review from another jeweler's real website.

To find my review candidate this week I used Yelp to search for jewelry stores in Dallas, Texas. The first 2 pages of Yelp results I saw were filled with either large chain stores or jewelry designers. Then the first two jewelry stores on page 3 had dead websites. In the #3 position on Page 3 was Sergio's Jewelry LLC, located at 9440 Garland Rd in Dallas, TX.

The Sergio's Jewelry li...
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AT: 05/10/2013 12:57:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 09, 2013

Average Visitor Duration to a Jewelry Website

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Average Visitor Duration to a Jewelry Website 374-daily-golden-nugget-729One of the most frustrating measurements that I encounter when analyzing a website is the time a visitor spends on the website. Honestly I hate it when someone asks me how Google Analytics can track a visitor to a page, but yet that visitor stayed on the page for a total of zero seconds.

In reality this measurement can be faulty because it's actually a best guess by any analytics program. Any number of things could cause an analytics program to register zero seconds as the amount of time a visitor spends on y...
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AT: 05/09/2013 05:11:30 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 08, 2013

Increase Those Pages Per Visit

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Increase Those Pages Per Visit 3419-daily-golden-nugget-728There are so many factors that need to be assessed when evaluating the success or failure of your website. So many website owners are stuck worrying about ranking in the search engines instead of paying attention to making the current customer traffic happy.

After all, happy customer traffic should reflect somehow to the overall money that you make in business.

There are 4 potential ways to measure how happy your website visitors are:
1. Number of repeat visitors
2. Number of pages they look at
3. How much total time the...
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AT: 05/08/2013 03:04:45 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 07, 2013

What Attracts Repeat Website Visitors?

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What Attracts Repeat Website Visitors? 8986-daily-golden-nugget-727In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget I explained that you should figure out how to better engage repeat visitors to your website. Today I'd like to give you some ideas on how to turn first time visitors into repeat visitors.

Gain Repeat Visitors Through Engagement Blogging

For a small business, blogging is typically thought of as a way to attract new customers by building content based on specific keywords...
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AT: 05/07/2013 02:46:10 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 06, 2013

Attracting Repeat Visitors to Your Website

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Attracting Repeat Visitors to Your Website 15-daily-golden-nugget-726Those of you running a retail brick & mortar store already know that it's easier to get a customer back into your store after they've made one purchase than it is to get a random person to come in and make the initial first purchase.

When it comes to websites, much of the time a website owner is more concerned with making sales than wondering if they have repeat online buyers. Many website analytical measurements are focused around the total number of visitors that come to the site. You usually make more money when th...
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AT: 05/06/2013 01:25:23 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 03, 2013

Alletti Jewelry Website Review

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Alletti Jewelry Website Review 604-daily-golden-nugget-725This is the Friday Jewelry Website Review to help you learn more about your own website by looking at a review from another jeweler's real website.

I have an interesting story to tell about how I chose the website for this review. Last weekend while enjoying a leisurely walk through Bordeaux, France, I looked on my smartphone to find a review candidate.

Google results from a smartphone are usually very highly localized when searchi...
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AT: 05/03/2013 03:22:40 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 02, 2013

You Really Should Track Your Visitors

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You Really Should Track Your Visitors 4398-daily-golden-nugget-724Earlier this week when explaining the topic of Click Through Rates as illustrated inside Google Webmaster Tools I also said that getting clicks to your website does not immediately mean you will make money. Your website actually needs to convert visitors into some type of sale or first step conversion towards eventually making a sale.

I have found that most website owners spend little time worrying about website custo...
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AT: 05/02/2013 04:40:58 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 01, 2013

Matching Website Pages to Keyword Impressions

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Matching Website Pages to Keyword Impressions 2653-daily-golden-nugget-723In yesterday's Daily Nugget I explained what steps to take to boost ranking for specific keywords based on their current ranking as reported in your Google Webmaster Tools account. Several of my suggestions included the need to write stories or blog posts.

Over time, Google Analytics will report every time visitors read your blog, and you will be able to track when those blog posts brought visitors to your site...
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AT: 05/01/2013 05:39:58 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 30, 2013

How To Elevate Your Keyword Ranking

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How To Elevate Your Keyword Ranking 7783-daily-golden-nugget-722I'd like to refer back to Google Webmaster Tools again and take a close look at the average position of the keywords listed on the Search Query report and compare them to the importance for your business. Keyword ranking will has a direct impact on your sales, which is why everyone is always clamoring to achieve first place ranking on Google.

But what does it take to move a keyword's ranking from down in the mud to one that's top ranked? The keyword ranking scale is from 1 to 1000 with the highest rank at 1 and the lowest ran...
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AT: 04/30/2013 02:11:40 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 26, 2013

Bailey's Website Review

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Baileys Website Review 452-daily-golden-nugget-720This is the Friday Jewelry Website Review to help you learn more about your own website by looking at a review from another jeweler's real website.

The website I've chosen for today is Bailey's Fine Jewelers which has 5 locations throughout North Carolina.

Here's the website: http://www.baileybox.com, you might want to open it up and follow along as you read this review.

First, I'd like to mention how I found this website. I searched Google for the phrase "jewelry store" to see what wou...
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AT: 04/26/2013 01:26:38 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 25, 2013

Understanding What Causes the Navigational Search Type

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Understanding What Causes the Navigational Search Type 9439-daily-golden-nugget-719When reviewing the list of organic keywords that bring visitors to your website, retail jewelers often ask me why their store's name appears at the top of the list. Some jewelers wonder if it's a competitor searching their name, and others wonder why there are so many variations of their store name being searched for. This Daily Golden Nugget will explain all this to you.

Let's consider the customers that shop in your jewelry store. How often do new customers come into your store compare...
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AT: 04/25/2013 01:31:03 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Formulating SEO Procedures Based on Existing Data

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Formulating SEO Procedures Based on Existing Data 5640-daily-golden-nugget-718In today's Daily Golden Nugget I'm going to examine the fictitious designer name "Fancy Rings" and try to reverse engineer how search engines analyze the content on a jeweler's website and what pages visitors land on when arriving on your site. This analysis will give us one type of content template for attracting new types of visitors to our website.

Although I'm using the fictitious designer name "Fancy Rings" all the other numbers mentioned in this Nugget are accurate. For simplicity sake I'm ab...
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AT: 04/24/2013 02:12:24 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Comparing Date Information from GA and GWT

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Comparing Date Information from GA and GWT 424-daily-golden-nugget-717In today's Daily Golden Nugget I'm going to examine the fictitious designer name "Fancy Rings" and how it would appear in the Google Webmaster Tools Search Query report, and how to compare that report to the Organic keyword report within Google Analytics.

Although I'm using the fictitious designer name "Fancy Rings" all the other numbers mentioned in this Nugget are accurate. For simplicity sake I'm abbreviating Google Analytics as GA and Google Webmaster Tools as GWT. Feel free to follow along in your own accounts...
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AT: 04/23/2013 02:01:53 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 19, 2013

Random Jewelry Website Review

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Random Jewelry Website Review 3626-daily-golden-nugget-715I'm going to try something new today, something I've wanted to do for quite a while but just never started... a random review of a jeweler's website.

The goal of this review is to point out things that will improve usability, identify things that will negatively impact search engine optimization, and point out things that I felt were done well.

FTC Notice: I'm randomly choosing a website and I won't be telling the independent retailer that I'm doing a review. Unless someone else tells them, they will only find out about this revie...
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AT: 04/19/2013 04:42:34 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 18, 2013

A Bit Bout Keyword Ranking

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A Bit Bout Keyword Ranking 7776-daily-golden-nugget-714In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget I explained that the results you see on the search results pages for Google and Bing do not matter anymore. You simply can't search for keywords in hopes to get an accurate portrayal of how people find your website.

As of today there are no tools that can give you an accurate portrayal without scrapping data. "Scrapping data" is the process of capturing the results from a search results page and saving it for some...
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AT: 04/18/2013 02:31:37 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Understanding Keyword SERP Ranking

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Understanding Keyword SERP Ranking 4531-daily-golden-nugget-713How would you measure the ranking success of your website for a particular keyword? Because of years of conditioning, most people would say that they will simply search for the term and look at the results on the screen. That's the wrong way to do it now.

The results you see on the search engine results page (SERP for short) are clearly ranked from 1 to 10, and it seems pretty easy to understand that type of ranking.

For reasons you might not yet understand, the odds of your website ranking #1 when you search for a targe...
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AT: 04/17/2013 07:33:31 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Easy to Understand Sitelinks

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Easy to Understand Sitelinks 4667-daily-golden-nugget-712Google and Bing are trying to be helpful for people who specifically search for your store name or your website. Specific searches for your business should show your website's home page positioned in the #1 spot in the search results, but that often will also trigger the appearance of additional links to sub pages within your site. Those additional links are called "sitelinks."

Sitelinks have gone through several evolutionary changes, and I suspect the functionality will change again as the internet continues to evolve. But for today, her...
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AT: 04/16/2013 03:31:27 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 15, 2013

Diversifying Your Link Building

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Diversifying Your Link Building 1456-daily-golden-nugget-711The topic of link building is mentioned a lot by many SEO professionals, including me. Every website needs a good number of other websites linking to it in order to achieve good standing in search engines.

Link building was once thought of as a race to get inbound links to your website. It didn't matter where the links came from as long as you had them. Because it didn't matter, many SEO service companies were setting up blogging websites and linked every page of the blog to their client's website.

This process easily generat...
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AT: 04/15/2013 04:21:26 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 12, 2013

Understanding Deep Linking

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Understanding Deep Linking 753-daily-golden-nugget-710The topic for today's Daily Golden Nugget was once very controversial during the early days of the internet and a few court cases came about because of it.

Today's discussion is on "Deep Linking" which is when you link from a page on your website to a specific page within another website, but not their home page. For example, any link from your blog page to a blog page on another website is called deep linking.

Back in 1997, Ticketmaster filed legal action against Microsoft because Microsoft's website was linking directly to a ticket sale p...
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AT: 04/12/2013 01:38:46 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 11, 2013

High Velocity Link Building is Bad

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High Velocity Link Building is Bad 10-daily-golden-nugget-709There's a little bit of anticipation every time you make a change to your website home page or add another post to your blog. Will people notice your website change? Will search engines see the new blog post?

The daily average visitor traffic to jewelry store websites is pretty low, and there's not much of a chance that people will notice a new blog post or a website change unless you point it out to them. Simple methods of announcing the change include sending your customers a link to your new blog in an email, and you could share ...
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AT: 04/11/2013 01:13:00 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 09, 2013

Variety is the Spice of Keywords

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Variety is the Spice of Keywords 9048-daily-golden-nugget-707Blogging is important for online marketing. There is a story to tell about everything; you just need to understand how to tell the story that's both interesting to the reader and brings business to your website or to your front door.

My recommendation is always to include your blog directly on your website rather than some other blogging system, like WordPress or Blogger. The reason I recommend this is because your blog will appear in search results for the keywords and topics you write about.

When someone arrives on your ...
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AT: 04/09/2013 06:09:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 08, 2013

Choosing the Right Keywords

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Choosing the Right Keywords 4095-daily-golden-nugget-706Everyone likes a money making keyword. You know; those words or phrases that usually mean you will make some money today. A good example of a money phrase would be "who's a good jeweler to buy an engagement ring from?"

Now, if you're new to the whole jewelry website SEO game (that's search engine optimization) then you might think that the 2 money words from the previous question are actually only "engagement ring," but you'd be wrong.
<...
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AT: 04/08/2013 05:26:55 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 04, 2013

NAP: Name, Address, Phone Number

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NAP: Name, Address, Phone Number 1054-daily-golden-nugget-704The internet is riddled with abbreviations and acronyms for everything related to online marketing and technology.

* SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization
* IP usually refers to an "Internet Protocol [Address]"
* URL stands for Universal Resource Locator

As local search engine optimization became popular over the last few years for brick & mortar stores, the abbreviation NAP has become more popular. It's much easier to say "Nap" than "Name, Address, and Phone Number" over and over again.

One of the key comp...
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AT: 04/04/2013 11:02:28 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 03, 2013

6 Quick SEO Problems You Can Discover On Your Own

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6 Quick SEO Problems You Can Discover On Your Own 8199-daily-golden-nugget-703Search engines do not like low value websites. Low value sites typically include those with 250 words or less on a page, and those that appear to have duplicate content. Does Google think your site is low value? Do you even know?

Navigate over to Google search and search for "site:yourwebsite.com." (Meaning your actual website address, not the words "yourwebsite.com") Don't include the quotes, DO NOT put a space between the "site:" and your domain name.

The results of this search will show...
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AT: 04/03/2013 09:08:27 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 01, 2013

Marriage of Google+ Local and Google+ Page (part 2)

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Marriage of Google+ Local and Google+ Page (part 2) 7318-daily-golden-nugget-701This is the second part of a 2-part nugget. Please read the first part here.

Step 5: Setting Up Your Google+ Page
Now we need to set up your Google+ Page from within Google+. Navigate over to your Google+ profile home page at https://plus.google.com/. On the left side of the screen you will see a bunch of gray icons that says Profile, Explore, Photos, etc. Click the icon that says ...
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AT: 04/01/2013 10:58:38 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 29, 2013

Marriage of Google+ Local and Google+ Page

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Marriage of Google+ Local and Google+ Page 8636-daily-golden-nugget-700Today marks another milestone for the Daily Golden Nugget series. This is Nugget #700!

In honor of reaching another hundred I'm going to recap the topic from the First Nugget written back on July 26, 2010... Google Maps.

The Google Maps feature mentioned back then has gone through a series of evolutions and name changes from Google Maps, to Google Places, to Goog...
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AT: 03/29/2013 08:44:22 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 28, 2013

Your Advertising Will Spur 3 Important Shopper Patterns

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Your Advertising Will Spur 3 Important Shopper Patterns 1979-daily-golden-nugget-699How often has someone shown you a printout from a competing jeweler's website and asked you to price match that same item?

Here's another example: Has anyone ever walked into your store specifically asking for a 0.80ct round diamond at a price under $4,100 that has a very good cut, with E color, and a VVS2 clarity?

Jewelry shoppers have the power of the internet at their fingertips, and they now heavily research every purchase they make. In fact, studies from Google and Shopper S...
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AT: 03/28/2013 10:21:59 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 27, 2013

8 ZMOT Actions All Jewelers Must Learn and Understand

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8 ZMOT Actions All Jewelers Must Learn and Understand 8214-daily-golden-nugget-698This is a continuation of the Daily Golden Nugget from March 26, 2013.

As a quick recap, ZMOT is the "Zero Moment of Truth" which represents the idea that someone will search for more information online before considering buying your jewelry. Something "stimulated" them to "google it." That stimulation could have been an advertisement, or a conversation with a friend who was wearing je...
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AT: 03/27/2013 04:52:57 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 25, 2013

Understanding ZMOT for Retail Jewelers

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Understanding ZMOT for Retail Jewelers 943-daily-golden-nugget-696It should be no surprise that new technology adoption within the retail jewelry industry is much slower than other industries. What I typically find is that a retail jeweler needs to experience a few situations on their own before they understand the importance of new technology.

The adoption of mobile websites is one of those things that retail jewelers still haven't embraced widely. Now that responsive website designs are available many jewelers will probably take that short cut technique to mobile as their starting po...
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AT: 03/25/2013 09:56:31 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 22, 2013

Google Hits You Over the Head with Basic SEO Tactics

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 9087-daily-golden-nugget-695When you've been watching search engine optimization changes for as long as I have you tend to recognize the big neon signs that clearly tell you what you should be doing and not doing on your website.

Basically, if you want to rank well in Google's search results then you simply need to read their Webmaster Central Bog and seriously take to heart everything they tell you to do.

The blog is located here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/

Unfortunately, Google doesn't normally smack you across the face with exact directions. Instead they say things like "we look for descri...
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AT: 03/22/2013 05:15:13 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 21, 2013

Understanding and Implementing Agile Marketing

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Understanding and Implementing Agile Marketing 5373-daily-golden-nugget-694How Agile Can Your Marketing Be?

On Sunday, February 3, 2012, Super Bowl XLVII was brought to a screeching halt by a blackout during the third quarter. For a brief moment the television went black and the announcers were silent. My friends and I sat there wondering if our television broke.

Up until that point throughout the game we were already interacting with our smartphones and iPads to read game related tweets from friends, and watching our respective Facebook pages for other commentary. Ther...
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AT: 03/21/2013 08:25:07 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 20, 2013

The Psychology of Product Catalog Organization

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The Psychology of Product Catalog Organization 4594-daily-golden-nugget-693Organizing and launching your online catalog takes more than just good photography. You need to have a well designed layout for your catalog, and new studies show that you even need to know a little about psychology.

Over the past few years I've spent more and more time reading various reports about how to design website that are not necessarily aesthetically pleasing, but rather have the subtle ability to lead customers down a desired path. Old school business and marketing experts will also refer to th...
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AT: 03/20/2013 06:10:23 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Social Media Button Setup

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Social Media Button Setup 3225-daily-golden-nugget-692Everyone is doing it and it's time to get on board with social sharing, that is, social sharing directly from your website. In this Daily Golden Nugget I'm giving you a list of popular social sharing methods and how to get their buttons on your website.

To start, let me explain that you should always give your website readers the ability to share content from your website. You might not need social sharing buttons on all your pages, but you should definitely have the ability to share from your product catalog and from each blog entry.

All...
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AT: 03/19/2013 12:25:01 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 18, 2013

Explanation of a Social Media Time Saving Process

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Explanation of a Social Media Time Saving Process 2997-daily-golden-nugget-691It's an early Sunday morning as I sit down to write this Daily Golden Nugget. After 690 days you would think that I would run out of topics, but that never seems to happen. I have a list of 16 topics that I've seen in tech news recently, and other questions that customers have asked. There is plenty of source material that I can grab, review, compare data to, and then write something that my readers will appreciate.

But then there are other topics that are simply good to share directly to one of m...
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AT: 03/18/2013 02:20:51 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 15, 2013

Mobile User Flow vs. Desktop User Flow

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Mobile User Flow vs. Desktop User Flow 2752-daily-golden-nugget-690It's safe to say that the non-holiday time of the year started 30 days ago. During the period of October through February, all of the statistics I measure are skewed in favor of retail jewelers. For that 5 month period, people are more willing to deal with usability issues of your website simply because they need to buy some type of gift.

From Mid February through September the visitor traffic to retail jewelry websites is more uniform, and more likely to be influenced by other types of marketing.

For the last 30...
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AT: 03/15/2013 09:05:28 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 14, 2013

An Engaging QR Code to Facebook Contest for Your Jewelry Store

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An Engaging QR Code to Facebook Contest for Your Jewelry Store 5340-daily-golden-nugget-689Over this past weekend I attended the MJSA Expo show in New York City and met with several vendors, jewelers, and speakers. I especially enjoyed my conversation with Eugene Brill of Rio Grande about their e-commerce use on mobile devices.

One of the topics Eugene brought up during his seminar was the use of VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 03/14/2013 09:39:02 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Learning Internet Marketing From a Cat

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Learning Internet Marketing From a Cat 539-daily-golden-nugget-688Internet memes are everywhere. Add a profound or funny statement to any picture of a cat and you might just have your own meme that goes viral today.

You can learn a lot from a cat. They teach us humans that we should simply sit around and do nothing every once in a while. House cats seem to sit around all day enjoying their free time. All they care about is a clean litter box, frequent petting or brushing, and being fed. And when you run out of food, you better make a quick run to Petco otherwise little kitty will stomp...
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AT: 03/13/2013 02:45:56 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 12, 2013

A Short History of the Mobile Internet

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A Short History of the Mobile Internet 76-daily-golden-nugget-687Believe it or not mobile website technology first started to emerge around 1997. At the time the Nokia 9000 Communicator smartphone was perhaps the only reasonably useful device to access the internet through a LCD display. In 2001 Ericsson created the T68 smartphone with the first color display and simple web browser.

Early smartphone with web capability continued with the PalmOne Treo, BlackBerry 6210 & 7210 in 2003. The Sony Ericsson P910 was released in 2004, and the first 3G phone was the Nokia 6680 in 2005.

Whil...
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AT: 03/12/2013 08:07:58 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 11, 2013

Related Items and Similar Items in your Product Catalog

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Related Items and Similar Items in your Product Catalog 6263-daily-golden-nugget-686In the world of e-commerce there are those that dabble with selling online to supplement their income, those who hope to make a living from it, and those that are actually making a living from it. The success and failure rates of e-commerce websites are tied to an infinite number of variable ranging from merchandising the right product, marketing, website design, pricing, and following the rules of the game that the search engines set forth.

Large e-tailer websites like Amazon, and even ...
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AT: 03/11/2013 11:31:28 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 08, 2013

How Image Optimization Can Affect Your Website Quota

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How Image Optimization Can Affect Your Website Quota 6845-daily-golden-nugget-685Today's Nugget provides a technical background of how your website's storage size can grow over time. Not all website hosting plans are the same, and you should be aware of how your website will eventually outgrow what is allocated to you.

Have you ever looked at the space capacity on the hard drive of your Mac or the C drive of your Windows PC? Over time the available free space seems to disappear without it being very clear why. Your personal computer has a finite amount of space, and over...
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AT: 03/08/2013 05:50:51 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 07, 2013

Solving A Big Duplicate Content Error

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 853-daily-golden-nugget-684Duplicate content issues can kill your website. What's "duplicate content?" Well, it's when you say things twice on your website, and say things twice on your website.

Duplicate content also occurs when you copy information from someone else's website to post on your own site. Perhaps your intentions were good for your readers, but you didn't realize that copying that diamond education information was bad for you.

Most duplicate content issues occur right on your own website rather than from the blatant copying from someone else's site. Perhaps you didn't mean to repeat yourself, but it d...
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AT: 03/07/2013 06:56:15 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 06, 2013

Using Panoramio Photos of Your Store

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Using Panoramio Photos of Your Store 3440-daily-golden-nugget-683It's been a very long time since I wrote about the Panoramio online image service that Google runs, and a lot has changed since then. In fact there's now an entire community of Panoramio users that enrich their daily lives with this service. I'll start from the beginning and explain this for you...

Panoramio is a photo sharing website which focuses on showing the wo...
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AT: 03/06/2013 11:02:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 05, 2013

Google Image Search Provides Great Ideas

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Google Image Search Provides Great Ideas 3364-daily-golden-nugget-682Today's Daily Golden Nugget is for those retail jewelers that create custom design jewelry. If that's you, then take a moment and read and think about this one.

A few of the buzz words you frequently hear search engine optimization specialist say include "Googlebot," "spider," and "crawl." Of course there's also the "Bingbot" and the "Yahoobot," as well as a "bot" for every other search engine out there.

That "bot" is not really a robot, but rather a software program that is running on one of Google's or Bing...
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AT: 03/05/2013 09:29:13 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 04, 2013

Google Product Review and Quality Guidelines

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Google Product Review and Quality Guidelines 8843-daily-golden-nugget-681Every SEO professional will tell you that the process of search engine optimization is learned through experimentation, trial and error, and fortuitous discovery. Indeed, it's that same process that allows me to find many of the Daily Golden Nuggets I write about.

On the other hand, I have found that time and time again Google actually tells us exactly what they want us to do through their countless blogs, help videos, and support forums. But they don't tell us exactly; instead they are more like a psycholog...
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AT: 03/04/2013 10:41:49 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 27, 2013

A Refresher on Google Alerts

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A Refresher on Google Alerts 1621-daily-golden-nugget-678I've not mentioned the Google Alerts service in a long time. Nothing has changed since the last time I reported on it back in 2010, but today I'd like to provide a little refresher course on this topic.

Google officially describes the Alerts service as a way to monitor the web for interesting new content. When the new content is found, they will send you an email.

Examples of this "interesting new content" could be anything related to your town's name, anything related to the designer lines you carry, and anything related to your co...
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AT: 02/27/2013 07:14:26 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Tuning Page Titles and Meta Descriptions to Increase Click Throughs

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Tuning Page Titles and Meta Descriptions to Increase Click Throughs 7529-daily-golden-nugget-677Many people talk about search engine optimization as the process to tweak your website so search engines will spider it and index it easily. Hopefully when someone local searches for an "engagement ring" you will appear in the search results.

However, you also need to add a bit of marketing flair when writing your page title tag and the meta description for each page.

In the past I've said that you need to keep your page title tags short in order to have th...
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AT: 02/26/2013 10:42:53 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 25, 2013

Improving the ranking of your Google+ Local page

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 4940-daily-golden-nugget-676The ranking results for your listing on Google+ Local have probably gone up and down in the past year since "Places" was converted to "+Local." During that time Google has spent a lot of time trying to improve the overall way that things relate to one another online, and it's those relations that might be hurting your +Local listing.

Your Google+ Local business listing appears within the Google+ network now. Some of you might remember that before 2010 the Google Places system was part of Google Search. The same information in your +Local listing also appears within the Google Maps system on de...
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AT: 02/25/2013 08:09:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 22, 2013

Case Study of a Website Redesign

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Case Study of a Website Redesign 2069-daily-golden-nugget-675I have a quick case study today about a jewelry store that first built their website in 2008, did a minor programming change in 2010, and then did a major overhaul of the entire website in 2012. You will see how traffic changed and how activity on their website changed. My measurement period spans from December 2011 - February 2012 compared to December 2012 - February 2013.

Both the old and the new website shared these similar pages:
* About Us
* Staff
* Special Offers
* 4C's of Diamond Education
* Designer pages
...
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AT: 02/22/2013 11:04:12 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 21, 2013

Top 4 Home Page Image Usage Guidelines

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Top 4 Home Page Image Usage Guidelines 280-daily-golden-nugget-6741. Grab attention; 2. Establish a connection; 3. Welcome them inside.

Those are three basic functions that the home page of your website should be doing. When you do any of those wrong, you are doomed to have a higher bounce rate.

The photos on your home page play an important part of that home page trifecta. Based on my measured results, I've put together some guidelines on the hows and why's you should use certain types of photos.

My top 4 home page photo guidelines in order of importance:

1. Tie i...
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AT: 02/21/2013 08:07:19 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Changes to the Facebook Cover Photo Policy

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Changes to the Facebook Cover Photo Policy 330-daily-golden-nugget-673I remember reading Facebook studies from 2011 showing that the most popular types of updates to Facebook were images. When comparing text updates, video updates, and photos updates, the photos had the highest ratings in the studies.

It certainly was true for a while; any photo posted to Facebook would be seen by a larger number of your fans and friends. The results were clearly measurable.

Within a short time many brands started to flood their posts with images. This exploitation eventually lead to a change...
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AT: 02/20/2013 08:43:55 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 19, 2013

SEO of the Tortoise and the Hare

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SEO of the Tortoise and the Hare 7311-daily-golden-nugget-672Search Engine Optimization, SEO, for any website is a long and daunting task. The process is never ending for websites that are updated frequently. Even after you've optimized content, you sometimes need to go back and re-optimize it again and again when search engines make major changes in the way they rank websites.

Search engines are smart enough to know when you are trying too hard with your SEO efforts. They have ways to monitor changes on your site and measure if those changes are taking place too fast.

How fast is t...
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AT: 02/19/2013 08:48:38 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 18, 2013

Google PageRank is Fading Out

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Google PageRank is Fading Out 6899-daily-golden-nugget-671Google was founded on mathematical equation of how many web pages are linking to any other web page on the internet. The value calculated by this equation is known as PageRank, named after Larry Page, one of the founders of Google.

For many years the ranking of your website was clearly measured by the number of pages linking to you, but also the PageRank of those pages linking. PageRank is measured on a scale of Zero to Ten, 0 given to brand new web pages and 10 given only to pages that have billions of links. Everyone starts out at a P...
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AT: 02/18/2013 04:08:27 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 15, 2013

Image SEO with Alt and Title Attributes

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Image SEO with Alt and Title Attributes 9877-daily-golden-nugget-670Here's a cool SEO technique for you, with regard to the images you use on your website, and how you use them for linking. This Daily Nugget will be good for those of you that manage your own SEO efforts on your website. I'll be explaining a little about HTML tags, so if you're not interested in playing the HTML code or SEO then you might just want to skip it.

The basic HTML code for any image is this:

<img src="image-name" alt="description" title="description" class="css-reference" />

The image-nam...
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AT: 02/15/2013 11:25:01 AM   2 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 14, 2013

Google Trends Helps You Choose New Inventory

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Google Trends Helps You Choose New Inventory 433-daily-golden-nugget-669The jewelry trade show season is picking up again. Now is the time to reexamine your plan for the rest of the year and the inventory you have in your store. Can you do a stock balance? Should you reorder the same styles? Should you add a new designer line to your store?

Correctly answering those three questions will increase the sales in your store, and of course an incorrect answer could cause another year of slow financial recovery. From my experience, most jewelers will ask their industry peers for produc...
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AT: 02/14/2013 05:52:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 13, 2013

The Search Engine is Calling You

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The Search Engine is Calling You 2121-daily-golden-nugget-668The curious caller ID on your phone says "Search Engine" and when you pick it up it's someone telling you they can place your website in the top ranking position in Google's search results.

This is a telephone scam.

My office has been receiving these calls since October 2011 and it seems like we still have at least one come in every month. They are quite annoying, although not nearly annoying at the "this is your Captain speaking" phone calls.

Google usually does not make telemarketing calls, and they certainly do not ...
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AT: 02/13/2013 11:27:49 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Facebook Social Graph Search Has Ups and Downs

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Facebook Social Graph Search Has Ups and Downs 3255-daily-golden-nugget-667Facebook recently announced that they will try to revolutionize online search by letting you find recommendations from your friends. The entire concept is still in the early phases and the usefulness is not quite clear. They call it the "Social Graph Search."

In the past they've tried to work their way into other technologies, like location based services and photo sharing, with mixed results. In some cases they had to force their new features on users when they were not adopted quickly.

As it ex...
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AT: 02/12/2013 06:22:31 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 11, 2013

Devilish Black Hat Spamming SEO

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Devilish Black Hat Spamming SEO 7645-daily-golden-nugget-666100, 200, 301, 302, 404... Those are all numbers relating to websites in one form or another. Every time this Daily Golden Nugget series reached one of those numbers I wrote a special edition specifically about that number.

This is Daily Golden Nugget #666 and in honor of that special number I decided to write about one of the more "Devilish Black Hat SEO" techniques continuing to plague the internet.

What I'm about to describe is something that can happen to anyone who has low security on their website. A typical form of "l...
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AT: 02/11/2013 04:18:41 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 08, 2013

Product Catalogs and Website Updates

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Product Catalogs and Website Updates 8370-daily-golden-nugget-665Google has a YouTube video training channel called GoogleWebmasterHelp where I go to hear the weekly tips that they suggest, and to see their latest Q&A videos.

One of the common questions among all SEO professionals is how often you should update your website in order to stay popular in search results. Within the SEO community the term "website freshness" is used to indicate when you last updated your website. The Webmaster Help channel published...
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AT: 02/08/2013 11:35:38 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 07, 2013

Domain Names Don't Really Matter Any More

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Domain Names Dont Really Matter Any More 8280-daily-golden-nugget-664At the beginning of 2013, I started to review my previous Daily Golden Nuggets to see what predictions came true, which didn't, what internet technologies changed, and which ideas are completely dead.

Within my first 50 Nuggets I wrote about the idea that you could create multiple websites for yourself for specific targeting reasons. The idea is to have multiple domain names that serv...
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AT: 02/07/2013 02:58:28 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 06, 2013

The Page Title Debate of Commas, Hyphens, and Pipes

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The Page Title Debate of Commas, Hyphens, and Pipes 7680-daily-golden-nugget-663The discussion of Page Titles can often lead to a heated disagreement between different search engine optimization professionals. Some like jewelry SEO Pros like to include a lot of information in the title, some like to include several associated keyword phrases, and some prefer to keep them short and sweet.

My personal preference is to keep them short and sweet and only to use them to name ...
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AT: 02/06/2013 05:43:24 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 05, 2013

Securing Your Website with SSL

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Securing Your Website with SSL 2387-daily-golden-nugget-662Thinking of starting your own e-commerce website? You will need a secure socket layer certificate, otherwise known as an SSL certificate, or just "SSL" for short.

Secure certificates create an encrypted connection between your website and a web browser. Through this encrypted connection, information can be passed between your web server and the web browser without worry that a website hacker will be able to steal credit card numbers or other personal information.

SSL certificates come in many variations depending on which securi...
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AT: 02/05/2013 03:46:04 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 04, 2013

Understanding Google Sitelinks

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Understanding Google Sitelinks 1226-daily-golden-nugget-661The topic of "Sitelinks" has come up in casual conversation a lot recently in my daily work and I realize that I've never specifically written a Daily Golden Nugget about sitelinks, including what they are and the strategy I use to create them.

Let's start with the basic explanation of a sitelink: In the Google Search Results, sitelinks are the hyperlinks to subpages of your website that often appear below your main search result listing in order to help users navigate more quickly through your website.

Google claims to create ...
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AT: 02/04/2013 05:58:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 01, 2013

Screen Resolution Statistics from December 2012

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Screen Resolution Statistics from December 2012 5531-daily-golden-nugget-660I've pulled together 3 more sets of statistics showing the difference between screen resolutions of the general public, of people who visit jewelry websites, and then the screen resolutions that retail jewelers are still using during their work day.

These measurements are from December 2012.

I'll start with the general screen resolution statistics measured by StatCounter.com Global Stats. These are the most popular screen resolutions in the United States.

(1st) 1366x768, 17.05% -- 15" to 1...
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AT: 02/01/2013 05:39:54 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 31, 2013

Testing Online Ads in 24 Hours

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Testing Online Ads in 24 Hours 787-daily-golden-nugget-659Getting started with any new advertising method always carries a little bit of trepidations. Your advertising budget could be exhausted easily if you made the wrong choice. Common questions that might cross your mind might be: Will it work? Will it not work? Will I reach my target audience? Will the audience I reach spend any money?

With offline advertising you have to rely on demographics and circulation statistics for each medium. With online advertising you can't rely on previously know statistics because it's all up to you to figu...
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AT: 01/31/2013 05:47:56 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Eleven Advertising Points for 2013

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Eleven Advertising Points for 2013 9456-daily-golden-nugget-658Yesterday I detailed the differences between online advertising in 2008, 2010, and then my suggestions for this year. Here's my unified advertising suggestion list again in case you missed it:

1. Offline advertising
2. Website landing pages
3. Email advertising
4. Google AdWords Remarketing
5. Advertising with Facebook sponsored posts
6. Google+ Page posts
7. Google +Local
8. Blogging using Google Authorship
9. Mobile Website
10. YouTube
11. Twitter

Let me explain what each of those 11 items ...
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AT: 01/30/2013 06:30:27 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 28, 2013

DNS Services Invoices are a Scam

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DNS Services Invoices are a ScamToday I'm detailing information about a domain name and DNS scam circulating through direct mail and email. This is something you should be aware of to protect yourself from a financial fraud.

About three months ago I found out that several of my customers were receiving invoices in the mail from "DNS Services," a company specializing in DNS protection services.

DNS stands for "Domain Name System," which is the technology that allows you and I to type in a human readable domain name which the computer can turn into a number. Computers don't understand written words, only numbers,...
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AT: 01/28/2013 06:46:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 25, 2013

Apple iOS Beats Android in Website Visits

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 6469-daily-golden-nugget-655I finally have some statistics from browser usage from December 2012. I actually managed to track both consumer usage and usage of actual retail jewelers.


In the battle of smartphone operating systems you hear a lot of Google Android users saying that the Apple iPhone is horrible, meanwhile iPhone users don't normally make a big deal about the Android.

According to sales reports the Android is pulling ahead of the iPhone, and that might make you believe that the Android is the better smartphone. You really have to look at the fine print of those sales reports to see the Android is se...
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AT: 01/25/2013 06:28:45 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 24, 2013

Employees Can Be Your Social Secret Weapon

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Employees Can Be Your Social Secret Weapon 6091-daily-golden-nugget-654Yesterday I gave you a nifty idea for running an employee contest that would stimulate new online reviews. Today I'm giving you 3 more tactics on how you can use your employees as a social networking secret weapon...

Continuing the trend of yesterday's reward based employee contest, this first tactic would also need to include another monthly employee reward.

Everyone likes to have their name turn up in the newspaper or headlines for good reasons. It's like getting your 15 minutes of fame. This next emp...
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AT: 01/24/2013 05:15:00 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Getting Better Online Reviews for Your Jewelry Store

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Getting Better Online Reviews for Your Jewelry Store 7065-daily-golden-nugget-653Facebook recently announced a change in the way their search features are going to work. They are finally going to cross reference the online social activity of our friends and give us matching search results according to the pages our friends Like.

So, for example, if I search Facebook for an auto mechanic I'm supposed to see results that include all the auto mechanic Pages my friends "liked" on Facebook. I don't think my local auto mechanics would even have a Facebook Page, so that's a bad ...
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AT: 01/23/2013 05:57:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Protecting Yourself from Googlebot Created Duplicate Content

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Protecting Yourself from Googlebot Created Duplicate Content 3387-daily-golden-nugget-652Sometimes Google is sneaky.

In their quest to find all there is to find, Google will follow every link on your website inside out, upside down, and backwards until they've read all your web pages, online documents, and video files. But they don't just stop there.

The Google indexing process will also look at all the URLs that make your website work and it will experiment with different permutations just to see if they can expose hidden details about your website. From G...
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AT: 01/22/2013 05:58:11 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 21, 2013

Begin Your SEO Process Here

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Begin Your SEO Process Here 3499-daily-golden-nugget-651Talk to any SEO professional and you're likely to hear the phrase "duplicate content" over and over again as one of the things you should avoid on a website. One of the larger tasks of search engine optimization (SEO) is to protect yourself from duplicate content penalties assigned by search engines, with Google in particular.

Here are common situations that can create duplicate content penalties:

1. Items in your product catalog appear multiple times ...
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AT: 01/21/2013 02:30:48 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 18, 2013

Using GWT to Better Train Your Website for Blogging

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Using GWT to Better Train Your Website for Blogging 1028-daily-golden-nugget-650Once upon a time a jeweler asked me why his website wasn't showing up in Google for the phrase "champagne diamonds." As it turned out he didn't have that phrase anywhere on his website, so Google had no reason to direct people to him.

As part of the "training" you need to give your website, you need to regularly look at your Google Webmaster Tools to find out what you're missing.

Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) has changed their interface a lot over the past 12 months, and it's much easier f...
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AT: 01/18/2013 05:51:10 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 17, 2013

ROI and Conversion Calculations for Jewelers

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ROI and Conversion Calculations for Jewelers 6033-daily-golden-nugget-649This is the second part of a Nugget explaining how you can take tracking results from Google analytics and calculate more than just the return on investment for your retail jewelry store.
(Part one here)

Let me do a quick rundown of all the example numbers from yesterday...

The following visitor referrals have come to our website over the last 30 days
Visits from Facebook: 15
Visits...
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AT: 01/17/2013 06:12:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Data Collecting for ROI and Conversion Calculations

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Data Collecting for ROI and Conversion Calculations 526-daily-golden-nugget-648One of the most common problems for a retail store, not just retail jewelers, is being able to accurately track the point of origin of online visitors and follow them through to the point when they walk into your retail store. Although for small retailers there is a simple method... you simply ask your customers.

That might seem intuitive, but in all seriousness, the retail jewelers I talk to tell me it's not easy for the sales person to remember to ask a lead source question when you're in the mid...
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AT: 01/16/2013 07:10:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Your Website is Your Least Trained Employee

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Your Website is Your Least Trained Employee 1990-daily-golden-nugget-647The Daily Nuggets from the last several days have covered the more advanced topics of tracking your visitors from social networks using the UTM campaign tracking built into Google Analytics. In yesterday's Nugget I also explained that those tracking tags create long, ugly URLs that should be shortened.

We're now 15 days into the New Year and I want to continue to arm you with what you will need to know in order to make 2013 a successful website year for you. That tracking is just the beginning. The path of we...
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AT: 01/15/2013 05:55:59 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 14, 2013

URL Shorteners Help Manage Long Ugly Links

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URL Shorteners Help Manage Long Ugly Links 1393-daily-golden-nugget-646Over the last three days I spent a lot of time explaining how to use the Google Analytics UTM variable tracking to monitor the success rate of the links you share to the various social networks. The method I explained does require a bit of time to implement and then the links you share will become very long and ugly.

What I didn't explain yet is that sometimes those long and ugly shared links (URLs) can break as you use them, or when other people re-share them. Emails are notorious for breaking long website li...
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AT: 01/14/2013 03:11:59 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 11, 2013

Reading Google Analytics UTM Reports

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Reading Google Analytics UTM Reports 731-daily-golden-nugget-645Over the last two days I've explained the frustrations of trying to pull together all the reporting methods from many online tools and social media platforms. I also explained how you can use the built in UTM tracking feature from Google Analytics to bypass those reporting frustrations and direct all trackable information to a single place.

Today I'll explain where to find the reporting inside of Google Analytics.

Start by logging into your Google Analytics account and click "Traffic Sources" in the left navigation. Aft...
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AT: 01/11/2013 05:18:28 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 10, 2013

Setting Up Google Analytics UTM Tracking

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Setting Up Google Analytics UTM Tracking 4113-daily-golden-nugget-644The internet is supposed to be evolving into a massive social structure that allows you to share anything you want with anyone else. On an average day a person could share stories to friends on Facebook, photos to Pinterest, tweet interesting quotes through Twitter, and post their latest family videos to YouTube.

On a personal level, you probably don't care how, when, or who will read the stuff you publish to the internet, but you assume that people will eventually find and read it.

As a business, you can't sp...
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AT: 01/10/2013 07:02:56 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 09, 2013

Tribulations of Measuring Online Marketing and Social Networking Results

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Tribulations of Measuring Online Marketing and Social Networking Results  683-daily-golden-nugget-643Online marketing is a struggle for almost everyone. No one is sure what will work and what will not. Different experts have conflicting ideas on how you should spend your online advertising money, yet no one seems willing to provide meaningful reports that are easy to understand.

Email platforms like Constant Contact, iContact, and MailChimp have their own methods for measuring open rates, bounce rates, and click rates. But is that information really he...
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AT: 01/09/2013 02:16:16 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 08, 2013

Determine if the Reality Check for your Facebook Marketing Bounces

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Determine if the Reality Check for your Facebook Marketing Bounces 221-daily-golden-nugget-642Regardless of whether your sales were up or down for the 2012 holiday season, you should still evaluate what part of your marketing plan worked and what failed.

To help you with your evaluation, I'm going to review how you can measure the reality of your social marketing efforts from Facebook.

I'm going to explain a few Google searches below. For your own best test results with these searches you should use the Google Chrome web browser in "incognito" mode. If ...
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AT: 01/08/2013 07:33:50 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 07, 2013

Using Facebook Photo Albums for Your Website's SEO

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Using Facebook Photo Albums for Your Websites SEO 7395-daily-golden-nugget-641Since we're at the beginning of a new year, I'd like to share a new designer line marketing strategy that ties together your website and your Facebook Page.

A few months ago, I noticed that Google is including Facebook Photo Albums in search results. After a few months of testing I've come up with a method whose primary purpose is to help you grow your website visitor traffic but this will also grow engagements between you and your Facebook Likes.

In other words, this is a hot off the press, ...
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AT: 01/07/2013 12:26:43 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Resolve to Hire a Website Employee

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Resolve to Hire a Website Employee 703-daily-golden-nugget-638I'd like to start off the first new Daily Golden Nugget of 2013 with a potential New Year's Resolution for your jewelry store.

Here it is: Hire a dedicated employee to work on your website.

I realize that it might be a bad time to be telling you to increase your payroll spending, but like all New Year's Resolutions, your goal should be to get this done before the end of the year.

Hiring an employee to work on your website is no small task. It's going to be harder for you to find a qualified website employee than it wo...
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AT: 01/02/2013 03:29:00 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 31, 2012

Jewelry Website Predictions for 2013

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Jewelry Website Predictions for 2013 925-daily-golden-nugget-636It's the end of one year and the beginning of another, and that means it's time for predictions for next year.

I have 4 predictions for retail jewelry stores for the 2013 year. Here they are...

Prediction #1.
The problem of easy tracking of users from point of origin online to an in-store sale will NOT YET be solved. This is one of the largest problems that retail jewelers face; in fact all businesses that use online marketing to increase the business of their brick and mortar stores face this problem. The true ROI ...
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AT: 12/31/2012 06:13:33 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 28, 2012

Most Popular Jewelry Landing Pages for 2012 Holiday Season

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Most Popular Jewelry Landing Pages for 2012 Holiday Season 2749-daily-golden-nugget-635In Yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget I listed the 9 popular pages that people were reading on independent retail jewelry store website throughout the 2012 Holiday Season. Today I'm looking at the popular Landing Pages.

The term "Landing Page" refers to the first page a person visits when they arrive at your site. This is the page you link to from Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or a blog post. More importantly, it's the page that people see when they search for something in Google or B...
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AT: 12/28/2012 01:01:13 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 27, 2012

Most Popular Jewelry Website Pages for 2012 Holiday Season

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Most Popular Jewelry Website Pages for 2012 Holiday Season 4339-daily-golden-nugget-634I'm still reviewing more online tracking data for the 2012 Holiday Season. Today I take a quick look at the popular pages that customers were most interested in during the 2012 Holiday Season.

As always, the most popular page on any website is the Home Page. Here's a list of the 9 pages from independent jewelry store websites in the order of their popularity for the Holiday 2012 Season:

1. Online Catalog
2. Store Hours
3. Contact Us
4. Designer Pages (for specific ...
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AT: 12/27/2012 06:41:59 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Post 2012 Holiday Season Google Insights

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Post 2012 Holiday Season Google Insights  1338-daily-golden-nugget-633Today I'm reviewing more online tracking data for the 2012 Holiday Season.

According to Google Trends, the online search interest in "jewelry" steadily increased throughout the holiday season from November 1, 2012 through December 22, 2012. The peak days were Cyber Monday, November 26th, Saturday December 8th, Saturday December 15th, and Monday December 17th.

The data from Google Trends seems to show that online interest gold jewelry was greater than silver jewelry. Do your in-store sales reflect higher per...
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AT: 12/26/2012 01:45:58 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Google Analytics Reports for 2012 Holidays

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Google Analytics Reports for 2012 Holidays 6495-daily-golden-nugget-632This is Christmas Day!

I'll keep today's Golden Nugget brief and just cover some statistics I've been tracking this season in the jewelry industry.

Here are some stats direct from Google Analytics. These are average statistics measured across many websites run by independent retail jewelers. These statistics include both e-commerce sites and non e-commerce sites and are a comparison of the 2011 Holiday Season to the 2012 Holiday Season.

Website Visits: Up 35.45%
Unique Visitor Count: Up 42.23% VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 12/25/2012 05:48:55 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 24, 2012

Holiday Stats as the 2012 Season Comes to a Close

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Holiday Stats as the 2012 Season Comes to a Close 5911-daily-golden-nugget-631It's Christmas Eve and the holiday gift buying season comes to a close. My team and I have heard mixed reports from the jewelers we work with. Some said it was a good season and some said it was a slow season. Exact numbers up or down won't be known for a little while, but I wanted to review some of the data I collected over the last 30 days.

To start, there certainly was no shortage of last minute deals over the weekend. Of the 200+ retailers I've subscribed to, 31 of them sent an email with a h...
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AT: 12/24/2012 04:04:28 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 21, 2012

Runaway Website Page Speed

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Runaway Website Page Speed 23-daily-golden-nugget-630Has the world ended? If you are reading this then I guess the Mayan Apocalypse was wrong. If you're not reading this then I guess I spent my time writing it for nothing and I should have spent these last few days enjoying myself. Personally I was betting on the birth of Skynet more than zombies, but if an apocalypse hits, we probably have nowhere to run, no matter how fast we try.

Speaking of running fast, have you heard any of that chatter that Google uses the speed of your site to help rank your website? It was a rumor in 2009 that was confirmed...
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AT: 12/21/2012 06:24:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 20, 2012

Choosing the Right Website Hosting for your Jewelry Site

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Choosing the Right Website Hosting for your Jewelry Site 7717-daily-golden-nugget-629Choosing the right company to host your website shouldn't be a whimsical choice one afternoon. If you're planning on making a lot of money with your website then the company you choose will eventually be the cornerstone of your online business.

You can hire and fire web programmers whenever you like, you could even outsource the programming and design of your website instead of having a dedicated programmer. What you can't change overnight is your web hosting environment. Once chosen...
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AT: 12/20/2012 06:47:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Dastardly DNS Management

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Dastardly DNS Management 8346-daily-golden-nugget-628This is the 4th and final part in a series about website system administration. The previous topics I presented were website security, data backup, and server monitoring as common tasks for the everyday average System Administrator. These topics are meant to enlighten you to the important background tasks that make your website run, and so you can appreciate the work that your IT staff does to keep your online business running.

The last topic in this...
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AT: 12/19/2012 01:57:55 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Server Monitoring Leads to Website Health

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Server Monitoring Leads to Website Health 220-daily-golden-nugget-627This is the 3rd part in a 4 part series about website system administration. I've already outlined that website security, data backup, server monitoring, and domain name management are all common tasks for the everyday average System Administrator. These topics are meant to enlighten you to the important background tasks that make your website run, and so you can appreciate the work that your IT staff does to keep your online business running.

Today'...
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AT: 12/18/2012 02:02:53 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 17, 2012

Backups: In the Hour of Need

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Backups: In the Hour of Need 5939-daily-golden-nugget-626This is the 2nd part in a 4part series about website system administration. On Friday I explained that website security, data backup, server monitoring, and domain name management are all common tasks for the everyday average System Administrator. These topics are meant to enlighten you to the important background tasks that make your website run, and so you can appreciate the work that your IT staff does to keep your online business running.

I covered website security in detail on Friday. Today's topic is Data Backup.

There's no...
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AT: 12/17/2012 10:09:31 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 14, 2012

The Unappreciated Life of a Website System Administrator

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The Unappreciated Life of a Website System Administrator 3860-daily-golden-nugget-625Website security, data backup, server monitoring, and domain name management are all common tasks for the everyday average System Administrator. Even though you may not be paying an IT person on your own staff, someone out there is probably overseeing the functionality of your website 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The 4 tasks of system administration I mentioned above are usually included in the hosting of your website. But sometimes they are not, and I'd like to talk about how thi...
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AT: 12/14/2012 08:57:32 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 13, 2012

Rich Snippets and Semantic SEO Make the Web Better

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Rich Snippets and Semantic SEO Make the Web Better 1180-daily-golden-nugget-624Before publishing every Daily Golden Nugget I send it through a review and editing process by other people in my office. Today's Nugget was not well received because it has higher than normal technical content. I thought about scrapping it, but I think the topic is important for website owners to understand. I've slimmed down the technical example from my original version. My hope is that this doesn't seem like I'm trying to teach a fish to fly.

One of the more advanced SEO techniques I've alwa...
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AT: 12/13/2012 07:28:50 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 12, 2012

It's time for the adults to take over the social networks.

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Its time for the adults to take over the social networks. 880-daily-golden-nugget-623Google+ is growing in popularity very slowly and many businesses have found successful and unique ways to use it.

The growth rate of Google+ has been stunted because Google refused to allow software developers an easy way to post directly to the network. Programs like TweetDeck, cotweet, and MarketMeSuite have direct software connections to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many other social networks. It's through these programs that people can automatically post information to the soci...
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AT: 12/12/2012 12:21:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Building your website with creative content should never end.

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Building your website with creative content should never end. 6276-daily-golden-nugget-622Your website is never complete. The sooner you realize that the sooner you will stop worrying about getting your website perfect, and that means less stress for you.

As a small retail jewelry business owner you need to start your website small and then continually add to it through blog posts, educational articles, monthly newsletters, and slowly adding new products.

Having a blog area on your site allows you to randomly post your thought de jour or other random happe...
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AT: 12/11/2012 10:27:43 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 10, 2012

2013 Prediction: Keyword Ranking Doesn't Matter Anymore

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2013 Prediction: Keyword Ranking Doesnt Matter Anymore 4631-daily-golden-nugget-621Slowly but surely Google is making it more and more difficult for all of us to do keyword research and target keyword phrases as our primary online marketing strategy and search engine optimization.

It all started to go downhill in late October 2011 when Google began hiding keyword information in Analytics. Google said they were increasing privacy protection of personalized search results. Google Analytics reports this hidden keywords in a single grouping called "Not Provided." Google tr...
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AT: 12/10/2012 11:05:31 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 07, 2012

Understanding the Page Title Tag

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Understanding the Page Title Tag 1957-daily-golden-nugget-620Much of the online marketing difficulties we face require us to come up with more creative ways to get our message across in as little time as possible. The new generation of internet users is bombarded with short status updates from everywhere. Many smartphone apps allow for popup "push notifications" that display a few words of a message for a few seconds. Tweets and text messages are measured in 140 or 160 characters or less.

All these short messages have conditioned users to look for fast information in bite sized chunks that ...
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AT: 12/07/2012 10:31:19 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 06, 2012

Matching Online Ads to Landing Pages

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Matching Online Ads to Landing Pages 5685-daily-golden-nugget-619Including today there are 19 more shopping days before Christmas. By now you probably have all your ads out there doing their job; the only thing left to do is help the customers as they walk into your store and use your website.

Handling the in-store customers should be second nature for any retail employee; otherwise that employee wouldn't be on a selling floor. The typical salesperson will greet a customer as they walk into the store and attend to their needs. Customers will probably ask for a specific item if they were...
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AT: 12/06/2012 10:18:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 05, 2012

H1 Tag Usage in 2013

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H1 Tag Usage in 2013 2734-daily-golden-nugget-618Since I'm dedicating most of this month to reviews of basic search engine optimization topics, I'd like to recap a topic that I haven't seen discussed much in the last 12 months.

The HTML Header tag, known as H1.

Many basic search engine optimization techniques were overshadowed in 2012 by Google's activities to filter link spam and website content spam. It almost seems like the SEO bloggers have forgotten about header tags entirely.

So what is a header tag? The idea of a "header" stems back to printed newspapers where the largest words on p...
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AT: 12/05/2012 09:30:24 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Parking Your New Domain Name

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Parking Your New Domain Name 956-daily-golden-nugget-617Ask any SEO professional how a domain affects your search engine ranking and you'll probably get a few different answers. The importance of how a domain name influences your ranking has changed a lot in the past few years, so those SEO guys were probably correct in their thinking at some point in time.

Here's an update on the impact of Parked Pages on how Google indexes your domain name. This is updated information according to what Google published as of November 2012.

First I need to explain what a Parked Page is. When you first buy ...
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AT: 12/04/2012 09:24:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 03, 2012

Tis the Season to Go Evergreen

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Tis the Season to Go Evergreen 9278-daily-golden-nugget-616A blog can serve a variety of purposes. Actually a blog has so many purposes that WordPress became popular because how easy they made it for a blog to be used in flexible ways.

Here are some ideas of how you can use the blog on your website.
1. It can be used to post information about upcoming events.
2. The blog can have updates on the latest jewelry styles you have in the store.
3. It can tell stories about happy customers.
4. You can post educational information about jewelry to your blog.

This list could be end...
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AT: 12/03/2012 09:14:01 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 30, 2012

Do Not Pay For Link Building

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Do Not Pay For Link Building 2762-daily-golden-nugget-615In general the usage of the name World Wide Web has been replaced by common vernaculars of web, internet, net, and even inter-web. The original World Wide Web name refers to how one website would hyperlink to another website. In the early years, around 1993 through 1997, that linking was done purely because someone liked your website and they wanted to link their site to yours.

Eventually the search engines started to count the number of links you had to your site as a measure of your popularity. Google was founded using a mathematical mo...
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AT: 11/30/2012 10:39:29 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 29, 2012

How to Correctly Use Synonyms in For SEO

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How to Correctly Use Synonyms in For SEO 7424-daily-golden-nugget-614How many different jewelry synonyms can you think of for the phrase engagement ring?

The heavy use of similar variations of phrase throughout your web page is a sure way to get yourself penalized by Google. In the past, if you were serious about ranking your website for "engagement rings" you would use that phrase over and over again throughout many pages of your site. Sometimes you would use the phrase 5 times on a single page.

Prior to 2012, it was common practice to use all these phrases on a single page o...
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AT: 11/29/2012 01:16:03 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 28, 2012

7 Sites Where Customer Reviews are Important

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7 Sites Where Customer Reviews are Important 2746-daily-golden-nugget-613It's the season of cheer, and people are suddenly more giving, more willing to do something for others. As a retail store owner you certainly hope that people will shop at your store for their gift giving purchase, but at the same time, other than money, there's a gift you could ask of each customer.

Reviews and recommendations.

Ask every customer if they would be willing to write an online review for you. They wouldn't do it in the store; instead they would have to do it on their smartphone or on the...
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AT: 11/28/2012 12:10:42 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Micro History of Link Building and How it Works

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Micro History of Link Building and How it Works 5578-daily-golden-nugget-612For retail store owners and retail employees the idea of the holiday season means longer hours at work, more customers, and the occasional strong drink after work. It took at least the last 3 months to plan for the next 30 days. All your marketing is in place and ready to fly, drop, or launch.

My work here is done. Over the next 30 days or so I'm going to switch my Daily Golden Nugget series back over to the "Grain of SEO Gold" series that I introduced last year this time. In the "Grain" series I'll ...
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AT: 11/27/2012 11:33:41 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 26, 2012

QR Codes Could Help For the Holidays

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QR Codes Could Help For the Holidays 1079-daily-golden-nugget-611Here's an idea that will help you during the holiday season, and it shouldn't take too much time to set up.

There are occasions when customers will browse through your jewelry store on their own, without help from a sales person. Instead of letting them look around randomly, this is a good opportunity to invite those customers to find out more information by scanning the few QR codes you've placed inside your showcases.

Two years ago I mentioned QR codes in Daily Golden Nugget #2, but at the time very few people knew ...
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AT: 11/26/2012 11:15:58 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 23, 2012

Idiotic Doorbuster Marketing Mistakes

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Idiotic Doorbuster Marketing Mistakes 4359-daily-golden-nugget-610For my US readers I'd like to say Happy Black Friday!

Today officially kicks off the holiday shopping season in the United States. Many department stores and chain stores open very early today with "Doorbuster Sales" which usually end by Noon.

According to the Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English, the "doorbuster" is a special discount price available for a limited period, typically during special early-opening hours. From my experience, the items sold during these doorbuster periods are nothing more than lo...
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AT: 11/23/2012 12:29:33 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 22, 2012

Capturing Customer Stories During the Holidays

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Capturing Customer Stories During the Holidays 3667-daily-golden-nugget-609Throughout the upcoming 45 days, your staff is going to put in long hours in hopes that customers will be beating down your door 7 days every week. Financial forecasts say that this year will be better than last.

As you are hurried and harried through your daily routine you should try to take notice of the people come to you looking for the perfect holiday gift. Customers come looking for gifts for him, gifts for her, gifts for a child, or even a grandparent. Some customers might even stop in for a smal...
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AT: 11/22/2012 12:31:59 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Making a Good Impression on Website Visitor

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Making a Good Impression on Website Visitor 8410-daily-golden-nugget-608It's the eve of Thanksgiving in the United States. Many people are taking today off from work to cook while many retail stores are getting set for the start of the massive sales cycle that starts on Friday morning, Black Friday.

By now I expect all retailers have sent out their first flight of ads. It doesn't matter if these ads are inviting customers to your website or to your store; strangely enough all ads increase traffic to your site because people will want more information.

For the last few years...
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AT: 11/21/2012 09:27:35 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Effective Places to Buy Ads Other Than AdWords

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Effective Places to Buy Ads Other Than AdWords 6118-daily-golden-nugget-607In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget, I detailed how several different methods of referred visitor traffic have changed over the last 2 holiday seasons. Two highlights from yesterday are:

1. A decline in referral traffic from Chamber of Commerce websites.
2. A decline in referral traffic from directory websites (e.g. citysearch.com).

I don't know why these 2 type of websites have lower traffic referrals, but my speculations are as follows:

Speculative #1: A regretful byproduct of Google's 2...
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AT: 11/20/2012 09:23:05 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 19, 2012

Website Visitor Stats from 2010 and 2011

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Website Visitor Stats from 2010 and 2011 8199-daily-golden-nugget-606The data I reference for all my jWAG Daily Golden Nuggets spans back to 2003. That's when I started working exclusively with jewelry stores and when I started compiling information.

In 2010 I ramped up my data collecting efforts when the jwag.biz website was launched and that data is starting to produce some interesting historical information.

I decided to peek into the data to find the most popular ways that visitors arrived at a retail jewelry store website during the 2010 and 2011 holiday seasons, and compa...
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AT: 11/19/2012 12:31:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 16, 2012

Holiday Retail Store Hours

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Holiday Retail Store Hours 6711-daily-golden-nugget-605Posting store hours on your website for the holiday season is ÃœBER IMPORTANT! To put into perspective exactly how important, I'd like to review some comparative statistics from the last 30 days to the 30 days of the 2011 Holiday Season.

I routinely monitor web page layouts and how users maneuver a website once they land on a jewelry store home page. This is how I know what types of website designs and pages work, and which ones don't. Three specific pages I'm always watching are how users interact with are the Contact Us page, Directions pag...
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AT: 11/16/2012 04:28:22 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 15, 2012

Quick Holiday Changes to Your Website

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Quick Holiday Changes to Your Website 6144-daily-golden-nugget-604Here's a refresher of basic holiday changes you need to activate on your website. The goal of these changes is signify to your users that the holiday season has arrived and to provide a faster method of finding the gifts they need.

The first change you should make on your website is something subtle to represent the season. BlueNile.com is using an elegant snowflake background on their website already. These snowflakes appeared on November 1st just as they started sending holiday marketing emails.

Last year I saw ...
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AT: 11/15/2012 11:33:31 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Holiday Marketing is Well Under Way

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Holiday Marketing is Well Under Way 8054-daily-golden-nugget-603"Hello, Holidays!"
"Want to get beautiful gifts?"
"Beat the Rush with these Early Christmas Gifts"
"Just in time for holiday parties!"
"Ready for the Holidays?"
"Start Planning Your Holiday Gifts"
"Early Cyber Monday Deal!"
"New Early Black Friday Specials Online Now"

There's no doubt about it this year. In the United States is seems like every big brand launched their holiday marketing campaigns exactly at the same time on November 1, 2012. In fact I received a cute email from Tiffany & Co. at 5:07pm on ...
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AT: 11/14/2012 10:11:46 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 13, 2012

302 Through the Eye of the Storm

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302 Through the Eye of the Storm 382-daily-golden-nugget-602The East Coast of the United States, in particular my home state of New Jersey, was severely damaged by Hurricane Sandy and then 7 days later hit again by Nor-Easter Athena. Much of the state was left without power for several days which caused a domino effect of even more life-threatening problems statewide. The world-renowned "Jersey Shore" will never be the same, especially since much of the shoreline is gone, including famous and historical amusement piers.

Some of the devastation, shown in these before and after photos, can never...
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AT: 11/13/2012 10:03:40 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 12, 2012

Web Hosting Security Issue No One Ever Talks About

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Web Hosting Security Issue No One Ever Talks About 7320-daily-golden-nugget-601After 600 Daily Golden Nuggets you might think that there are no new topics that I could cover. I sometimes think the same thing, but then something strange happens in my daily work that uncovers something completely new and unexpected.

The problem I'm about to explain affects every website that has ever moved from one web hosting company to another or from one web server to another. This is a very strange situation that, until just a few days ago, never thought it would have an adverse affect on...
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AT: 11/12/2012 08:34:34 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 09, 2012

Android Google Maps vs. iPhone Apple Maps

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Android Google Maps vs. iPhone Apple Maps 9384-daily-golden-nugget-600Who would have thought that the Daily Golden Nugget series would ever get this far? Today is Nugget Number 600! I have to warn you that this one is going to be a #longread compared to my usual.

My very first Nugget was about Google Maps and how it could drive customers directly to your store. Each multiple of 100 since then has also been about Google Maps, Google Local, Google Places, and Google+ Local. But today it seems I must now include a new interloper... Apple Maps.

For starters, if you've not yet s...
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AT: 11/09/2012 09:26:49 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 08, 2012

A Review of Link Building That Hurts Your Website

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A Review of Link Building That Hurts Your Website 592-daily-golden-nugget-599Today I'd like to talk briefly about the adverse affects of paying a company for link building. This is a topic that many SEO professionals have written about a lot this year in the wake of the Google Penguin Update from April 2012. I'd like to cover this topic again now that 6 months have passed.

As a recap of what was in the news 6 months ago, Google has a filtering algorithm that detects when you have too many links pointing to your website with the same keywords. It's called the "Penguin Filter."...
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AT: 11/08/2012 09:01:30 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 07, 2012

Home Page Animations Are The Bomb!

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Home Page Animations Are The Bomb! 837-daily-golden-nugget-598I think I need to eat my hat, or at least nibble on it a little.

I've never been a supporter of animation effects on website home pages. My personal point of view is that they take way too long to look at and they get in my way when all I want to do is quickly browse a website. Because of my expertise in online marketing, I know that home page animations are designed to sell you something, and I don't want to be sold to. I'd rather have a link to click.

Home page animations come in many different sizes and appearances. Th...
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AT: 11/07/2012 06:50:05 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 06, 2012

How Presidential Elections in the USA Affect Website Traffic

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How Presidential Elections in the USA Affect Website Traffic 4688-daily-golden-nugget-597Today is Election Day in the USA. If all goes according to plan, sometime this evening we will know who the President will be for the next 4 years.

There are business cycles that are usually influenced by seasons, weather, holidays, and other typical events. Although not an official holiday, Election Day, and especially a Presidential Election Day like today tends to have a dampening effect on consumer spending that repeats every 4 years in the US.

In yesterday's Daily ...
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AT: 11/06/2012 09:52:34 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 05, 2012

Google Analytics is You Own Historical Index

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Google Analytics is You Own Historical Index 2871-daily-golden-nugget-596Over the next 50 days, most retail businesses in the US will experience their typical holiday season boon. What's going to be the hottest sellers this year? Answering that question requires some guessing, some trend analysis, and some experience. Of course there are always standard items that you sell year after year that you probably already have on order and stocked in the store.

Historical tracking on your website, specifically Google Analytics, can help to remind you what was popular last year, and the ...
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AT: 11/05/2012 07:35:27 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 02, 2012

The Clock Won't Stop but You Could Step Back and Correct Your Website.

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The Clock Wont Stop but You Could Step Back and Correct Your Website. 1238-daily-golden-nugget-595Thinking of sending out any last minute promotions in honor of Daylight Savings Time? Today is the day to do it, and get it done before mid-afternoon. After that there's going to be a major drop in the number of people who are using desktop computers.

This is the "Fall Back" weekend! From November 1st through December 31st every year there are only 3 times when people unplug from the internet. This weekend is one of those times. Can you guess the other two...
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AT: 11/02/2012 10:28:42 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 01, 2012

Put The Costume Away. It's time to use social networking correctly.

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Put The Costume Away. Its time to use social networking correctly. 9044-daily-golden-nugget-594It's the start of a new month and for many of you it's the official kickoff of the holiday season. Hopefully your marketing strategy is in place and you're ready for the flood of customers... of course in the United States we actually need to wait until after Election Day for those customers to start flooding in since no one likes to spend money during an "election season."

All joking aside, there are marketing methods that you should be including in your mix this y...
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AT: 11/01/2012 10:03:54 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Horrific QR Code Uses

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Horrific QR Code Uses 6315-daily-golden-nugget-593Today I'd like to tell you give you some additional warnings about QR code usage. QR codes are those square barcodes that look like a bunch of small dots. Many companies have incorrectly tried to use them in their advertising. Keeping with the theme of today, there are times when you should use QR codes and there are times when you should simply scream in horror at the waste of time and money that some marketing companies would suggest.

I've seen such horrors, and I can't believe that large companies actually spent money on these marketing ideas withou...
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AT: 10/31/2012 10:56:23 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 30, 2012

We're Seeing Black. Black Friday Headlines

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Were Seeing Black. Black Friday Headlines 591-daily-golden-nugget-592In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget I explained that there are 4 potential days in November around which you could base some type of marketing campaign or announcement. Those days are Daylight Saving Time, Election Day, Veterans Day, and Thanksgiving. Simple email announcements, Facebook posts, or Tweets could raise awareness of your special promotion and sneak in under references to those days.

On the first hand, most retail stores--including most retail jewelers with active marketing campaigns--would rather focus th...
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AT: 10/30/2012 10:26:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 29, 2012

Talking Turkey in November, and Other Holiday Headlines

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Talking Turkey in November, and Other Holiday Headlines 1169-daily-golden-nugget-591Last week I gave you a list of Halloween themed headlines that you could use in your marketing messages for this week. Today I'm going to give you a list of headlines that you could use throughout November 2012. These headlines were recorded during November 2011 as part of one of my long term continuing research projects on email marketing and website headlines.

November is a very robust month with more opportunities to broadcast a marketing message than you may realize. The general th...
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AT: 10/29/2012 11:24:20 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 26, 2012

Using Brand Names to Gain Social Recognition

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Using Brand Names to Gain Social Recognition 7728-daily-golden-nugget-590In a recent survey I read that brand names would play an important part in jewelry sales during the Holiday 2012 season. I have a feeling that if we were to look at the surveys for the last 10 or 20 years, we would see similar survey results. Some people prefer to shop brand names and some people don't care.

The difference this year over last year is that social media has further changed the way in which communicate with customers.

Before this holiday season kicks into full speed you should track down...
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AT: 10/26/2012 10:57:52 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 25, 2012

The 2 biggest Mistakes in QR Code Marketing

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The 2 biggest Mistakes in QR Code Marketing 7246-daily-golden-nugget-589QR codes still remain a mystery to many people in the United States. Around the world the popularity of QR codes has gone from tech usage, to fashionably popular, and has settled into common place usability for many purposes.

In case you don't know what I'm revering to, a QR code is a square barcode that's made up of many dots. It has smaller squares in 3 of the corners to help the barcode reader know which end is up or down. The "reader" is actually any smartphone with a "QR Code App" installed. When you s...
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AT: 10/25/2012 10:24:27 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Give Them What They Want When They Want It

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Give Them What They Want When They Want It 8439-daily-golden-nugget-588How big is your sheet of paper? How big is the direct mail post card you send? How big is the newspaper ad, or the billboard you paid for?

The answer to each of those questions will always include specific dimensions, but the answer I'm actually looking for is "finite."

Each of these advertising mediums has a time and a place, but they all need to attract attention. Most of the time the best attention-getters include good artwork, good layouts, and just the right amount of information. Too much informat...
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AT: 10/24/2012 09:46:29 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Sample Halloween Headlines from 2011

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Sample Halloween Headlines from 2011 592-daily-golden-nugget-587Halloween is upon us and it's time to pull out the catchy headlines for your email marketing, website headlines, and even your social media posts.

Every year during holiday season I'm always surprised by the cute and catchy ad headlines that tie into the specific holidays. I often wonder how ad writers get their inspirations to come up with cute headlines since I usually don't think of them without immersing myself in holiday kitsch.

As a long term research project, back in the Fall of 2011 I started tracking emails from...
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AT: 10/23/2012 05:28:23 AM   0 COMMENTS
Sunday, October 21, 2012

When Should You Add Stuff To Your Blog?

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When Should You Add Stuff To Your Blog? 4666-imageI'd like to propose this question: What's the best way to use your blog?

Before that can be answered, you need to understand some of the different pages on your website and how you might be using your website currently.

Each webpage serves different functions; here are 4 examples:

* A home page is the point of first impression for most people who visit you. Customers usually don't get past ugly home pages unless you provide a niche need.

* Product catalogs show the world what you sell. This is essential for a retail store.

* About Us and Store...
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AT: 10/21/2012 11:21:04 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 19, 2012

404 Error Pages That Mean Business

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404 Error Pages That Mean Business 851-imageThe web works smoothly and users are satisfied as they browse through your website using your navigation menus and links. As long as they keep clicking on the navigation you've created you they shouldn't hit any error pages.

What is an error page anyway? 404 is the internal website code that is recorded when a page is not found. If a website were more personable it might say "the user wanted something but it wasn't on my website's hard drive, so I'm going to keep track of this request in a bucket I call 404."

Users of your website don't normally see 404/Error Pages as long as...
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AT: 10/19/2012 07:20:03 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 18, 2012

Holiday Prep Quick Website Changes

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Holiday Prep Quick Website Changes 6242-imageIn these last-minute days before the holiday season kicks into high gear, several jewelers have asked me what they can do to boost their website ranking without going through the process of blog writing. The jewelers who have asked don't have active blogs but they have hundreds or thousands of products on their website.

Here are a few simple things you can do to try and boost your own local ranking:

1. Create a Google Sitemap.xml file that include all the pages on your website AND all the products in your product catalog. Submit this file to your Google Webmaster Tools acco...
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AT: 10/18/2012 09:12:32 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Facebook Personal Profiles Should Not Be Used by Businesses

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Facebook Personal Profiles Should Not Be Used by Businesses 9777-Daily-Golden-Nugget-583It's still happening on Facebook. I need to revisit a topic that has long been a point of contention and confusion for many business owners: Personal Profiles vs. Business Pages

We as everyday average users of Facebook have a personal profile through which we all can keep in touch with family, friends, or even customers. Through the last few years we've seen several privacy disputes with how Facebook manages who sees the information that we share. Thanks to the competition crea...
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AT: 10/17/2012 10:11:16 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 16, 2012

It May Be Time To Dump Pandora Charms

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It May Be Time To Dump Pandora Charms 7418-Daily-Golden-Nugget-582-imageIn this Daily Golden Nugget I'm going to give you an analysis of Pandora Jewelry and their rise, and apparent decline in popularity. This is the kind of analysis that buying groups and vendors hate, simply because this information helps your Open To Buy and hurts their sales and commissions.

Google has a tool that shows you the global search volume for any search term. They've been collecting search data since 2004 that allows you to see trends over time. They appropriately call this the Google Trends t...
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AT: 10/16/2012 08:52:09 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 15, 2012

4 Must-Do Holiday 2012 Inbound Marketing Strategies for Jewelers

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4 Must-Do Holiday 2012 Inbound Marketing Strategies for Jewelers 7119-imageIn preparation for the upcoming Holiday 2012 season you need to start adding information to your website now so Google will lead internet visitors to during the holiday website search season.

Today's Daily Golden Nugget gives you a few website content strategies that you can use for new content or for blog posts. No matter how you include these ideas on your website, they will bring a flurry of visitors during the holiday season... as long as you go do this right now.

Strategy #1:
Get photos of recent celebrity e...
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AT: 10/15/2012 09:25:19 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 12, 2012

Blogging for Gold Buying: A Case Study for Jewelers

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Blogging for Gold Buying: A Case Study for Jewelers imageAbout 4 weeks ago I received and email from a jewelry store that wanted to know why they weren't ranking for the phrase "gold buying." The store's website didn't appear in the search results when the owner of the store did a Google search for that phrase along with their town name, and he wanted to be in the results.

Today's Daily Golden Nugget explains what I set up for that store, and the results we already see after only 3 weeks. Use this case study as a blueprint for your own efforts.

This particular jeweler had 60 pages on their website and a pr...
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AT: 10/12/2012 04:49:49 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 11, 2012

Like it or Not, Mobile Use is Transforming Your In-Store Sales

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Like it or Not, Mobile Use is Transforming Your In-Store Sales imageHere's a strategy for the retail jewelry store owner who'd like to completely embrace the way smartphone have transformed the way consumers shop when inside your four walls.

According to mobile research published by Google in 2011 and then recently confirmed by Javelin Strategy & Research (javelinstrategy.com) 59% of consumers are using a website to browse and buy products. Another study from Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies indicated that 70% of iPhone users were using their phone's web browser to help with in...
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AT: 10/11/2012 06:10:21 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Holiday 2011 Mobile Website vs. Mobile App review

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Holiday 2011 Mobile Website vs. Mobile App review imageThe start of the holiday season has already passed for some of you, and for others it starts on November 1st. There's still time to get a mobile website up and running using any number of desktop-to-mobile conversion websites.

I can't say enough about the importance of a mobile website, but other experts will say that the true mobile wave of the future is actually in the mobile apps. I disagree completely.

For the last few years we've seen an evolution of mobile websites from difficult to program beasts to something much easier to attain. There are mor...
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AT: 10/10/2012 04:34:20 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 09, 2012

Google AdWords and Mobile Website Ads

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Google AdWords and Mobile Website Ads imageGoogle AdWords is probably one of the most predictable methods of online marketing to increase website traffic. Google has made it very easy to set up a campaign, insert phrases to target, create generic advertisements, and launch the campaign. With a little knowledge you can pay them a lot of money and increase your website traffic by 909%.

Yep, 909% is a real number that I've seen a few times. I've also seen the real advertising cost involved with that number and the minimal sales. Just because you increase your website traffic doesn't mean you will actually have sales.

A...
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AT: 10/09/2012 04:58:43 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 08, 2012

More than 700 Thousand Reasons to Have a Mobile Website

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More than 700 Thousand Reasons to Have a Mobile Website imageI watched a statistical video from Google last week where it said 58% of small businesses in the USA do not have websites at all, and far fewer have mobile websites. I'm always surprised by how big these numbers are because I know you can't survive in business today without an email address and a website.

Let me present the data that Google had that explains how often smartphone owners search for local stores on their phone, and what they do after the search.

I'm presenting information for the USA, UK, and Australia. I'm also breaking the dat...
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AT: 10/08/2012 09:25:03 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 05, 2012

Jewelry Website Mobile Usage Statistics

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Jewelry Website Mobile Usage Statistics imageTo close out the week of mobile website topics, I would like to give you some statistics about mobile device usage from my own measured data.

My goal for today is to see what type of mobile device is more popular and what is the most popular content those users are reading.

My measurement sample was 135,675 pageviews across more than 100 jewelry websites of different types and sizes, making it a truly generic sampling of jewelry stores.

Here's how the operating systems were measured:

22,746 pages viewed by iOS/Apple users
7,463 pages viewed by Android users VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/05/2012 07:10:04 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 04, 2012

How to Get Started With A Mobile Website

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How to Get Started With A Mobile Website imageSo you've decided to put a mobile website together for your jewelry business... What information exactly should you put on it and how should it be designed? This is what I'm going to explain in this Daily Golden Nugget.

First, let me make it clear that when I refer to a mobile website I'm actually talking about a stripped down, faster version of your regular website and not an automated adaptation of your full website.

The mobile website needs to be quick, and you don't want to overload the data plans of the people coming to the site. To do this you need to have a site d...
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AT: 10/04/2012 05:25:00 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 03, 2012

The Debate Over Responsive Websites or Mobile Websites

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The Debate Over Responsive Websites or Mobile Websites Daily-Golden-Nugget-573There's a growing debate over mobile websites and the technology behind them. The debate is if (1) you should create a mobile website that is separate from your real website and is specific to mobile devices or (2) if you should program a single website that is able to detect what type of device is being used, then adapt to the user's needs.

Up until early 2012 the philosophy was to have 2 different websites because the people browsing your website via mobile have different needs than those browsing...
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AT: 10/03/2012 05:57:25 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 02, 2012

Value Added Customer Service with This Photo Sharing Tactic

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Value Added Customer Service with This Photo Sharing Tactic Daily-Golden-Nugget-572I'd like to share with you a specific tactic to increase customer service, create immediate social marketing, lower buyer remorse, and create long term online marketing. This tactic will cost little or no money, and your customers will do it for you.

Facebook and Google+ are common apps on smartphone and tablets. They allow all of use to interact with our friends and family throughout the day with nonsensical things, photos, shared memories, and random quotes of something you overheard. ...
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AT: 10/02/2012 05:13:05 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 01, 2012

Consumer Mobile Habits Will Shape the Coming Holiday Season

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Consumer Mobile Habits Will Shape the Coming Holiday Season Daily-Golden-Nugget-571It's the beginning of a new month and the beginning of the 4th quarter of 2012. For the retail jeweler, and most other retail stores, this is also the beginning of the busiest part of the year. During these next few months consumers will be using the internet as a tool to better their lives, save time, and help them make important shopping decisions.

Much of what we do on the internet now is no longer limited to a desktop computer. Smartphones have become the most common starting place f...
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AT: 10/01/2012 06:47:39 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 28, 2012

Virtual Product Catalog vs. Catalogs with In-Store Inventory

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Virtual Product Catalog vs. Catalogs with In-Store Inventory imageIt's getting down to the wire. There's very little time left to get your website launched or products uploaded before the holiday season rolls around.

Every year--for the past five years--the consumer shopping pre-planning trends have grown. People aren't waiting for the Sunday newspaper circulars any more; they are going online.

More and more people are browsing products online, and decide then which stores to visit. Computers are faster, smartphones are faster, and consumers are demanding that they see online product catalogs. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 09/28/2012 05:04:08 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 27, 2012

Website E-commerce and Hacking Security

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Website E-commerce and Hacking Security imageIf you build it they might come, but will they buy?

Running an e-commerce website is just as complicated as running your regular retail store. As you build your e-commerce site you should always figure out the best solution before just settling on whatever your programmer or consultant tells you.

When it comes to actual selling, you have simple options like BuyNow buttons from PayPal or Google, or various types of payment systems that will manage your shopping cart and the credit card processing. Having your own shopping cart on your website with your own merchant account a...
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AT: 09/27/2012 01:01:50 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Three Ways To Accept Money From Online Buyers

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Three Ways To Accept Money From Online Buyers imageDo you think it's time to set up an e-commerce website for your jewelry store? Before you decide to dive into e-com you need to know the initial basics of how your customers will be paying you. There are some pitfalls that your website developer probably won't tell you until the last day before your website is ready.

For small websites with few products you should consider using Google Checkout or PayPal for their BuyNow or integrated shopping cart features. But if you have hundreds of products that change regularly you should set up your own merchant account and onli...
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AT: 09/26/2012 05:10:48 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Twitter Automation and Basic Business Building Ideas

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Twitter Automation and Basic Business Building Ideas imageTwitter seems like a very strange place to most jewelry store owners. Exactly how and why a jewelry store would want to use Twitter seems a mystery. Truthfully, even though you might not understand it, it's still a social network that builds business.

This Daily Golden Nugget would be too long if I went into specific details of how to use Twitter, so instead I'd like to give you a few simple ways you can employ Twitter to build your jewelry business.

First, you need to create an account by visiting twitter.com and choosing an account name that matc...
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AT: 09/25/2012 11:48:01 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 21, 2012

Write an Email Once, Reuse it On Your Website

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In the last few days I've give you several business building ideas and methods to use email marketing. Now it time to take those emails and make money with them for the next two years... yes, 2 years.

My point of view is that each of your customer emails should be more editorial content than just images with a coupon or sale announcement. The daily emails that I send out are pure editorial content without any graphics because they are intended to be educational, but for your jewelry store you should try a few different formats of emails to see what your response rate will be.

As a retail store you should avoid 100% text emails and you should avoid 100% image emails. Somewhere in between is the perfect balance for your store.

Successful emails typically include blurbs of text but also nice looking "creatives," whic...
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AT: 09/21/2012 09:19:10 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 20, 2012

How Jewelry Stores Can Use Promotions in Their Emails

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The other day I wrote that you could ethically bribe your customers into signing up for your emails by telling them you "occasionally send out offers and promotions." I only call it a bribe because that's a much more acceptable reason for someone to hand over their email address to a jewelry store.

Let's face it, most customers will not sign up for yet another email list, and potentially open themselves up to spam, unless they feel there will be a strong benefit for them. Service businesses have an easier time convincing people to sign up for "informational newsletters" than a jewelry store will. Let's face it, when was the last time you were willing to hand over your email address to the cashier at your favorite shoe store, or clothing store. They, just like you, are a retail store that customers will expect to get promotional...
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AT: 09/20/2012 09:03:04 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Smarter Jewelry Websites Send Smarter Emails

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Here's a brief topic you probably already know about, but just didn't know it had a name.

Have you ever signed up to a website and had a confirmation email sent to you? Have you ever forgotten your password and requested the website send you an email confirmation to prove your identity? Have you ever received a purchase confirmation email from a website after placing an online order?

All those emails are referred to as "Transactional Emails." In fact any email that someone requests from a website in some form or another falls into this transactional category. It's important to understand the value of these emails because in 2003 the CAN-SPAM Act specifically defined what they were and that you (the website owner) do not need permission to send this type of email.

Although the internet industry refers to these as "...
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AT: 09/19/2012 04:50:10 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Jewelry Store Email Marketing Ideas

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Here are some email marketing ideas that will boost sales in your jewelry store.

One of the most powerful ways to grab someone's attention via email is to send them an email on their birthday and anniversary with the simple subject of "A special Birthday/Anniversary Wish From Your Jewelry Store."

Many of you reading this probably have customer relationship software that tracks birthdays and anniversaries. There are several direct mail marketing companies that will take your customer information and send out batches of post cards every month for all the birthdays and anniversaries.

When it comes to email you NEVER want to batch send all the emails to everyone with a birthday in that month. The better strategy is to send individual emails on the actual day. Inside that email you can offer a free gift or perhaps a d...
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AT: 09/18/2012 04:33:50 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 17, 2012

Jewelers Can Boost Sales Through Email Marketing

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I can't say enough about the importance of regular email newsletters. They boost traffic to your website, remind people that you exist, show people you are smart in your field, and of course are useful for promotions.

The success of your email marketing depends on which of those strategies you decide to use, and if you stay with it. Email marketing might sound like a thing of the past since so many social media sites seem to be better the better, more modern methods of communication. You might also be scared off by the low email open rates, email bouncing, and that horrible "but why did they do that" feeling you get when someone unsubscribes.

It's all worth it because you control the email marketing, not the social media sites; because it's a method of communication that you can rely on; because most people don't read eve...
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AT: 09/17/2012 04:52:12 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 13, 2012

Easy Ways to use QR Code to Help Direct Mail Marketing

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Every marketing tactic you use helps bring a few more customers to your jewelry store or your website. Some marketing strategies bring a lot of business and some are barely noticeable but help build your brand awareness.

Using QR codes as an add-on to your existing direct mail marketing will help lift your response rates with the 20-something generation. QR code usage is finally starting to catch on in the US and you commonly see them in grocery stores, in magazines, on small billboards, and on direct mail.

Using the QR code doesn't require the need for technical knowledge, you just need to create the code and give it to the person creating your direct mail ad. Creating the QR code is easy with the website I'll give you below, but before you do that, there are a few logistical things to think about that I should mention f...
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AT: 09/13/2012 03:38:58 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 12, 2012

In-Store Events Might Be Press Worthy

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The next time you launch a contest or plan event for your jewelry store, you should consider issuing a press release as part of your announcement.

Most people think of press releases as a statement you send to your local newspaper in hopes that they will run a story on you. Although that might be true, in the digital world a press release is also a credible way to build links to your website.

Press releases have very specific formats for writing. You can find great beginner how-to guides on prweb.com under their "Learning" section. Make sure to review these before attempting to write a release for yourself. Of course if you have the money you should hire a press agent instead of doing this yourself.

Once you've composed your release, you should call all your local papers and find out their procedure for submitting...
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AT: 09/12/2012 03:03:44 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 04, 2012

Understanding Google Places and Google+ Local

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The Google account for your business is probably a little confusing right now; actually it's just as confusing as what Facebook did to businesses about 2 years ago...

Google is trying to bring all aspects of your business under one umbrella, which of course is Google+. They are going through some very tough growing pains right now.

The terminology they are using is very confusing, but hopefully this list of definitions will help.

Google Maps - This is the large desktop and mobile service that allows people to search their local area for directions, food, and local retail stores.

Google Places - This is the old name for the service that used to feed your business information into Google Maps. Even if you didn't have a Google Places account, your business probably still had a listing thanks to Google's pre-popu...
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AT: 09/04/2012 04:10:26 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 31, 2012

Hauntingly Flexible AdWords Remarketing Tactics

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In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget I explained how Google AdWords Remarketing could be used to tag your customers so your ads would follow them around the internet. Here's the link if you missed it: http://ow.ly/diFTj

I'm continuing the discussion of Google AdWords Remarketing today with a little more in depth explanation of how versatile Remarketing can be.

To make Remarketing work on your website you have to add a small piece of JavaScript code to the programming code of your site. This usually requires the help of your programmer since most websites don't have the ability to insert code like this on the fly. When it comes to adding Google JavaScripts most programmers know that you usually just insert the same code globally to the footer of all pages.

The simplest version of Remarketing is implemented with a glob...
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AT: 08/31/2012 11:44:05 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 30, 2012

Shoestring AdWords Budgets with Remarketing

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Google AdWords has several different uses depending if your website is e-commerce or not. With an e-commerce website, it makes a lot of sense to pay for online ads that drive traffic and hopefully result in sales. Remember that driving traffic does not result in sales unless people like your website and it's easy to use.

Normally when people think of AdWords, they think it will cost a lot of money for per click, and that the monthly cost will drown you. Honestly it's no different than the money a jewelry store pays for a billboard or a radio ad, and the results are at least trackable. There's no way to track the number of people who read your billboard and take action, and there's only guessing when it comes to tracking radio ad results. So switch your billboard and radio budget to AdWords and don't worry about being drowned.<...
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AT: 08/30/2012 02:10:25 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Let Yourself Be Interviewed. You've Got Stories.

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You have traveled the world, bought diamonds in Antwerp, have taken thousands of photographs during visits to diamond mines in Africa, won awards for your custom jewelry designs, and have a wealth of knowledge spanning back through all your years as a jeweler. Your career has been fulfilling and enjoyable.

It's too bad no one know about you.

Why not? Because you don't make time to blog about your experiences as a jeweler, about the trips you've taken to benefit customers, about the unique designs you've created that are now treasured family heirlooms, or about the happy couples that you've helped.

Blogging is probably the most important method of achieving "people optimization" for your website instead of search engine optimization, but it takes time. According to Wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute it takes one m...
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AT: 08/28/2012 04:41:41 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 27, 2012

Analytics Can Help the Website People Optimization Process

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"Your website needs to be optimized for people, not search engines." That's the current mantra that Google has been pushing for a while, and everything they are doing seems to reinforce it.

You could hire a company to optimize your website for people, or you could do it yourself; it all depends on your budget. Today I'd like to give you some ideas on how you would approach "people optimization" if you did it yourself or hired someone.

Regardless how big your budget is, you need to set some goals for your website. Typical jewelry stores either want to drive more foot traffic to their store or sell online. Regardless which goal you choose, you need to understand what a jewelry buyer is expecting when they come to your website.


Understanding the needs of your jewelry buying customer is not easy. Consumer wants a...
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AT: 08/27/2012 03:26:03 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Decoding Facebook Reach for Retail Jewelers

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Facebook has built-in analytics called Insights. If you are an Admin, from the top of your Page you can see the basic Insights chart showing purple dots for each of your posts, a green line for the number of people talking about your Page, and a blue line that shows the reach of the post.

Typically it's the reach that people look at to measure the effectiveness of their posts. "Reach" represents the number of times your Page has somehow appeared to other people on Facebook. In the simplest terms, those appearances could have been in the Ticker on the top right of your feed page and in the list of Stories shown on your feed page.

In a more abstract measurement, the number of people you actually reach is also measured by the people who Liked and Shared your post through friends of friends and fans; then the number of frien...
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AT: 08/21/2012 11:56:38 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 20, 2012

Are You A Good Content Builder, Or A Bad One?

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How do you create fresh, and more importantly, good content? Truthfully, content is anything you write, anything you photograph, anything you video record, or that you audio record. A simple video from your iPhone becomes "content" as soon as you upload it to Facebook, Tumblr, or Google+. Anyone can sit down and write a new blog post; anyone can take a few photos, and anyone can create an amateur video using a smartphone now.

On the other hand, if you use a real video camera to film a 10 minute interview with a customer, that doesn't become content until you've processed it into something usable. That 10 minute video is raw, and represents a potential of 10 hours of video production before it becomes "content." I get really frustrated with other internet guys who say "You recorded a lot of good content in the studio today." W...
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AT: 08/20/2012 04:18:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 17, 2012

How to Build Google Plus Followers for Jewelers

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To close out the week I'm giving you some direct suggestions on using Google+ for your retail jewelry store.

I'd like to start by recapping what I mentioned yesterday, in that Google+ can be, and will be your social media network for making connections that will turn into money. This is for business. I say this because your friends on Facebook are perfectly happy socializing and wishing everyone a TGIF; why would they migrate to Google+ just to do the same?

On all social networks you attract the people who are interested in what you talk about. If you're engaging in conversations about common every day things like sports, food, weather, and politics then you will probably attract friends and followers who simply like to socialize. But if you keep your social posts focused on your products and services, then people will...
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AT: 08/17/2012 05:37:37 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 16, 2012

Why Jewelers Should Use Google Plus

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I haven't written much about Google+ because many of my readers don't use it. But I think it's time to step up and start paying attention to this social network because it has much better SEO value than Facebook. Let's be honest here, Google is the current master of web search and they give Google+ shares a lot more weight than what you might be doing on Facebook. So if you don't think people will "see" your posts via the actual Google+ website because "no one" (150 million people) uses it, rest assured the techniques apply themselves to the Google SERP so your efforts will definitely go seen.

On the surface, there are a lot of similarities between the actions you take on Facebook and those you take on Google+. Both social systems have the ability to connect with people for business or pleasure, both systems have the ability to...
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AT: 08/16/2012 12:47:38 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 15, 2012

How to Reap the Benefits of Authorship

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Because of Google's requirement for continual fresh content, many retail jewelers are struggling to create a continual stream of new information and blog posts. There's only so much diamond educational information you can write and eventually you just need to start blogging about other topics.

Many jewelers, especially those on a thin budget, will hire freelance writers to create new blog posts. You can hire a freelancer for $5 to $10 per blog post but the better freelancers would charge $20 or more per post.

When Google wants to push some new feature they provide SERP incentives for those how participate. Over the last year they've started providing SERP perks to blog authors who publicly claim ownership of their posts. Have you noticed the photos of blog authors appearing in Google's SERP? Those photos are a very stro...
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AT: 08/15/2012 12:36:03 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 13, 2012

Google Plus Instant Upload for Jewelers

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On Friday I gave you 3 suggestions for posting photos to Facebook. One suggestion was to share product photos from your website and the other two required taking photos with your smartphone and uploading them.

The problem with Facebook photo sharing is that you need to take a photo with your smartphone, post it, and comment on it at that moment. If you're too busy running a jewelry store then these suggestions are not good for you. There is a solution to make your daily photo snapping faster, and defer the commenting until later. But it's not through Facebook...

Enter Google+.

The smartphone Google+ app has a feature called Instant Upload. With this you can snap photos all day long and never worry about uploading them. Each photo is uploaded to a private album in your Google+ account without needing to tap, resi...
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AT: 08/13/2012 10:59:27 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 10, 2012

3 Must Do Photo Sharing Techniques for Facebook

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If you want to dazzle, impress, and eventually make a sale, you will need really good jewelry product photography on your website. Some jewelers get the photographs from vendors, but most jewelers who truly understand the web will take their own photos.

Posting photos on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ is a surefire way to increase interactions with your customers, and even increase sales. My strongest recommendation for photo sharing on Facebook is to share one of your product detail pages that has a really large, good looking jewelry photo. The more eye-popping the photo is, the more likely customers will click it from your FB Timeline. Post the page, not just the picture.

My second recommendation for photo sharing on Facebook is to post photos you took throughout the day in the store. As an example, you could take a ...
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AT: 08/10/2012 11:09:39 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 09, 2012

55% Mobile and 99.999% Website Uptime

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According to Nielsen's latest data, 55% of US mobile phone owners now have smartphones. Android usage has reached 51% and Apple's iOS is now down to 34%. Several of the SEO blogs I follow were abuzz yesterday with statistics and speculations of how all these mobile users are changing website and search usage.

The findings and reports yesterday focused on restaurants, auto, and travel industries. I decided to apply their finding to the jewelry industry and here's the important things I found.

62.4% of mobile traffic comes from mobile Google search. (Bing was too small to measure.)

22.5% of mobile traffic comes from referrals from other sites.

15.1% of mobile traffic comes from people who typed the domain name in directly.

59.7% of all mobile visitors entered a jewelry website through the home page.
...
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AT: 08/09/2012 09:20:21 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Website Contact Forms with Special Features

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After writing yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget about the importance of contact forms on your website, I think I should dive a little deeper into an idea on how you can use your website's contact form. You will probably need a web programmer to set up the features I'm suggesting today.

I'm giving you the best contact us form idea that I've see work over the years.

My favorite and perhaps the most universal feature is a form field for a registration code. Here are some ways to give out the registration code:
1. Put a code on your direct mail.
2. Put a code on your newspaper ad/insert.
3. Include the code in a radio ad.

Consumers with the code would go to your website and enter it on your Contact Us page. Naturally you need to tell them that they have to do this, and you will need to ethically bribe them to ta...
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AT: 08/08/2012 10:20:27 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Contact Forms Offer Great Value for a Website

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Above all else, your website needs a way for someone to contact you. I'm surprised sometimes how difficult some jewelers make it to find a simple contact page or a phone number. It seems silly, but just last week I was reviewing a website that had an absurdly tiny link to the contact page hidden in the footer of the website.

I'd like to detail some of the more important things I've learned about a website's "Contact Us" page.

Most important is to have it easy to find. Don't tuck it away in the footer of your website and nowhere else. Sure, the footer is still a good place, but my previous testing always showed that 11% of all website visitors would click on it when you put the link prominently in the top right corner of your website. In other words, put it in the website's header.

You should never put your email ...
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AT: 08/07/2012 10:25:27 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 06, 2012

Quick Dip in the Social Pond

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Here's a simple Daily Golden Nugget for you. Let's look at the social media sites that jewelers are using, and some of the best ways they are generating website traffic.

These are the top referral social sites of interest, in order of measured results:

1. Facebook
2. Yelp
3. Google+
4. Pinterest
5. LinkedIn

Facebook generated the most number of referral clicks, with a 5.15 average number of pages viewed by a visitor.

Yelp is in second place with the number of visitors, with an average of 5.81 pages viewed per visitor. Visitors from Yelp stayed an average of 3 minutes 52 second.

Google+ may be in third place with the number of visitors, but those visitors browsed through an average of 11.58 pages over an average of 3 minutes 51 seconds.

Most referrals from Facebook are arriving on the...
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AT: 08/06/2012 10:35:39 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 03, 2012

Latest Browser Measurements you Need to Know for Your Holiday Plan

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With my new data collection methods it's become much easier to look at important website design and usability metrics. Computer speeds, internet connection speeds, mobile technology, and web browsers all play a pivotal role in our daily lives. A small change in any of those 4 parts of technology can force a complete redesign of your website.

Approximately every other month I'm collecting data about the latest web browser usage on jewelry websites. The last time I published these reports was May 28, 2012, Memorial Day in the USA. Let me repeat that these measurements are for jewelry stores only and not generic numbers for every industry.

Here's a quick reminder of the old measurements as of May 27, 2012:

38.18% Internet Explorer
19.83% Safari
19.65% Firefox
12.01% Chrome
6.33% Android Browser
1.83% M...
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AT: 08/03/2012 02:19:21 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 02, 2012

Start Your Holiday 2012 AdWords Remarketing Prep Now

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How's the holiday 2012 marketing planning coming along?

In this Daily Golden Nugget I'm going to give you some exact strategies to build up holiday marketing strategy using Google AdWords Remarketing. With these ideas you can build your audience starting today but they will not see your ads until you activate them in November.

To accomplish this you will already need a Google AdWords account and to create an audience remarketing tag. I usually recommend multiple remarketing tags to better segment your audience, but in today's Nugget I'm only going to refer to a single tracking tag; let's call it the "Holiday Tag."

Google AdWords Remarketing uses a web browser cookie to track users. The cookie is activated by a small JavaScript, called a "tag." Since JavaScript runs almost everywhere, you have the ability to cooki...
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AT: 08/02/2012 05:13:21 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 01, 2012

5 Things Jewelers Need to Know About Remarketing

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Here's a boiled down cheat-sheet of what it takes for a jewelry store to get started with Google AdWords Remarketing.

I recommend hiring a marketing company that has experience with Google AdWords. They will help save the aggravation of getting this to work for yourself. A good company would work through these steps with you.


1. Look at your Google Analytics account for the usual Exit Pages where people leave your site. Try to figure out why people leave after looking at those pages. Determine if you can create a marketing campaign around those reasons.


2. In Google Analytics, look at the page path people go through on your website. This is in the Audience > Visitor Flow area of GA. Identify a few combinations of pages that people visit that you would consider potential quality customers.


3. C...
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AT: 08/01/2012 11:51:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Google Remarketing to Jewelry Website Visitors

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In this installment of the Daily Golden Nugget I'm going to explain how you can use Google AdWords Remarketing to target market to people who have visited your website.

Over the last two days I've given you some brief introductions to Google AdWords--not so you would feel pressured to learn to do it yourself, but so that you would know what to ask for when hiring an internet professional to manage AdWords for you. There are a lot of people out there that know how to manage AdWords; some are certified by Google, and others aren't.

Just because someone is certified doesn't mean they know what they are doing; a sad reality I learned a long time ago when hiring employees for my own company. Use what I tell you here as part of the interview process before hiring someone to work on your AdWords.

AdWords Remarketing give...
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AT: 07/31/2012 10:52:51 PM   2 COMMENTS
Monday, July 30, 2012

Google Remarketing to Jewelry Interest Groups

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Today is the 2nd anniversary of the Daily Golden Nuggets. As I begin the 3rd year of writing about jewelry website SEO and online marketing tips I want to remind everyone that you can submit a questions or comment for a future Nugget. Just reply to a daily email or submit a question through the contact form on the jwag.biz website.

Last Monday I attended a special training session for Google AdWords to learn the latest stuff about Remarketing. AdWords Remarketing is a special form of AdWords that only shows ads to people who are part of an interest group, or those who have already been to you website.

Even though Google announced Remarketing in March 2010 very few people have heard of it or use it. Any AdWords adverti...
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AT: 07/30/2012 07:06:00 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 27, 2012

Google AdWords Primer

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I'd like to turn my attention to Google and tell you about AdWords. This is one of the topics I usually stay away from because it's difficult to explain it in a Nugget without having your eyes glaze over. But I'd like to offer a brief overview anyway because something here should pique your interest...

Google's search results pages and millions of other websites across the internet are littered with ads, AdWords ads. They appear as text ads throughout most of the Google owned websites, but many other websites have banner ads, Flash Ads, and text ads that are served through the AdWords system.

Companies large and small, and many people just like you and I can sign up with Google and run ads for our business. Although Google says they charge you every time someone clicks an ad, the truth is that you need to prepay for you...
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AT: 07/27/2012 09:46:58 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 26, 2012

QDF: For Jeweler's Eyes Only.

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Today I'm going to outline a very specific strategy for celebrity blogging. This is an over-the-top strategy may require a person working full time on website marketing and blogging.

This strategy requires an acute awareness of the entertainment industry, and it will help you attract many visitors to you website very fast.

When many people suddenly search for the same phrase it triggers a Google algorithm called "Query Deserves Freshness" or QDF. Because of QDF Google is able to provide search results with the most recently found web pages, instead of web pages that have good jewelry SEO ranking.

With QDF, the time stamp of the web page is more important than the long term value of the page. Most of the time the...
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AT: 07/26/2012 09:09:03 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 25, 2012

20 Important Celebrity Engagements since January 2004

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For quite a while everyone in my office has known about the positive impact celebrity news and red carpet events have jewelry related search traffic. Jeweler stores who blog about celebrities can attract many organic visitors. The conversion process is a different topic, but celebrity blogging certainly does give you more opportunities with customers to convert.

Most of the time I talk about celebrity blogging in the past tense, but there's a far greater potential for a sudden influx of visitors if you blog about celebrity events the same day a story breaks.

Specifically... celebrity engagements.

I first became aware of this phenomenon on November 16, 2010 when Prince William and Kate Middleton announced their engagement and there was a huge spike in the amount of search traffic for the phrase "engagement ring." <...
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AT: 07/25/2012 08:57:32 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Would you prefer 1 Ring or many Rings?

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I came across an interesting article last week written by Dr. Siddharth Shah, the Director of Business Analytics at Adobe. He monitors the analytics of $2 billion dollars in online advertising. According to his research, he says that people doing singular term searches are on average closer to making a purchase than plural searches.

You can't dispute his findings for the financial industry since that's mostly what he deals with. I've taken his analysis idea and applied it to the jewelry industry and given you some actionable conclusions below.

Since e-commerce is pretty much a bust for retail jewelers, I have more organic data on the search terms "engagement ring" and "engagement rings" instead of e-commerce conversions. Without actual conversion numbers I have to apply what I know about visitor intent in order to make s...
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AT: 07/24/2012 08:56:12 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 23, 2012

Digesting Your Previous Blogs to Create New Blogs

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There are so many different ways to create quality blog posts, and to keep your readers engaged. Today I want to explain how you can create a digest blog post using your previous blog posts.

Digest emails are quite popular, in fact, for the first 200 or so Daily Golden Nuggets we were sending digest Nuggets every Friday to readers that wanted them instead of the daily emails. Websites with active blogs and articles (like news sites) often send evening emails with blurbs of all the day's posts.

There's a difference between sending a digest email and creating a digest blog post. The email can use the same wording, perhaps even the first few sentences of each original blog, but if you intend on posting this digest online you need to write a brand new summary of the blog.

For SEO purposes, you need to have new words po...
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AT: 07/23/2012 02:19:16 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 20, 2012

More Gentle Blog Hand Holding for Jewelers

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Today, once again I'd like to hold your virtual hand as I lead you through another exercise on how to use someone else's blog as the creative spark for your own.

To start, you have to find yourself a few fashion blog websites. You could simply search Google for "jewelry fashion blogs" and look through the results.

What you'll find is that an overwhelming number of them are very photo-centric with very little commentary on the photos. Many of them will also be from your competitors, or from sites that sell the jewelry that's being blogged about. You don't want that type of site, because that's what you are trying to accomplish for yourself.

I found this blog from the South Florida Sun Sentinel that will work well for this example:
http://blogs.sun-sentinel.com/features_fashion/2012/06/jewelry-trends-for-the-fall-...
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AT: 07/20/2012 07:10:15 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 18, 2012

ROI of TV Commercials Might Be Down, But TV Blogging is Boomin!

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A few years ago I remember a Tacori ring was used on the TV show Desperate Housewives. The appearance of this ring caused a measurable spike in search traffic for Tacori rings.

Another time I also caught a recording of the daily talk show The View in a waiting room and saw their presentation of the Debbie Brooks line of handbags. Again, another measurable spike in search traffic was seen.

Time and time again there are casual mentions of jewelry, or even product placement throughout many television shows. I'm not talking about paid commercials, but rather integration in the actual shows that people watch.

Award ceremonies are the typical places to look for the latest clothing and jewelry fashion trends. Many jewelers already blog about who's wearing what at those red carpet events because those are planned in adv...
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AT: 07/18/2012 09:39:30 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Tapping the JIC for Jewelry Related Blogging Topics

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I'm on a mission to help a retail jewelry store owners find new and interesting things to blog about.

Every jewelry store should have a blog as a way to build organic traffic to their website. Making the blog interesting is important, and the Jewelry Information Center (aka JIC) can do a lot of the legwork for you.

JIC maintains 3 different website properties that all jewelers should tap into. Here they are:

Website: http://www.jic.org/
Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/JewelryInformationCenter
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JICjewelryinfo

Many jewelers already share the blog posts from the JIC website to Facebook and Twitter. Other jewelers retweet their Twitter musings. You could copy those strategies, or you can step up your marketing effectiveness by blogging about the JIC. Here's how...

Firs...
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AT: 07/17/2012 08:17:28 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 16, 2012

Jewelers Can Beat the Writer's Block

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Some people have the "Gift of Gab," and some just don't. Knowing what to say and when to say it can make or break your popularity, and surprisingly it's the same way with Google.

Official directions from Google always say to post new content to your website. It's the new, fresh content that attracts attention. But for most jewelers there's only so many ways you can talk about diamonds, the 4 C's, diamond rings, and birthstones before the topics are beaten to death.

So instead of beating that same old horse in your blog posts, you need to look for alternative things to talk about on a regular basis.

Here are 2 ideas to prevent writers block while writing blog posts for jewelry stores.


Red Carpet Events - Keep a lookout for any celebrity or local event that generates a lot of hoopla. Although these events...
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AT: 07/16/2012 08:37:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 13, 2012

Ugh! More discussion about link building...

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I'm sorry if the link building topic seems like such a well covered topic of late. The Google Penguin filter has everyone up in arms about link building and if SEO was killed by the Penguin.

SEO is not dead, and neither is link building. In fact blog writing is one of the best ways to keep building quality links back to your website, or from your internal blog to other pages within your site.

I say that jewelers should use blog writing for 3 reasons:
1. Build website content to illustrate expertise and to soft sell.
2. Build content to attract organic visitors.
3. Build links to internal pages of your website.

The first 2 items on that list happen automatically when you write a blog. The 3rd item requires extra work on your part, but you can't post a blog and NOT link to something on your website. Otherwi...
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AT: 07/13/2012 03:33:37 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 12, 2012

The History Channel Can Help A Jeweler

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Blog writing is different than book writing because you need to assume your blog's readers are distracted.

Many readers will skim through an online editorial when it's written in standard 4 sentence paragraph format. Readers who skim are more likely to jump to the next paragraph long before they finish reading the current one.

Skimming is a natural part of online life. We don't have enough time to sit and read every word, so we jump from paragraph to paragraph trying to glean the most important bits.

To combat skimming, and to make sure your readers do read the most, you need to break your blogging format from 4 sentences per paragraph to 2 or 3 sentences.

Another difference between book writing and blog writing I learned through many frustrations when I first began blogging.

One of the biggest mistak...
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AT: 07/12/2012 03:32:07 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 11, 2012

3 Blogging Tips Shared by a Blogging Pro

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I'd like to share with you a few of my daily blogging techniques that keep me going, and that I hope keep you guys coming back to read. It took me quite a while to get comfortable with blog writing and hopefully I can shortcut your learning curve with what I've learned through 513 Daily Golden Nuggets.

I do my best to write at least 500 words in every Nugget. I didn't come up with this number arbitrarily; it happens to be the magic number that many print publications ask for when you write an editorial. Sometimes my Nuggets are 800 words, and sometimes they are 400, but 500 is always my target.

At first you might find it impossible to write 500 words, 400 words, or even 300 words. Be verbose in your writing without repeating yourself or keyword phrases for your products and just do your best to reach 300 words.

I'...
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AT: 07/11/2012 03:31:10 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Shrub? You Need an Online Persona

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Do you have a personality? That a serious question. Are you a shrub or do you happily greet each and every customer that walks into your jewelry store?

Chances are that shrubs don't make for good entrepreneurs and they wouldn't be in business long. It's doubtful that you would employ a shrub to work in your store either since they certainly do not make for good jewelers.

Let's face it, it's not the price of the jewelry that matters; it's the customer service with a smile that convinces someone that they cannot live without the fine jewelry you're selling. Your personality closes the sale and you need to allow yourself to write your blog entries using that same personality.

Some people create different aliases and new personas for themselves online. Does "J.J. Smith" actually work for you or is that just an onlin...
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AT: 07/10/2012 03:29:40 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 09, 2012

The $3000 Reason Jewelers Should Be Blogging

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Other than creating new video, blogging is the best and most versatile method to create new content for your website.

Through blogging, you can demonstrate your expertise on topic, give a product review, provide a commentary on something you read online or in a magazine, talk about jewelry or fashion trends, create event write-ups that leave the reader envious that they missed the soiree, and so much more.

Since I've been blogging professionally now for 510 days perhaps it's time to share my own tips and tricks that keep me going, so you, the everyday average jeweler, can copy my methods, and success.

Admittedly, my success at blogging has a very limited reach since everything I write for jWAG is focused on the retail jeweler and I don't attract much attention outside our industry. But your success can be much furthe...
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AT: 07/09/2012 03:28:17 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 06, 2012

Legitimate Link Building and Name Recognition

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We received a few good accolades and feedback on our recent Daily Golden Nugget series about how to monetize the website traffic you already have. One reader sent back a good question that I'm answering as today's Nugget.

Question: As an ecommerce business, is there any benefit to "leaving your name" across the internet (for example, answering peoples' questions and leaving your website). Some specific examples are:

1. Posting in consumer forums
2. Answering questions on twitter, yahoo answers, or legitimate question/answer sites
3. Leaving reviews of books about diamonds, etc.
4. Commenting on jewelry blogs


Each of the 4 suggested strategies has some value for increasing traffic, link building to your site, and gaining a public reputation; but since this is a manual process, the real question is if ...
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AT: 07/06/2012 10:30:26 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 05, 2012

Basic Guidelines to Slowly Build Organic Links

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I'd like to give you some basic guidelines to follow so you can slowly and effectively build links back to your website in this post Google Penguin filter age.

I've mentioned the Google Penguin a few times, but let me just quickly recap and say that it's a filter Google is now using to figure out when you are unnaturally building or paying for link schemes.

In times past, if you wanted to rank highly for the phrase "engagement rings" you would use a variety of techniques to create links with those words as the anchor text of your link. But now you're more likely to get higher ranking when you have information about engagement rings on your website and you link to it with the simple anchor text of "click here."

That information on your website could be a blog, educational article, or a newsletter archive; anything as...
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AT: 07/05/2012 08:38:07 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 04, 2012

Google Penguin and Your Website Navigation

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It's Independence Day in the US, a day when Americans should reflect on what it took for the original colonies to stand up and form a new nation. From coast to coast there are patriotic displays of red, white, and blue, parades, fireworks, and families and friends gathered together for backyard barbeques.

Since many of you are probably getting ready for your own outdoor celebration I'll make today's Daily Golden Nugget brief.

I was poking through Google Webmaster Tools over the weekend and I realized that Google is showing more of your internal navigation links within the report "Links to Your Site > How your data is linked." In the past this report was a good place to see how people were linking to you from other websites, but now it's also reporting your internal navigation.

For most websites I track the following...
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AT: 07/04/2012 08:20:38 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 03, 2012

Google Free Merchant Center is Now Paid Shopping

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For several years Google has allowed all retail stores to upload inventory into their search engine. The feature was originally called Google Base, then Google Merchant Center. When consumers would search for popular product phrases, the Google SERP would always show a few product photos and links to the corresponding websites.

Getting your products listed in the SERP was just as difficult as regular jewelry SEO for your website. Generally speaking it was a lot of work.

Recently Google announced a name change and a shift in how it would operate this free product listing service... in that it's actually not going to be free any more.

Google Merchant Center is transforming into Google Shopping, and it's taking on t...
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AT: 07/03/2012 09:15:11 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 02, 2012

Rethinking Traffic Sources for Jewelry Store Websites (Part 4)

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I'm kicking off this week with a conclusion to the Daily Golden Nugget series I started last week. The topic is how to better monetize the website traffic you have now in the wake of Google's Penguin filter.

There are different sources where your website visitors will come from: Organic, Direct, Referrals, Paid. Today's topic is Paid traffic.

Google likes when you pay for AdWords traffic because that's how they make most of their money. Setting up AdWords used to be difficult for everyone, but in the past few years they've created several quick start methods to get involved, and they even suggest ad copy and budgets for you.

The competition for AdWords between large online jewelers and local jewelers can be very expensive. If you target people within 100 miles of your jewelry store, and if you're willing to spend $...
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AT: 07/02/2012 10:33:12 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 29, 2012

Rethinking Traffic Sources for Jewelry Store Websites (Part 3)

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This is a continuation from yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget on the topic of how to better monetize the website traffic you have now in the wake of Google's Penguin filter.

There are different sources where your website visitors will come from: Organic, Direct, Referrals, Paid. I covered Organic and Direct traffic on Wednesday, and began explaining Referral traffic yesterday.

I've accumulated some interesting statistics about Yelp that need sharing. In case you don't know, Yelp is one of many online business directories that allows you to create your business listing, or manage the one they created for you.

Consumers like Yelp because they make it easy to write online reviews through a smartphone/mobile application or through a PC's website. You should keep on top of these reviews and respond to them, especially if ...
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AT: 06/29/2012 09:46:45 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 28, 2012

Rethinking Traffic Sources for Jewelry Store Websites (Part 2)

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This is a continuation from yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget on the topic of how to better monetize the website traffic you have now in the wake of Google's Penguin filter.

There are different sources where your website visitors will come from: Organic, Direct, Referrals, and Paid. I covered Organic and Direct traffic yesterday so today I'm picking up today with Referral traffic.

The websites that the Penguin filtered out are only those involved with detectable link building schemes. Google did their best not to filter out websites that were just doing their normal business and not intentionally abusing the system.

There are still a few blogging websites that are referring traffic to a few jewelers. These are off-site blogs that the jewelers themselves are maintaining, or perhaps they are paying a 3rd party to do ...
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AT: 06/28/2012 09:43:55 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Rethinking Traffic Sources for Jewelry Store Websites

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In late March 2012, Google changed the methods of link building very drastically when it introduced the Penguin search filter. In essence they destroyed every popular method of link building and penalize you for even the slightest evidence of link building scheme detection.

In short, they have made it impossible for anyone to unnaturally build inbound website linking.

Since that time I've been analyzing data a little differently, hoping to find some new information that might help the retail jeweler. Prior to March 2012, I would see a lot of referral traffic from various random blogs, but almost all of them are gone because of the Penguin filter, and jewelry stores aren't getting those referrals any more.

So it's time to look at what you guys are still getting and take action to maximize your sales when visitors do...
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AT: 06/27/2012 11:56:02 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, June 25, 2012

Google's New Review System, Zagat Rated

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Over the past 18 months there were many other bloggers who complained that Google's online review system was tainted by spam. In fact, all review sites have experienced review spam, which refers to business owners going to their own store listing and creating a few good reviews.

For a while Google didn't show reviews from other review sites like insiderpages.com, judybook.com, yahoo.com, or citysearch.com; but those seem to be included in the new Google+ Local business layout. Each of those other companies have grappled with review spam in their own way, but is seems like Google may not care any more...

Did you know that Google bought Zagat for $151M USD in September 2011?

I remember hearing the news about it while spending a day in NYC with my mother. I travel around the USA and Europe and I see many stores with t...
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AT: 06/25/2012 11:25:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 22, 2012

Constantinople (Not Istanbul)

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Wow! This is Daily Golden Nugget #500!

I can't believe I've been writing these for 500 weekdays straight. In calendar days that's 697, and definitely qualifies me as a professional blogger.

I was inspired to start the daily Golden Nuggets while I was traveling around France. While there during July 2010 I was using my iPhone 3 to navigate, find restaurants, read reviews, and even leave my own reviews.

Back in December 2009 Google mailed out door signs to 100,000 businesses whose Google Local Business page was popular. These door signs included a QR Code, not that anyone in the USA knew what a QR Code was at the time.

In France, what surprised me was the number of small shops all around the country that I found with one of those December 2009 Google Local QR Code door signs. Each one of them also appeared v...
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AT: 06/22/2012 11:13:29 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 21, 2012

Do people actually sign up for email newsletters?

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I've worked closely with a few jewelers who didn't know anything about their own email list. These are jewelers who had newsletter signup boxes on their website but newsletters were never being sent out.

In most cases I found out that either the employee who set up their email newsletter accounts no longer work there, or they canceled the email marketing service. The store owner never saw a value in the email newsletter list but instead of removing it from the website, they just let it sit there.

Those I spoke to said they would figure it out eventually, but in the mean time they were still paying for the monthly subscription fee.

For my own ongoing research, I've lost track of the number of email lists I've signed up for. I fill out every email form I see, which is probably between 5 to 10 new lists per week.
<...
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AT: 06/21/2012 11:03:24 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Detecting and Removing Email Black Listing

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If you've been the unfortunate victim of a computer virus or hacked email account you might find yourself suddenly black listed from sending email.

But how would you know if you were?

Here are some warning signs that your emails are not getting to their destination...

1. People do not reply to your emails.
2. People tell you that they did not get your emails.
3. You stop getting emails.
4. You start receiving unexplained "Mail delivery failed" or other messages from a "Mailer-Daemon"

The last one on that list is probably the easiest to figure out. The Mailer Daemon is a software program that runs on all email servers. There are always at least 2 email servers between you and the recipient of your email. Each of those email servers has the potential to black list your email address, and if they do,...
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AT: 06/20/2012 10:26:31 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 15, 2012

Increase Your Email Delivery Rates in December

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The Daily Golden Nuggets are not a forum for us to ever try to sell you anything. This is Nugget #495 and we've always provided straight forward, actionable information. For a brief moment we need to deviate from that and tell you about something exciting happening over here.

We'd like to Open Source our website software. While many jewelers have set up their website using Weebly, WordPress, Joomla, Magento, and many others, our team over here developed an extremely light, easy to use, and extraordinarily powerful CMS. We call it the Junior CMS and we've been providing it to our paying customers for the last year.

We'd like to give it away to the entire world, and the entire jewelry industry. But in order to do that, we need to raise the money to pay the developers to convert it to Open Source.

We've set up a fun...
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AT: 06/15/2012 11:24:42 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 14, 2012

Increasing Your Email Open Rates With This Easy Step

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Today's Nugget Sponsor: http://thejrcms.com/1

Avid movie watches will often wonder what "landed on the cutting room floor" during the movie editing process. Today's Daily Golden Nugget is one of those snips that didn't make it into Matthew Perosi's Email Marketing seminar at JCK on June 2, 2012.

Typically your email program will hide images from you until you permanently add the sender to an approved list, or a white list. To load the images you simply click the "view images" or "show remote content" button.

While the images are still hidden, the email program will show you the alternative text behind the images. Do you take the time you edit the alternative text behind the images?

Many companies don't realize the importance of "alt" text and how it can make or break an entire email campaign.

On Mon...
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AT: 06/14/2012 04:19:54 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Hiding Holiday Pages from People but Not Google

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One of the most overlooked SEO pages of any website is the sitemap page. It might seem silly, but this is the single page from which a user can find any other page of your website.

This is especially important if your website has several layers of pages hidden deep from your home page and someone is quickly trying to get back to a page they were reading yesterday.

Other than functionality, sitemap pages are also important for Google. Most of the time Google will not bother to read more than 2 levels deeper into your site than the page they land on. If Google follows a link to your home page they will spider many of the 2nd tier pages that link from the home page, but they may not read the 3rd or 4th tier pages at all.

Think of your sitemap page as a cookie jar for Google. Every page of your site looks like a 2nd t...
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AT: 06/13/2012 08:10:49 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Holiday Email Timing Preparations Start June 28th

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When's the best day of the week and time of day to send an email? The answer is one which varies from year to year, and from person to person. It all depends on who you talk to and what industry they track.

MailerMailer.com is a good source for email research data, another good source we found last year was Kissmetrics.com. We've included links to both places at the bottom of this email, but we warn you, the data from both places contradict each other.

We've had our own research accumulating over the last 9 months and we're pretty confident in our own ideas. Let's share two things that will help with your holiday email planning.

The first thing you need to know is that you are being watched. We're not talking about the guy looking over your shoulder, but rather by your ISP, and by all other ISPs. These guys are ...
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AT: 06/12/2012 06:23:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, June 11, 2012

Getting Ready to Attract Holiday Foot Traffic

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So... it's June. What's on your agenda for this month? Perhaps you have holiday advertising planning on your mind. If not in the next 2 weeks, then certainly you'll be thinking about it over the next 6 weeks.

As you evaluate your advertising budget we want you to take a very close look at what you spent last year, and what the return on investment was for each method. Many jewelers reported upticks in sales last holiday season, but was that because the economy turned around or because advertising methods worked?

While at JCK we spoke to a few successful jewelers that were not selling online, but were heavily marketing their website. In fact, those successful retailers told us they were spending between 50% and 70% of their entire marketing budget through online marketing instead of traditional media.

Most of you ...
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AT: 06/11/2012 03:59:04 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 08, 2012

Merchandising Your Jewelry Store Website

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How often do you change the displays in your front windows? Depending on your jewelers block insurance you might well be emptying those window displays every night; which give you a chance for creativity every morning when you set them up again.

We have to assume you change the whole display at least once a month. How do you determine what to put out there? Do you think about the current season? The current holiday? Town Events? Do you match your current advertising? Each of these ideas touches on some form of merchandising.

Updates to your website should be considered the same as updates to your front windows. You only have a few seconds to attract someone's attention as they walk by your front window, and it's the same for your website. Something out on the internet brought the customer to your home page, and you ...
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AT: 06/08/2012 06:58:04 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 07, 2012

The Bad Rebirth of Zip Code Search into Mobile Apps

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It's about time that we cover today's mobile marketing topic about downloadable, mobile applications.

For the record, we're not big fans of mobile applications for retail stores simply because you have to download them, install them, and in many cases you also have to configure or log into them. That can take from a minute to 5 minutes depending on the size of the application and how difficult it is to find in your phone's "app store."

We feel the retail store should focus their mobile strategies on mobile websites instead of an application. The mobile sites are much less expensive to create and maintain, and your customers appreciate it more too.

Back in March 2012, Nielsen released their findings on the popularity of mobile apps vs. mobile websites. During the holiday 2011 season they measured Amazon, Best Buy,...
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AT: 06/07/2012 08:15:48 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, June 06, 2012

4 Tools for Every Jeweler's Online Toolbox

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"The local jeweler has done such a good job creating an experience, it needs to be done online" -Matt Lauzon, Founder & CEO of Gemvara

We grabbed that quote above during "The Great E-Commerce Debate" seminar at JCK on Friday June 1, 2012. It might be a simple idea Matt Lauzon is suggesting, but doing it is a different story all together. Later in the seminar he also added that no one in the jewelry industry, himself included, has completely figured out how to provide the online customer service that compares to what you provide in the store.

That's not to say you shouldn't try. You can't ignore the internet and hope your business will survive. You also can't keep waiting for better technology to come around before you start to get your feet wet. Ignoring change just leaves you further behind.

So where should you ...
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AT: 06/06/2012 08:52:58 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, June 05, 2012

The Millennial Generation Expects Product Catalogs

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What a fantastic weekend at the JCK Las Vegas show! We gathered many new questions and got a lot of new information to report to you over the coming weeks.

Many jewelers are asking if it's important to have a product catalog on your website, and we'd like to report on some things we heard, and tell you our opinion.

If you have an online product catalog, you have the choice to sell through full e-commerce, or just show products. Our opinion is it better to not activate e-commerce unless you are ready for the extra expense of PCI compliance security, and as long as you realize that you won't have tons of online sales unless you also have a marketing budget. Also, you need a staff that can handle online orders.

On the other hand, with e-commerce you can track your ROI from the first click all the way through the sale,...
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AT: 06/05/2012 01:55:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, June 04, 2012

Jewelers, Are You Tracking Conversions?

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The jWAG team has had a very busy weekend at the JCK Las Vegas show! We've been recording video questions for a Web TV series we've been planning and interviewing many vendors that are forward-thinking, tech savvy, and willing to help the retail jeweler with their online marketing.

It's been a great show so far!

We attended several seminars relating to online marketing and e-commerce on Friday and Saturday. From those seminars there was one question that retailers were asking over and over again:

How do you track conversions from the internet?

To answer this question you need to first understand what a "conversion" is. This is the work we internet marketing folk use to refer to the casual website visitor that takes some action and then becomes your customer.

Every website is different, every retail ...
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AT: 06/04/2012 11:49:37 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 01, 2012

Dealing With Emails When You've Been Blacklisted

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Managing your own email list can be tricky business when trying to do it on your own, whether directly from your own computer or when you are using the email program of a paid service.

Sending emails directly from your own computer is more likely to get you labeled as a spammer, and black listed, than if you pay an official email company. When doing it on your own, the first thing you need to watch out for is the number of email recipients you BCC in the email at once. We suggest not sending to more than 30 people at a time. Any more than that and your ISP will probably get angry with you and give you a warning about email abuse and spam. It assumes more than thirty people could not possibly be expecting an email from you all at once.

When sending emails from your own computer you don't necessarily have to follow the off...
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AT: 06/01/2012 02:41:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 31, 2012

Avoid Spam Black Listing: Send Fewer Emails Over Time

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Many retail jewelers tell us they are collecting names and emails but want to wait until they have 100, or 300 before doing anything with them. The truth is that you need to start with 10, or 30, then keep adding new emails every week as you collect them.

ISPs (the guys who actually control the internet) have hardware filtering which recognizes typical spam patterns. One recognizable spamming pattern is when too many emails sent at once from an email address that's never sent bulk email before. If you suddenly send out 1000 emails over a single night you will get blacklisted.

This is why if you've been collecting email addresses in your store for the last 5 years but haven't used them yet, you could be setting yourself up for a fall by sending an email blast to all of them in one day. Email marketing needs to start slo...
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AT: 05/31/2012 02:15:41 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Good Email Signup Practices for Jewelers

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As part of the best practices of opting in to newsletters and deals, you should require that everyone confirm their email address. To do this you need to send a confirmation email to the person after they sign up. Most paid email services take care of this process automatically for you as per of the newsletter signup form that you would add to your home page.

If you don't pay a service, you shouldn't simply capture an email address through your website and start sending special offers, you still need to send a confirmation email. You do this simply by manually sending an email out to the customer and having them reply. That's a lot of work, which is why you should just pay a monthly service to do it for you.

Many customers will type their email address wrong, or they simply do not understand the correct format of their e...
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AT: 05/30/2012 12:05:47 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Post Your Summer Hours to Your Website

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Now that we've unofficially entered the Summer season in the US it's time to take care of some very important housekeeping on your website.

Surly you're already planning your vacation days and early closings. You need to put your change of hours on your website as early as possible.

Let's take a look at the last 30 days of collected data to explain why this is important...

These are 3 of the most popular pages across our tracked jewelry sites, and the percentage of people who read those pages.

Home Page, read by 24.53% of visitors
Store Hours, read by 0.86% of visitors
Contact Us, read by 0.41% of visitors

Typically the jewelry catalog pages are more popular than the Contact Us, but not as popular as the Store Hours page.

To make these numbers more understandable, let's use the example of...
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AT: 05/29/2012 01:31:50 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 28, 2012

Latest Web Browser Usage States on Jewelry Websites

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Today is Memorial Day in the United States, which means most businesses are close. It's also Pentecost Monday which is widely celebrated throughout Europe, so most businesses are close there today too.

In honor of the holidays we're going to make this Daily Golden Nugget brief. After all, who wants to read one of our long posts on their day off?

Let's check in on some simple statistics about web browsers. We looked up two previous Nuggets to surface old browser usage data, and at the bottom we're showing you the most recent measurements.

We measure the various web browsers across several hundred jewelry websites, and this is what we've found...

Browser Usage Data on September 12, 2011:

48.7% Internet Explorer
21.4% Firefox
17.3% Safari
12.4% Chrome
0.3% Opera


Browser Usage Data A...
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AT: 05/28/2012 01:32:35 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 25, 2012

3 Facebook Posting General Practices Techniques for Jewelers

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At the beginning of this week we told you about our ongoing Facebook study. We started actively collecting data on February 2012 and the process is still ongoing. Our goal is to identify the types of social post and interactions that will not only build your interactions on Facebook, but also bring people to your website.

It's important to get people to your website because that's the only place you can truly control the user experience and the marketing they are exposed to. The ultimate goal, of course, is to get people into your store, which you could do successfully through Facebook itself, especially with Events. Discovering the success of our suggestions here relies entirely on whether or not you have a face-to-face customer lead source tracking system. In other words, you have to ask the people who walk into your store.<...
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AT: 05/25/2012 11:39:10 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 24, 2012

Understanding Facebook EdgeRank for Jewelers (Part 3)

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This is a continuation of our Daily Golden Nugget series on Facebook. We're still covering basic Facebook information so you can understand why Facebook has worked well for so few jewelers while most gave up after trying different things for a few months.

We're on a quest to explain how Facebook measures the importance of every status post and how they are organized in your personal News Feed. As we explained earlier, Facebook's EdgeRank is calculated with 3 apparent variables known as Affinity, Edge Weight, and Recency. We prefer to use more sensible names that are easier to understand like "Friendliness Factor," "Post Type," and "Post Age."

No matter how popular your posts are, they will eventually fade away through age. Age is not simply measured by the minute or seconds hand on the clock, it could be based on how fre...
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AT: 05/24/2012 11:54:24 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Understanding Facebook EdgeRank for Jewelers (Part 2)

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This is a continuation of our Daily Golden Nugget series on Facebook. We're still covering basic Facebook information so you can understand why Facebook has worked well for so few jewelers while most couldn't see a return on investment.

And that's the key, ROI. The only way to successfully market to a Facebook audience is to understand how EdgeRank works and how to influence it. If you influence someone's EdgeRank you also increase the chance they will visit your store or website. Facebook sets their own rules and user experience. You cannot fully control the user experience or hope to generate foot traffic and sales unless you get people to your website. You and you alone control the rules of engagement on your website.

As we began explaining yesterday, Facebook's EdgeRank is calculated with 3 apparent variables known...
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AT: 05/23/2012 06:55:43 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Understanding Facebook EdgeRank for Jewelers (Part 1)

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To say that our heads are swimming in Facebook data, research, other people's opinions, and total nonsense would be an understatement!

As we announced yesterday we've been conducting our own private research study into Facebook. Our goal is to discover what would get people off Facebook and onto your website or into your jewelry store.

This has not been easy. Why? Simply because no one is talking about this topic at all, yet all of you seem to be asking us for this information.

To be honest, typically you guys in the jewelry industry are a little more grounded, and slower to adopt new technology. While many other industries and brand ran headlong into the wide open green fields of Facebook marketing, most jewelers held back wondering what was on the other side of that wide field. Many of those early adopters foun...
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AT: 05/22/2012 10:13:01 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 21, 2012

3K Website Visitors vs. 3K Facebook Likes

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Let's set the wayback machine to 1993 when we used to track the number of "hits" to a website. At that time a website was simply an HTML file with text and a bunch of links between pages. A hit was counted every time one of the HTML pages was displayed in the Mosaic web browser. (Mosaic was the first web browser.)

The early internet engineers wanted to know how many times their pages were read, and they assumed each "hit" represented 1 person taking the time to actually read it. Those old counting system didn't consider that other file types, like images, would eventually get caught up in the hit counting.

Before anyone knew it, a page with 2 images was counting as 3 hits, and a page with 9 images was counting as 10 hits. This meant that two people visiting a page with 9 images would suddenly be 20 hits, rather than jus...
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AT: 05/21/2012 10:38:41 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 18, 2012

7 Internet Steps that Haven't Changed in 10 Years

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Massive changes to any website completely scare the bajesus out of us! The potential for lost Google PageRank, broken links, voiding user bookmarks will harm your business. How does that harm happen? In the simplest sense your telephones will stop ringing, your internet sales will slow down, and fewer people will walk through your front door.

But sometimes you can't avoid the massive changes, say, every 18 months when you want to redesign your website. Of course a "redesign" could just be an upgrade of the style sheet that controls colors and how your pages are laid out. A redesign doesn't need to include changes to the URLs of your website; it all depends on the content management system you are using.

Massive changes can occur because you are switching to a different web programming company, or hosting company. Somet...
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AT: 05/18/2012 11:24:51 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 17, 2012

Emails are Important. Check and Clean Them Up

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There's a level of professionalism that comes with having an email address that matches your jewelry store's domain name. Additionally, as the store owner you are able to control how your employees communicate with customers.

When you assign employee email accounts, for example sue@jewelrystore.com, you can control what computer Sue uses the email on, and if she reads the email on her smartphone. Of course you can also change the password and still continue reliable communications with customers long after Sue's left your employ.

As a business, even though you might find it initially difficult, you should force yourself to use an official email address instead of Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, or one given by your cable provider. Here are some quick good reasons:

1. It's more professional. Using sue@jewelrystore.com pro...
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AT: 05/17/2012 08:08:04 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Ever Paid for Link Building? You Were Probably Pecked by the Penguin

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There's been a big stir in the SEO community since April 24, 2012 when Google turned on a new filter algorithm they call Penguin. This new filter is designed to remove a new level of spamming websites from the SERP.

Last month Google did a lot of work to improve how they detect spamming websites and link building strategies that provide artificial boosts. We have no love for anyone who pays a service for rapid link building, and now Google has also figured out how to detect these link building schemes.

We've been watching our tracking very carefully before mentioning this topic, as usually we don't want to rush into speculations without hard proof.

Jewelry related websites were seriously penalized in SERP ranking if they has 20,000 or more inbound links from pages with thin content. You may remember from previous D...
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AT: 05/16/2012 10:23:40 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 15, 2012

There's Money in The List; The Wish List

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Wish lists are in important part of any successful jewelry store. Inviting a "just browsing" customer to start a wish list creates the potential for future sales, especially when you also ask for the email address of their significant other to whom to send the wish list to.

Some stores hold evening events a few times each year where no buying is allowed, but everyone creates a wish list.

Do you maintain wish lists in your store? What do you do with them when a customer writes them out?

We know of a few jewelers that still keep index card sized wish lists even though their point of sale computer allows them to computerize it. Those index cards do have a classic charm and an obvious personal sales touch to them, and of course they are still the only option if a jewelry store doesn't have an easy to implement compute...
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AT: 05/15/2012 10:57:13 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 14, 2012

196 Days and Counting Until Cyber Monday

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Cyber Monday is the Monday following US Thanksgiving holiday. After a long weekend of shopping consumers eagerly take to their computers seeking the best online deals. So much online shopping transpires that day that it's hard to believe people get any real work done.

This year Cyber Monday falls on November 26, 2012, just 196 days from now. That's not a lot of time to get your e-commerce jewelry website up and running.

HOLIDAY WARNING: If you don't start working on your e-commerce website by June 1, 2012 you probably won't have it live in time for this year's holiday season. From our experience, it just takes too long for a jewelry e-commerce website to be designed, programmed, photography, and product upload.

According to comScore, the 2011 Holiday season was 15% higher at $37.2 billion than in 2010. Cyber Mond...
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AT: 05/14/2012 08:12:13 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 11, 2012

Best Practices for Blogging for Jewelers

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An interesting debate about blog posting sparked up in the jWAG office the other day.

We were reviewing how the URL, H1, and page Title Tags all relate to one another, and how effective they are for SEO. Our standing recommendations are that all three items should match.

Example of Best Practices:
URL: /best-cathedral-engagement-rings.html
Page Title: Best Cathedral Engagement Rings
Header 1 Tag: Best Cathedral Engagement Rings

This is a well known strategy amongst SEO experts and it's one we also want you to use when posting to your own blog.

On the other hand, typical newspaper, news blog, and even our own industry websites like JCK and National Jeweler Network don't usually worry about the SEO aspects of their blog posts. Instead, they sensationalize their headlines to attract readers.

Ever...
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AT: 05/11/2012 08:52:23 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 10, 2012

Not Fresh? You Must Be Dead.

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Okay, maybe not totally dead, but instead merely "mostly dead." There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead, as any fan of The Princess Bride should recognize.

Google likes fresh content. They talk about "surfacing fresh content" in their every official blog post and every time an official Google representative is interviewed. We follow their guidelines very closely and try to measure how quickly your website will rank when you post new content.

We've been so busy paying attention to ideas of posting fresh content that we neglected analyzing what happens when you don't update anything. If your website is 3 years old or older you should pay close attention to this Daily Golden Nugget.

Several of the jewelry stores we worked with closely went out of business during the 2009 recession. In some cases th...
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AT: 05/10/2012 08:58:22 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 09, 2012

On-Page SEO Ideas for Jewelers to Target Local

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Last week we gave you an example of how you could rewrite some copy on your website with Local Intent so it doesn't appear overly spammy to Google. Here's the link to that Nugget if you missed it: http://bit.ly/IsBLUL

Today we have a list of some specific phrase examples that you could, and should somehow sprinkle around the pages on your site. We've using our address in New Jersey for this example.

Example #1:
"Hello and Welcome to Perosi Jewelers. Come browse through the most unique jewelry store, gift store, and bridal registry in Totowa."

If we were writing a book, we would say "jewelry and gift store" to be more concise, but for the web you need to split those phrases up for exact matching through Google Search. Also, you might notice the use of the phrase "bridal registry" in this example. Back on April ...
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AT: 05/09/2012 09:39:32 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 08, 2012

Google SSL Hurts Jewelry Keyword Research

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For all the free services Google offers, their Analytics service is probably the most important for all retail jewelry stores to use. From the first day you install it on your website you will see exactly what your visitors are interested in, how they navigate your site, and where they came from.

Inside Google Analytics you will discover what your "Audience" is doing, how effective your "Advertising" is, what "Traffic Sources" bring visitors, what "Content" on your site is most popular, and what the value of each of your "Conversions" are.

Traffic Sources can be very interesting to look at, and its here that we can see what search engines people come from, how many people come from Facebook, how valuable your Yellow Pages listing is, and if the link building strategies you are trying actually works.

It's also in the ...
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AT: 05/08/2012 06:34:15 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 07, 2012

Thin Content and Link Building Shakeup

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It's good news or bad news depending how you look at it.

Even thought we do not condone the practice, you are able to purchase link building services from many SEO companies that promise lots of good inbound links.

Their strategies vary from blog commenting to creating micro site pages. Blog commenting is usually deleted by the actual blog owners, but the creation of micro sites is something that Google needs to deal with.

A few weeks ago we mentioned "micro sites" when explaining the ins and outs of putting jewelry catalogs on your website. Those are perfectly normal types of micro sites and not at all what an SEO company would attempt as a link building scheme.

We've met some pretty crafty SEO guys in the past few years that employ micro site link building. Their method is to register new domain names for ...
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AT: 05/07/2012 09:06:57 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 04, 2012

The World; and SEO, Changes. Always. (Turn, Turn, Turn)

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Things change; they always do. That's the nature of the world, of business, of life, of love. Sometimes things get better and sometimes the unexpected happens. A gift of jewelry is given during the best of times, during the worst of times, to signify a new beginning, and to bring an event to a close. Pandora Jewelry built an entire business around life's precious moments. Perhaps it's this close connection to the human condition that motivates you, the independent retail jewelry store owner.

Change is also the nature of the internet. We estimate the best practices of website design change about every 18 months, and search engine optimization techniques change every 2 months. In fact, today we're expecting that Google will announce the 30 to 50 changes they made to their search algorithm in April 2012.

Every time Goog...
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AT: 05/04/2012 10:28:47 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 03, 2012

Example of Jewelry Website Copy Re-Writing

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Today we'd like to provide a sample of how to correctly rewrite website copy to target local search results. We'll show you the before and after of the copy re-writing in hopes you will understand how to do it yourself.

This is what we're starting with:

Perosi Jewelers opened in June, 1995 and is a full-service jeweler. Perosi Jewelers offers fine 14K, 18K & Platinum Bridal Jewelry; diamond fashion jewelry; loose diamonds; colored-stone fashion jewelry; 14k and 18k fine gold jewelry. Our store's founder, Louis Perosi, Sr., had 20 years experience in the jewelry industry before opening his own store with his wife. Mr. Perosi's education and training began under a master jeweler and continued for five years. Mr. Perosi then managed his own store in Delaware for a period of seven years before relocating to New Jersey. Once ...
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AT: 05/03/2012 11:26:10 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Your Hero Might Be Bad For Jewelry Business

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Large page headers and hero graphics are very popular right now; in fact they are so popular that in 5 years we'll look back on the 2010-2012 internet era as the rise and fall of oversized, in your face images and headers. Those oversized home page photos are known as "hero graphics."

While website header design growing, computer screen size is shrinking. Not too long ago the latest and greatest computer monitor was a 24 inch or 32 inch, but now it seems like the PC is quickly being replaced with laptop and netbook computers. Naturally those portable computers have smaller screen sizes.

And when it comes to really small screen sizes... let's not even mention mobile devices right now.

In the 2003-2006 internet era we saw a transition from websites that were designed with a static width of about 800 pixels to designs...
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AT: 05/02/2012 09:45:38 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 01, 2012

Using QR Codes with m. and .mobi

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Yesterday we attempted to explain the difference between using m.domainname.com and domainname.mobi for your mobile website.

Our bottom line was that it all depends on how long your domain name is, and if you want your domain name to exactly match your jewelry store's name.

Shortened mobile domain names really do help users. Bank of America uses "bofa.mobi" on all of their mobile marketing literature.

Typing B O F A . M O B I on a mobile device is a lot easier than typing out M . B A N K O F A M E R I C A . C O M.

Although, the people over at Bank of America are clever because if you type bofa.mobi in the smartphone, it redirects you to www.bankofamerica.com/mobile/richui.do#_home, and that's a much longer URL that no one would want to type into their smartphone.

Continuing with this perfect example, t...
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AT: 05/01/2012 10:55:22 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 30, 2012

Difference Between m. and .mobi

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We've mentioned quite a bit about mobile websites during the last few months, but we realized we never dug into the difference between the use of "m.jeweler.com" and "jeweler.mobi," so let's cover that topic today.

For our purposes, please replace the expression 'jeweler' with whatever your domain name is.

Back in 2005 the popular cell phone hardware and software companies supported a push to establish a new top level domain called dotMobi. The "mobi" is short for "mobile." Since cell phone speeds were also very slow back then something needed to be done to accommodate the growing trend of web browsing via cell phones.

It was hoped that the ".mobi" extension would tell users that the website was safe to browse on their cell phone, and it would be fast. In fact, if you registered a .mobi domain you had to sign a gua...
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AT: 04/30/2012 10:31:19 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 27, 2012

Inbound Marketing: Broaden Your Jewelry Store Message

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Over the past week we've given you several ideas for blogging. We hope that each Golden Nugget gave you actionable ideas how to make you blog better. Today's a great day to start blogging if you haven't yet started.

Google says "you need to build great content on your website" to be found in Search, and blogging on your website is the easiest method. Even though we say this day in and day out many jewelers do not listen to us, or worse, don't believe us. We don't take offense because, just like we don't quite know how a laser is used to weld a head to a ring, most jewelers don't know how the internet works.

We don't quite like blind faith, and so, it's now story time...

The ability to search Google for anything you want at the exact moment you want it has changed the world we live in today.

Access to inform...
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AT: 04/27/2012 11:13:01 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 26, 2012

Various Blogging Links Can Repair a Jeweler's Ranking

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With our continuing coverage of blogs and blogging techniques, today we'd like to give you some ideas of how to link your blog entries from one to another, to your website, or to products in your online catalog.

A few days ago we explained that "anchor text" is the term use to describe the actual words you are linking. The example we used in a previous Daily Golden Nugget was the sentence:

"We'd like to show you our best [engagement rings]."

As we said previously, the words "engagement rings" are shown as the anchor text and that would link to another page.

If you put that sentence in a blog post, you could link it to a dedicated to engagement rings landing page with details about various engagement rings, or you could link it to a product catalog page showing 10 or so different engagement ring styles.
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AT: 04/26/2012 11:37:08 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 25, 2012

100% of Blog Readers Could be Visiting Your Jewelry Site

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Since we seem to be on a roll with blogging topics, we'll continue today with another important blog discussion.

We frequently get asked what blogging software and blogging hosting service should be used to set up a jewelry store's website. There are obvious answers to that question, but they come with not so obvious consequences.

The apparent, obvious answer is to use a readily available blogging platform. According to TopTenReviews.com the top 5 blogging software platforms for 2012 (so far) are:
1. WordPress
2. Typepad
3. Squarespace
4. LiveJournal
5. Blogger


The popular blogging platforms amongst the jewelers we work with seem to be WordPress and Blogger. WordPress has a lot of features and can be used not only as a blog, but also to run the entire operations of your website. On the other han...
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AT: 04/25/2012 10:44:51 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Two Easy Blogging Tips for Jewelers

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Today we have 2 simple blogging tips for your jewelry website.

1. Kill the keyword cloud.

A few years back the "keyword cloud" feature was pretty popular and found on most blogging sites. The feature allowed you to indicate a few important keywords or phrases for every blog entry you posted. The usage count for all these keywords was tracked and then presented as a jumbled mess of words using various size fonts. The larger fonts represented commonly used words, and the keywords in the smallest font were used only once or twice.

Keyword clouds were thought to have high SEO value because they would repeat the same words over and over on every page of your blog. The truth was that Google view this repetitive keyword usage as pure webspam and many blogs lost ranking.

Before you hire a SEO company for link build...
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AT: 04/24/2012 10:41:07 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 23, 2012

Add More Blog Posts, Never Delete Them

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Most of the SEO techniques we teach you are related to how you should manage your content, write your content, and topics to attract customers. In our previous Nugget we explained in great length by you should remove the word "bridal" from all your online marketing and replace it with the word "wedding." That's a contextual change that will attract the right customers from Google.

We suggest looking through your site and replacing most occurrences of the word "bridal," but not all of them. Some people will still search for the phrase "bridal jewelry" so you should still be there for those few.

However, don't run to your old blog posts and replace bridal with wedding. That's the wrong strategy. Instead, you need to rewrite all those old "bridal" blog posts from scratch!

To explain why we want to tell you about ano...
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AT: 04/23/2012 09:31:26 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 20, 2012

Jewelers Must Give Up On Bridal Sales

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We're sorry this Daily Golden Nugget is so long, but it didn't make sense to split it. YOU MUST READ THIS. WE HOPE IT CHANGES YOUR WAY OF THINKING!

The web changes way too fast for mere mortals to really keep up, we estimate there are drastic changes every two months. In March 2012, Google changed the way they rank keyword phrases, and they announced their changes at the beginning on April 2012.

We took a close look at this and figured out how these changes affect the retail jeweler. As a comparison we we're jumping back to Daily Golden Nugget #398 from February 1, 2012... In other words, just two months ago.

We need to revisit these phrases so you understand how to adjust your blogging strategies and keyword usage:
* wedding ring stores
* jewelry stores
* jewelry
* wedding ring
* bridal jewelr...
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AT: 04/20/2012 09:24:15 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 19, 2012

Understanding Anchor Text for Jewelry Stores

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We're getting back to basic SEO concepts today with a discussion of Anchor Text.

Anchor text is also known as link text, link label, and even link title depending on which SEO professional you are talking to. In our office we commonly flip flop between "anchor text" and "link text" depending on the situation. All 4 phrases are common enough, and can be confusing, so hopefully this Golden Nugget will help.

Hyperlinks, or links, connect all the pages of the web together. Sometimes you click on an image hyperlink, and sometimes you click on a text hyperlink. When word (text) are hyperlinks, many times they will appear as blue and underlined.

It's those blue and underlined words that are the Anchor Text, and they are very important for SEO.

When the internet was in its infancy many people used the words "click ...
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AT: 04/19/2012 09:15:57 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 18, 2012

PCI Compliance Testing and Reporting for Jewelers

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This is the last part of our 6 part series about compliance requirements with the PCI Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).

Here's our list of topics with links next to the previous day's Nuggets.

Introduction: You will hate PCI compliance too
1. Storing cardholder data on your website
2. Protecting internal and wireless networks in your store
3. Security used in payment card applications
4. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 04/18/2012 09:07:30 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Block Your SEO Firm From Seeing Customer Payment Card Data

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This is part 5 in our 6 part series about compliance requirements with the PCI Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).

Over the last 4 days we've probably frightened you to death with all this security stuff. But that's what we do here at jWAG, we don't sugar coat anything. This PCI Compliance stuff is a necessary evil in understanding what you need to do for website security and jewelry store network security.

Here's our list of topics with links next to the previous day's Nuggets.

Introduction: You will hate PCI compliance too
1. Storing cardholder data on your website
2. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 04/17/2012 08:48:11 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 16, 2012

POS and Jewelry Website Software Security

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This is part 4 in our series about compliance requirements with the PCI Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).

We've taken the last 3 Daily Nuggets to explain items #1 and #2 shown below. We know this information is both boring and frightening at the same time. It's a necessary evil in understanding what you need to do for website security and jewelry store network security.

The Security Standards Council created PCI Standards to protect cardholder information from being stolen.

Here's our list of topics with links next to the previous day's Nuggets.

Introduction: You will hate PCI compliance too
1. Storin...
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AT: 04/16/2012 09:29:35 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 13, 2012

Is Your Jewelry Store Network Security Strong?

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This is part 3 in our series about compliance requirements with the PCI Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). PCI Standards are technical and operational requirements, set forth by the Security Standards Council, intended to protect cardholder information. We are working through these specific compliance aspects:

Introduction: You will hate PCI compliance too
1. Storing cardholder data on your website
2. Protecting internal and wireless networks in your store
3. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 04/13/2012 09:20:46 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 12, 2012

Should Jewelry Websites Save Payment Card Information?

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This is part 2 in our series about compliance requirements with the PCI Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). PCI Standards are technical and operational requirements, set forth by the Security Standards Council, intended to protect cardholder information. We want to help you understand these specific compliance aspects:

Introduction: You will hate PCI compliance too
1. Storing cardholder data on your website
2. Protecting internal and wireless networks in your store
3. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 04/12/2012 09:11:59 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 11, 2012

You Will Hate PCI Compliance Too

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We're getting more frequent requests to explain the how's and why's of running a jewelry e-commerce website. To answer those requests we usually talk about business strategies, marketing ideas, and SEO methods. But it looks like we've never written any Daily Golden Nuggets about security... until today.

When you think of website security you probably think of SSL, sometimes referred to as a secure certificate. A "secure" website is one that uses "https://" in the web address instead of "http://", that extra "s" indicates a secure communication state between the website and your web browser.

That was important to understand, so let's repeat it. The "https" security only applies to the information transmitted to and from your website to the customer. A secure certificate does not prevent your website from being hacked; i...
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AT: 04/11/2012 09:03:09 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Jewelry Designer Line Microsites

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This is the 3rd in a series of Daily Golden Nuggets explaining the good and the bad techniques of Designer Line pages on your jewelry website.

As a recap, a "Designer Line Page" is usually a single web page on your site that's dedicated to a single jewelry designer. They are commonly used as landing pages since they (should) include background information about the designer, and general details about the type of jewelry styles that designer creates. The designer page should also have a few high quality photos.

Some jewelers will link a designer line page to the designer's website, but in the past two days we've given you plenty of reasons why that's a bad idea.

Some time in 2008 we started seeing internet savvy designers create stand alone microsites that could be added to a jeweler's website. In this context we're...
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AT: 04/10/2012 11:41:07 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 09, 2012

Off-Site Linking is Bad for User Experience

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In Friday's Nugget we gave you 5 ways you can get customers to your website and 1 very easy way to lose them. The bottom line of Friday's Golden Nugget was our commandment to not link to designer websites. Instead you should do whatever it takes to keep customers on your own site and avoid all "off-site" linking.

Jewelers who do use off-site linking to a designer usually do not have the time or perhaps the ability to include that designer's product catalog on their own site. It seems to make sense to link to the designer, but really, it's bad news.

Our primary concern with all off-site linking is that run the risk of losing your customer to another jewelry store or e-commerce website. But there's also a usability factor to worry about.

When you send someone away from your jewelry website you will disjoint their us...
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AT: 04/09/2012 09:44:52 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 06, 2012

5 Ways to Attract Jewelry Buyers, 1 Easy Way to Lose Them

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Here's a regular routine for the online marketing process of your jewelry website, or brick and mortar jewelry store...

You share status updates on Facebook and hope to gain new fans. Maybe one day those fans will click over to your website to see the jewelry you sell.

You share on Google+ knowing that it will help influence the Google SERP. Maybe one day someone will actually search a phrase you posted on Google+ and click over to your website to see the jewelry you sell.

You create quippy remarks for a 140 character Tweet and flood your Twitter account. You hope that eventually someone will see your #jewelry or #engagement #ring hash tags and click over to your website to see the jewelry you sell.

You set up a WordPress blog and post regular entertainment news or monthly updates about birthstones. This pr...
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AT: 04/06/2012 10:50:50 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 05, 2012

Your SEO is Bleeding Out of Your Jewelry Store Logo

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We have to cover a double whammy today. Something so simple, yet so wrong, and you are probably doing it in every HTML marketing email you send and on every page of your website.

It's your logo.

You probably already know that you should always put your jewelry store's logo on your site, and at the top of all your marketing/newsletter emails. That makes complete sense, and you're probably saying "of course!"

Both your website programmer and your email marketing person probably spend a lot of time maintaining your website. If they have good computer skills they will keep their computer files organized and easily understandable. They even probably keep all your websites images stored in a single directory too.

It's these organization skills that will work against your online SEO effort!

Ask your website...
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AT: 04/05/2012 08:59:25 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Show Off the Real Staff of Your Jewelry Store

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Photography is something that many jewelers angst about all the time. Jewelry photography can be a complete nightmare to do yourself or expensive when you hire a professional. Jewelry photography will make or break the e-commerce sales on your website.

However, today we actually don't care about jewelry photography. Instead we want to talk about other photography on your website, specifically, photos of YOU!

That's right, you... Your smiling face should be somewhere on your website, as well as the rest of your employees'. This personal touch will appeal much more to the local customers that you're hoping will actually walk into your store.

Your photo, and other staff photos, shouldn't be reserved just for your "Meet Our Staff" page either. Sure, that's where they also belong, but why not have photos of you and yo...
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AT: 04/04/2012 09:16:48 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Jewelers Need to Remove Their Pipes

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We're getting back to some basics today. Let's look at a very specific character and how it's used in your Page's Title tag.

The pipe "|" character was once widely used in the Title Tag, but not so much anymore. Let's look at the reasons..

Here's a typical example of how we would have written a page title a few years ago:

14K Gold Cross Pendant | Pendants | Gold Pendants | Bob's Jewelry

In this example the pipe character is a separator of 4 distinct topics, which we're explaining in detail here:

1. 14k Gold Cross Pendant - This is actually the product detail page for a cross pendant made of 14K gold.

2. Pendants - In this example we're showing the parent product category here. This is actually a typical, old style method.

3. Gold Pendants - This is the sub-category designation in this e...
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AT: 04/03/2012 08:03:49 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 02, 2012

Celebrity Blogging For Jewelers

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We love blogging. In fact this is our 441st Daily Golden Nugget. It's not a special number like 100 was, or 200, or 400, or even 404. But the interesting thing is that once you have more than 300 real blog posts on your website you start to attract a lot of new visitors every month.

We're referring to a "real" blog post as something written about a topic that's near and dear to you, like celebrities adorned with jewelry at red carpet events, or jewelry fashion trends, or jewelry in entertainment news.

Paparazzi are not the only people interested in what celebrities are doing, or wearing. Your jewelry customers are also interested, which means you can blog about celebrities and attract attention... a lot of attention through Google SERPs.

As a long term test, we once wrote a celebrity blog post about reality-star-t...
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AT: 04/02/2012 10:55:09 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 30, 2012

A Slap of Truth for Jewelers and Jewelry e-Commerce

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If you attempt to set up an e-commerce jewelry website without a dedicated monthly budget you will set yourself up for disappointment. Not failure, but very slow progress and low sales.

That's a bit blunt, but e-commerce does need to be treated like a separate business entity with its own expenses and even employees, or at least an employee that spends a lot of time in front of the computer managing it.

The big players in our industry have established a strong foothold in e-commerce selling. Kay, BlueNile, JamesAllan, Zales, Tiffany, and a few others have the deepest of pockets of advertising dollars to beat out all the local retail jewelers.

If you want to have a jewelry e-commerce site you need to navigate your way through the variables of setup, monthly maintenance, and monthly marketing. Some of the variables ...
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AT: 03/30/2012 11:45:21 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 29, 2012

Implementing Your Own QR Code Jeweler Reviews

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In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget we gave you results from a QR code micro test we conducted over the last 7 months. We found that QR codes could be successfully used inside your store as a way to lead consumers to a review website.

When customers have to wait anywhere from 1 minute to 5 minutes, they will take the time to scan a QR code hung in the waiting area, then either read or leave a review.

We think it's important to note that the QR codes in our test were hung on a wall close to the customer rather than on the wall behind the counter. It is our opinion that physical proximity matters. One just does not expect to be allowed to take their phone and take a photo of something behind a salesperson.

Here are the steps to making this work in your own jewelry store:


1. Choose a review site.

This...
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AT: 03/29/2012 11:18:47 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 28, 2012

QR Code Test Results: Jeweler Reviews

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We're at the point in time where modern technology can influence consumer buying decisions within seconds through the use of mobile devices. We're not talking about mobile websites or intentional mobile marketing but rather online reviews and testimonials.

Through various blog posts Google continues to affirm that 1 out of 5 searches are related to a customer's location. Those location searches trigger the organic results to include Google Places listings and online review websites. Most of the time each of these results is accompanied by a set of star ratings.

Google tweaks the SERP layouts continuously. As of this writing, the review stars appear in the AdWords ads, Citysearch.com listings, and Yelp listings. Note that Google specifically includes the stars next to the AdWords ads instead of the Places listings in the...
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AT: 03/28/2012 10:02:07 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Customers Want to Love Your Mobile Website

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Consumer expectations of mobile commerce are getting higher every year. We're looking at more reports from the 2011 Holiday season in our quest for the best website recommendations for this coming season.

Rarely do we find published studies specific to the jewelry industry, so we occasionally take a close look at what's available from other industries and try to relate them to ours.

We recently looked at the company Tealeaf.com which provides comprehensive customer behavior analysis to some very large companies. During the 2011 Holiday Season, Tealeaf commissioned an analysis of mobile commerce website from what they designated as the top 35 mobile retailers worldwide.

We've taken their findings and tried to relate them to the jewelry industry.

In 2011 mobile technology was easily available to holiday shopp...
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AT: 03/27/2012 02:12:01 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 26, 2012

Understanding Where Jewelry Buyers Came From and What They Want

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Converting website visitors into customers requires an understanding of where your customers came from, and what page they arrived at on your website.

When analyzing a website we call that arrival page, or point of entry, a Landing Page. The place the visitor came from is called the Traffic Source.

Here's a list of common sources:

Google SERP
Google AdWord Ad
Google Places Listing
Google+ Page
Email Newsletter
Facebook News Feed
Facebook Ad
Yelp Listing

Understanding the content of each of these sources will help you convert your website visitor into a paying customer. Was the person reading your email newsletter, or did they click on a Facebook or Google ad?

The context of each traffic source changes what the person expects to see when they arrive on your website. Let's break do...
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AT: 03/26/2012 10:32:25 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 23, 2012

Redefining the Center of the Marketing World for Jewelers

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Your website is not an island. It's now a crucial part of your full marketing strategy. Sure, back in 1997 it would have been safe to think about a website as an island.

Your jewelry store's website should be the most interesting, most informative, most accurate, and most up to date component in your entire marketing model. If you've not yet turned your website into the center of your marketing world, then you need to change your strategy... Today.

Here's how to turn your website from that bastard child into the beloved favorite...

Introduce all your marketing teams, and tell them they have to work together or you will be sad to replace them. Everyone needs to work together, and this includes your billboard guy, postcard gal, newspaper ad man, social marketing guru, email newsletter guy, and your website people. ...
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AT: 03/23/2012 10:30:12 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 22, 2012

Holiday 2012 Mobile Website Planning Guide

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It's hard to believe the Holiday Season 2011 is already 3 months in the past, and the 2012 season starts in about 8 months. We don't want to be pushy, but right now is the time to start reviewing your 2011 holiday website strategies in preparation for the 2012 season.

We're serious about this. Now that Spring is officially here you need to start reviewing what worked, what didn't, and what your competitors did that impressed you. Work out a new marketing strategy, and start implementing it in July.

Last year Google Think (http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/) once again gave us reports that holiday shopping starts online in August. Few websites are prepared for these early shoppers.

Starting today, and then over the next 2 months, we will frequently publish the research-based SEO and online marketing strategies that we...
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AT: 03/22/2012 10:19:37 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Steve Jobs' Revenge... from Beyond!

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One of the best ways to hide your website from Google is to create it in Flash. Of course hiding from Google also means you are hiding from website visitors. Sound like a good business strategy? Of course it's not.

Since 2003 we've seen the popularity of Flash rise and fall. Google and Adobe even tried to work together so Google could read the words inside of Flash files. It seems like their joint effort never realized its full potential.

Within the last 9 years, our industry--the jewelry industry--saw many stores set up very beautiful looking Flash websites but later realized that their website yielded no return on investment. Additionally, a very large part of the customer audience could not see Flash on their mobile devices as the popularity of iPhones and iPads grew. Apple's Steve Jobs was always very critical of ...
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AT: 03/21/2012 10:08:46 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Sapphire Examples of Blogging Strategies

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Over the past few weeks we were trying to get a better understanding of how Google will translate a long tail search query into a valuable SERP for users. Specifically, we were testing queries that started with this:

"What is the ________"

Have you ever tried a search query starting with either of those 3 words? Google understands that this query search is for information; therefore they try to return some type of quality educational article before any potential e-commerce site.

Google doesn't have an all-powerful artificial intelligence that would be able to directly return an answer to a question. They have to rely on mathematically matching a search phrase to phrases found on web pages. Other than the mathematical word matching, they also compare the results to more than 300 other ranking factors to give you th...
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AT: 03/20/2012 11:26:21 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 19, 2012

SEO of a Flawless Diamond

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We're taking a break from research and number crunching and getting back to some basics of SEO today.

Search engine optimization for your jewelry store's website is not hard; it's just time consuming. When you follow a few simple guidelines you will immediately boost your site ahead of other locally, and maybe even nationally.

The first recommendation we always have for people is to make sure you have the primary 3 on-page SEO factors all lined up. Oh, "on-page" refers to things you can control about your website, like what is says and how it looks. As opposed to "off-page" factors like link building and how people talk about you elsewhere on the internet.

The 3 primary SEO factors according to jWAG are:

1. The title of your page.
2. The words you use in the largest heading on your page.
3. The actual ...
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AT: 03/19/2012 10:08:39 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 16, 2012

Don't Peddle Pave Engagement Rings

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If you have a specific question about your website, or online marketing, please send it in via any of our channels. We're here for your Q&A as well as these Daily Golden Nuggets.

One of the questions we received this week lead us on a path of research into the keyword "pave," and we'd like to share what we found.

When looking at the keyword "pave" we wanted to figure out what the best phrases would be for some blog posts and educational articles.

Some initial findings from our logs showed that we might want to write a few blogs using these 3 phrases:

pave engagement rings
pave engagement ring
pave diamond engagement ring

We then took these phrases and plugged them into Google Insights to see what the results might be.

We found that since 2006 the number of people using those search phra...
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AT: 03/16/2012 12:18:01 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 15, 2012

Multiple Domain Names with a Purpose

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It takes a lot of time and effort to achieve top ranking for your jewelry store's website. Your store offers a variety of services which need to be explained. Even with your best efforts your jewelrystore.com website might not have high ranking in the SERP.

If you're feeling ambitious--very ambitious--you could take a different strategy of online marketing by using multiple websites for very specific target audiences.

Earlier this week we were looking at the SERP ranking competition for the phrase "mens watch bands" and were surprised how few local stores appeared in the results. Even when we searched for "mens watch bands totowa nj" we still didn't have local store results.

This example the SERP included these websites:
nextdaywatches.com
thewatchprince.com
globalwatchbandgroup.com
watchbands.com
wa...
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AT: 03/15/2012 10:53:48 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 14, 2012

13 Months Later: Panda Updates and Jewelry Store SEO

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It's been about 13 months since Google unleashed the Panda filter and ripped apart the internet heyday of article marketing and link building.

Google's "Panda Update" originally went live on February 24, 2011 and has been refreshed a few times since. Panda is not actually part of the search algorithm, but rather an extra filter that's applied to the Google index.

Periodically Google runs its search database through this filter to weed out bad websites so they won't appear in the SERP. Among that list of bad websites are once popular sites like EzineArticles.com, HubPages.com, thefind.com, and mahalo.com.

These websites aren't actually bad, and you won't get a computer virus by visiting them either. Google filters out these online properties because SEO professionals figured out how to abuse them for financial gain....
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AT: 03/14/2012 11:53:48 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Breadcrumbs are more than Navigation tools for Hansel and Gretel

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Back in December while you were busy with the holiday season, Google rolled out a new improvement to how they sniff through your product catalog, and display it in the SERP.

We're just starting to notice the effect of this change, and wanted to point it out.

There are many types of programming codes that can be hidden inside of a web page. One way or another these hidden codes communicate with other web pages, or provide background interaction with things like databases. There are even hidden codes, called Rich Snippets, that tell search engines how to store information into their database.

Google's been reading and understanding Rich Snippets since May 2009, but in December 2011 they made a few changes so they could better detect this hidden codes on shopping, recipe, and review websites.

The beauty of Rich ...
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AT: 03/13/2012 11:57:46 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 12, 2012

You and Google Both Hate Old Dogs

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Many of the recommendations we make deal with adding new pages to your website on a regular basis and bulking up your word count when you have less than 400 on a page.

But there's an increasing shift in the importance of words vs. video and images. Last week we told you about the change in how Google is measuring YouTube video ranking; today we're explaining the hinted changes in how Google is measuring fresh images when they appear on the web.

Before we explain Google's new image ranking, we need to give you a little bit of background information about websites and files. Every jewelry photo, html file, background graphic, and PDF saved on your website has an associated date and time stamp; just like on your own personal computer.

Websites are hosted on web servers, which are (to put it simply) nothing more than ov...
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AT: 03/12/2012 08:31:31 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 09, 2012

Just Blog; Don't Count Jewelry Keywords

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Sometimes we go months without thinking about a topic and then twice in a single day something comes up, like today when in depth conversations about keywords and SEO blossomed...

Tuning your website for keywords can be tricky. If you had a choice of tuning your website for only 5 phrases, what would you choose? Do you sell just 5 types of jewelry in your store? If you wanted to tune your website for "engagement rings" and "diamond engagement rings" that would already be 2 phrases. You could easily end up with a list of 20 or 30 desired keywords and phrase permutations.

From our point of view you should not be trying to narrow down SEO to a limited set of keywords, simply because that's not natural. Imagine if you were told to have a conversation about the rain storm outside, but you were not allowed to use the word "we...
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AT: 03/09/2012 09:10:51 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 08, 2012

YouTube Videos Now Have Better Local Ranking

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Last month Google changed the way YouTube videos are ranked in the SERP to better match locally created videos to user locations. We're not sure if this new feature will work on a country level, state level, or local town level, but it's enough for us to revisit the YouTube topic and remind you of some things you can be doing to attract search engine attention.

The easiest videos to create are short, simple presentations of jewelry between 15 to 60 seconds in length. Someone could model the jewelry while a narrator (you or the model) describes what it is; or you can make it real simple and hold the jewelry up to the camera.

The last time we suggested short videos like this, we recommended the Cisco Flipcam, but now we're recommending to just use your Android or iPhone. Both smartphones can record simple videos and also ma...
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AT: 03/08/2012 12:02:48 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Here's How Google's Recent SERP Changes Affect the Local Retail Jeweler

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Today we've got some updates from the world of Google products and how we foresee them relating together to your benefit.

First, let's check in on Google Places, and if you're playing the jWAG drinking game, it's time to take a shot.

Some time in early 2011, Google took away much of the search engine optimization power you had in Places. They disabled several of the built-in fields and limited the information appearing on your jewelry store's Places Page. They claimed it wasn't a permanent change, and that might be what they thought at the time.

It now looks like Google Places is slowly being diminished in its importance. In July 2011, we suggested that your Google Places account and the Google+ Business page would eventually merge. Google+ was given a huge boost in importance when G+ posts started appearing in th...
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AT: 03/07/2012 09:31:15 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 06, 2012

How to Increase Website Visitors to a Jewelry Site Over the Long Term

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To follow up from yesterday's proposal location blogging suggestion, today we're giving you 2 more associated blogging ideas.

Our first suggestion is to blog about local locations where a wedding ceremony could be held. This list could include park locations, houses of worship, and even the mayor's office.

The second suggestion is a list of local banquet halls. Include the most upscale venue as well as the local firehouse or rescue squad hall.

You should include as many details about each location as possible, and remember to include a photo since those usually get the most attention by visitors. To get started, you should write one blog entry about each of the most popular places, or perhaps just the places you are most familiar with, then watch your website tracking for about a month.

In your website track...
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AT: 03/06/2012 11:42:32 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 05, 2012

Blogging: You can make their proposal memorable.

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The last time we analyzed the percentage of organic visitors to jewelry websites from the various search engines was July 12, 2011. Back then here's how the top 3 engines stacked up.

Google: 89.7%
Yahoo: 4.2%
Bing: 3.8%.

When we recently measured on February 22, 2012 we found this breakdown of organic traffic sources:

Google: 82.5% (expected leader)
Yahoo: 7.9% (wow, this one is still beating Bing)
Bing: 7.6% (new player and likely enhanced by Facebook users)
AOL: 1.1% (geesh, people still use this?)
Ask: 0.6% (amazingly still alive)
Search.com: 0.3% (never really caught on; obvious names don't always work!)

Remember, these numbers are only measured against websites for retail jewelry stores. Google is losing ground while Yahoo and Bing are gaining, but then, Google's numbers wou...
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AT: 03/05/2012 11:10:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 02, 2012

Events: ROI Boost When 10K People Are Interested

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This is the continuation of our Events topic.

Yesterday we explained that you should first create a dedicated and permanent page on your website for each event you hold. You should include a link to that dedicated page in all email invitations and in the Facebook Event that you create.

We left off with the question of why would you want to create a dedicated, permanent page on your website for each event. Here are our 2 really good reasons why:

1. Regular Social Activity

It's good to show people you have activities year round. Remember that in the February 29, 2012 Daily Nugget (bit.ly/xQ9BPj) we told you that the Store Events page was the 2nd most popular viewed via mobile browsers. Even if you don't have a current event, you still need to give them something to find.

Listings of past events just ...
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AT: 03/02/2012 10:04:34 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 01, 2012

Events: Set Your Digital Invitations Up Correctly

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Events. Not every jewelry stores runs them, but we have to wonder why not. Ladies Nights, Super Bowl parties, Red Carpet parties, Facebook Fan parties... or just your everyday average, run of the mill trunk show.

You don't own an average retail store; you own a jewelry store, and sometimes people need to be invited in. And if you do it right, those invitations will keep bringing new customers into your store for years to come.

Inviting customers to an event is easy with today's technology. We remember in 2005 when some jewelers were spending more than $3500 to snail mail a box of very slick post cards. With today's marketing, you're more inclined to save that money and take advantage of the invite power provided by Facebook and regular email.

Facebook has an entire Event Application to invite your fans, and give ...
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AT: 03/01/2012 12:03:41 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Important Pages for Rushed Mobile Users

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Our Daily Golden Nugget from Monday this week caused a bit of controversy when we gave a list of the most popular pages viewed on mobile devices. Read the Nugget here: bit.ly/w2K7nf

What surprised our readers the most was that the Directions, Contact Page, and Store Hours fell so low in the list. We've assumed for quite some time now that mobile consumers would be most interested in contact information, but Product Catalog pages far outpaced everything else on mobile.

We decided to go back to the drawing board and review a different sample of our captured data. This time we concentrated the Exit pages of mobile jewelry consumers, and the amount of time someone was on the site before they left.

There's a big caveat that comes with the statistics below. Since we rushed through this analysis, we couldn't 100% accurat...
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AT: 02/29/2012 11:02:45 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 27, 2012

Most Popular Jewelry Store Pages Viewed via Mobile

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Simply saying that people are using mobile devices is easy. Knowing how and what they are using them for is actually more important. If you knew what mobile users were interested in, you could better understand the type of mobile website your jewelry store needs.

Well we've got that information right here! No guesses, no theories. Here's some hard data of how customers are using their iPhones, iPads, and Androids to browse various jewelry store websites.

This is a breakdown of the pages mobile visitors are currently viewing and the percentage of their time spent viewing them.

35.8% Jewelry Product Catalogs
17.3% Home Page
14.7% Blog or Article Pages
12.2% View Individual Product Pages
4.2% Loose Diamond Searches
3.0% Services Page
2.5% Specific Designer Line Pages
2.2% Jewelry Education Pages<...
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AT: 02/27/2012 03:24:26 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 24, 2012

Mobile Device Usage Statistics for Jewelry Sites

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In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget we revealed our findings that 19.9% of visitor traffic to jewelry websites is now using an iPhone, iPad, or Android. The rising popularity of the mobile web is undeniable.

We want to share some additional statistics regarding browser usage. Please note that these statistics are for non-mobile jewelry websites.

These are the average number of website pages consumers look at using these browsers:

Internet Explorer: 4.94
Firefox: 4.84
Chrome: 4.39
Safari iPhone: 3.85
Safari iPad: 3.28
Android: 3.08

These numbers show us that the tolerance level for mobile usage is already pretty high. Users are willing to visit at least 3 pages of a non-mobile website using a mobile device.

Now let's look at the amount of time (in minutes) these same users are willing to ...
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AT: 02/24/2012 07:37:24 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 23, 2012

Surprising Turn in Web Browser Wars on Jewelry Websites

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Every so often we like to take a broad look at all the various browsers customers are using to visit jewelry websites. Since the jWAG team also manages a web server farm of hundreds of jewelry websites, it's easy to run a general report and see what's happening.

The last time we checked up on web browser usage was September 12, 2011. Here's our finding from back then.

The percentage shown represents the customer usage of that web browser.

48.7% Internet Explorer
21.4% Firefox
17.3% Safari
12.4% Chrome
0.3% Opera

As of February 22, 2012, these are the new browser usage percentages for customers visiting jewelry websites:

38.5% Internet Explorer
26.3% Safari
14.7% Firefox
12.1% Chrome
5.8% Android Browser
0.5% Opera
0.1% BlackBerry9700

Internet Explorer continues to l...
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AT: 02/23/2012 11:43:37 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Find Out Why WordPress Turned off a Jeweler's Blog

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Today we'd like to explain how we discovered the unfortunate waste of money one jeweler spent when they hired a SEO guy to build links by writing blog posts.

There's no need to look at your own account right now, but we'll begin our story with a quick trip into our Google Analytics account and click on the link for TRAFFIC SOURCES in the left margin. From there we expanded the Sources sub-section and selected Referrals.

On this Referrals page inside Google Analytics, we are able to see all the domain names on which people find your website, but more importantly, clicked to visit your website. It's typical to see facebook.com, jewelers.org, yellowpages.com, and maps.google.com among the popular referral domains.

If you've paid someone for "link building" services, you will see hundreds of random domain names in the r...
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AT: 02/22/2012 09:47:12 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 21, 2012

iPhone Visitors to Jewelry Sites up 1227%

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We're taking a close look at Google Analytics data to find useful, actionable information for jewelry stores.

Today we took a close look at the most popular mobile devices consumers used during the first 6 weeks of 2012, i.e. the Valentine's Day shopping season.

Apple took the lead with about 37% traffic using the iPad and 33% using the iPhone. HTC was in second place with 7%, and Samsung devices managed to claim 4%.

This is the first time we're seeing Apple's iPad at the top of the mobile device list. This seems to make sense since many people are replacing their laptops with iPads and cloud computing.

comScore recently reported that the Google Android operating system is now more popular than the iPhone, but according to our tracking we see more jewelry website visits using an iPhone. In the US we see a 1,...
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AT: 02/21/2012 07:09:51 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 20, 2012

Maybe they just hate the jewelry you carry.

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We would like to share an interesting lesson recently learned by one of the larger companies we work with.

Members of our jWAG team were called upon to review the Google Analytics account for a company with 5 store locations through their state. Specifically, we needed to identify the most valuable traffic sources. This was a 6 month review of their newly launched website.

The website doesn't have e-commerce, so measuring the value of traffic is very difficult, and relies heavily on the sales personal asking customers how they heard about the store. As it turned out, the first 6 months went by and none of the sales people were trained to ask customers.

What we see in Google Analytics is that more than half of the website traffic came from organic Google, so it's a good assumption that their SEO efforts are working...
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AT: 02/20/2012 09:15:26 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 17, 2012

You've Killed Your Website... On Purpose.

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This is our 410th Daily Golden Nugget. In honor of that number we're going to explain the very powerful, potentially harmful, and rarely used website status code "410."

The technology that makes every website run has a hidden set of numerical background status codes that are shared between web servers and your computer. Off the top of your head you might already know of the codes 200, 301, 404, or 500. You won't find these codes in Google Analytics, but often times you will see these numbers in your website log files.

Most of the 40 or so status codes used on a website are obscure and used for troubleshooting. The 4 codes above are among the most popular, but we're skipping over an explanation of them today so we can concentrate on 410.

The 410 code is akin to Botulinum toxin (Botox) in that 410 can kill your webs...
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AT: 02/17/2012 08:18:50 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 16, 2012

Capitalize on the Rise of the Man-Gagement Ring

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Back in July 2011, we noticed the first widespread recognition of the man's engagement ring, otherwise known as the "mangagement ring."

MyFoxBoston.com, Huffington Post, Essential Groom, TheKnot.com, Men's Health, and even JCK are among the news outlets feeding into the idea of the mangagement ring.

This might be a trend, so let's take a look at the possibilities for adding appropriate content to your website.

To start our investigation we jumped over to google.com/insights/search and looked up "mangagement ring" and found some interesting results. It turns out that "mangagement" is a common misspelling of the word "management." Google Insights has years worth of data showing people searching for property, business, waste, classroom, time, project, and financial "mangagement."

Among the misspellings we do see...
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AT: 02/16/2012 06:57:45 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Storytelling Builds Great Content for Jewelers

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Yesterday we suggested you take a moment and write down some of the romantic Valentine's Day stories you've heard over the last few days.

This wasn't just a wild suggestion, but rather the first step down a path of real world storytelling and answering of questions. Any time you add more stuff to your website, you are actually adding "content." It could be a product catalog, or it could be a story, but it needs to be written for real people to read rather than for search engines.

Quality content is rewarded, but let's explain how and why this is so.

As of today Google is already attempting to build a search engine powered by artificial intelligence (known as AI). According to Amit Singhal, one of Google's top engineers, they hope to one day have a very large database that understands the relationship between words,...
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AT: 02/15/2012 11:41:31 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Inspired By True Love: Jewelry Gifts

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It's Valentine's Day.

Here's a cool trick that you should do tonight that will help you prepare for a more successful Valentine's Day for NEXT YEAR.

Doing a quick search on Google right now for the phrase "valentine day gift ideas" or "valentine day gifts" will return millions of results, most of which are for chocolate and flowers. You won't find much in the way of jewelry mentioned on page 1 or 2 of the SERP.

It's interesting that, according to Google's published research (link below), they say that jewelry gifts will be about $3.5 billion this year. That far out paces the 1.7 billion in flowers and the $1.5 billion in candy. They also state that online searches for jewelry between December 25, 2011 and January 8, 2012 were up 42% over last year. Google's research also showed that people were starting their onli...
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AT: 02/14/2012 11:27:30 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 13, 2012

January 2012 Keyword Data and How to Use It

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We've analyzed a small part of our collected keyword data from January 2012 and have some results to share with you today.

The list below has 19 keywords ranging from the most to least popular. We've adjusted our numbers to present them on a scale of 0 to 100. The keyword "engagement" occurred the most in our tracking so we're putting that at 100 and measuring all other keywords against it.

100 engagement
92.38 rings
83.75 jewelers
56.34 diamond
37.05 ring
36.04 jewelry stores
20.81 wedding
20.81 custom
15.73 buy gold
14.72 bracelet
11.16 antique
11.16 jewelry store
8.12 jeweler
8.12 jewellery
7.61 bead
7.61 silver
5.58 necklace
3.55 estate
2.53 pendant
2.03 chain

A few of the keywords in this list have the same weighte...
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AT: 02/13/2012 03:05:52 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 10, 2012

The Importance of Video Transcripts for Jewelers

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Video is a pretty powerful marketing tool. There are many ways you can shoot, edit, and post your own videos online.

One of our favorite suggestions, and perhaps the easiest method to create video, is to simply use your smartphone to record short clips around your jewelry store. In particular you could create video "unveilings" of new inventory as it arrives. Naturally that type of video will have a "home movie" or "reality show" type quality, which is a good way to entice your audience rather than trying to sell directly to them.

Posting your videos to Facebook and YouTube is made easy through a variety of software programs on your PC or Mac, as well as easily available applications for your smartphone. Videos uploaded to Facebook are usually never seen by anyone other than your own Facebook fan base due to the fact th...
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AT: 02/10/2012 02:52:15 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 09, 2012

Building Business with 404 Error Pages

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This is our 404th Daily Golden Nugget. In honor of that number we're going to review what a 404 website error is and how to use it for your advantage.

First, let's explain the basics of what a "404" actually is.

As websites grow and change, it's common to move or delete a web page, but sometimes the links throughout your navigation or in your content are not correctly updated. Other people might have shared your pages or linked to pages of your website, and those links will never be updated. Generally we refer to these non-updated links as "out of date links."

The next time someone clicks one of those out of date links, they won't find the page they expected to because your website will realize something is wrong and will show the user an error message.

Behind the scenes of the website, in your log file, yo...
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AT: 02/09/2012 01:59:26 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 06, 2012

Page Dates and Google SERP Dates

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Google made it their business to provide relevant, recent pages on the first page of search results. They will usually display the date a webpage was created or updated if they can figure the date out.

Bing and Blekko (the only other search engines we look at) do not display a date next to their results, which means people looking for the most relevant, and clearly marked recent information probably will not use either of them. In case you are wondering, we are ignoring the fact that Twitter is really where you will find the most recent information.

Let's take a closer look at what we've learned about Google's date discovery process and how you can use it to your advantage.

They use a combination of time stamps, URL structures, and content clues to determine the dates.

One of the clues we believe Google sees ...
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AT: 02/06/2012 05:38:04 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 02, 2012

Google Maps Still Drives Visitors Directly to Your Doorstep

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We've made it to 400!

In honor of our first Daily Golden Nugget we're going to revisit Google Places today. We've not spoken about it in a while, so it's time to get back to our favorite topic again.

Today's Nugget is a parallel conversation to yesterday's topic. We're going to search for "jewelry stores in Chicago" using Google Maps. Yesterday's discussion was the same search phrase in the regular Google Search.

Navigating our search over to maps.google.com, we see results showing the center of Chicago with Chicago Harbor and Lake Michigan. Google understands that the word "Chicago" is very specific and the results clearly state "jewelry stores near Chicago, IL" even though we didn't type in "IL."

The map shows dozens of little salmon colored dots for many jewelers in the Chicago area. The top ten result...
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AT: 02/02/2012 05:23:25 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 02, 2012

This mistake will zap you from Google Local SERP

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Today is Groundhog Day in the USA. Will the groundhog see his shadow? We there be 6 more weeks of winter or will spring come early? It's been a mild winter so far at the jWAG HQ in New Jersey.

This is also the 399th Daily Golden Nugget!

Today we're going to review an SEO tactic that will help rank you locally.

The most common search phrase we see every month is "jewelry stores." But the phrase by itself shows up far less frequently than when used in a sentence, for example, like "jewelry stores in Chicago."

Whenever Google detects a proper town name or city name in the search phrase it will display results in the local format. That usually includes a list of locations pulled from Google Places along with a map showing pointers for each place. Regular search results appear below the local results.

G...
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AT: 02/02/2012 04:58:56 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 01, 2012

Your Engagement Ring Store is Not a Wedding Ring Shop

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We've covered a few different topics about meta descriptions and meta keywords over the past few days. Today we'll continue with some ideas how to avoid keyword stuffing.

Month after month our own compiled research always shows these keyword phrases among the most frequent searched:

jewelry store
jewelry stores
engagement ring stores
wedding ring stores

Basic SEO strategies dictate that you must include the words jewelry, stores, engagement, wedding, and ring on your website if you want to be found. But don't over use the words; otherwise you might look like a spammer. An overused keyword is one that appears unnecessarily on the page. Imagine the English language without pronouns; how annoying would it be to keep repeating someone proper name over and over again while talking to them? If you can imagine ...
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AT: 02/01/2012 04:30:52 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Go Ahead, Stuff. Your Competitor Will Love You.

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Meta Keywords have been a strong point of contention for many years. Every web page has the option to include a "meta keywords" tag in the background code of the page. Many years ago these keywords were among the first ways search engines would rank a web page.

In the mid to late 1990's, website owners realized they could stuff multiple keywords into that meta tag to boost their search engine raking. Luckily the search engines figured this out and very quickly disavowed the meta keywords HTML tag.

Search engine optimization specialists have stated pros and cons against the continued practice of meta keywords.

Google never used the meta keyword tag for optimization.

In 2009, Yahoo announced that they didn't use meta keywords for ranking. It was thought that Bing didn't use them either.

However...
...
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AT: 01/31/2012 01:31:26 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 30, 2012

Which Sells More: White or Yellow Gold?

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Here's some keyword research data that might help you.

Recently, while reviewing collected keyword data, we noticed a large occurrence of the keyword phrase "yellow gold" for December 2011. For the past 10 years, jewelers have told us that white gold jewelry is much more popular choice than yellow gold. Regular keyword research and traffic monitoring seems to agree with what we are told.

That is, until now.

So what are your latest sales figures for white gold vs. yellow gold? Have you noticed?

According to Google Insights for Search, the phrase "yellow gold" is steadily on the rise every year since 2004. Take a look for yourself at this link: http://bit.ly/yellowgold

Eight tall spikes stand out on the graph, which correspond to the last 8 holiday seasons. But that's not what we want you to notice. ...
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AT: 01/30/2012 04:25:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 27, 2012

Stuff. Stuff. Do NOT Stuff Those Meta Descriptions

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Yesterday we beat you over the head with the importance of having unique Meta Descriptions on every page of your jewelry website. Let's dig a little deeper into what they are really used for.

The Meta Description is not used for search engine optimization, but rather advertising. On all the SERPs from Google, Bing, and Blekko, you will always find a link to a website and a brief snippet below the link. Usually that snippet is the Meta Description, and most of the time you only see 160 characters.

Your Meta Description should not be stuffed with keywords. Here's a prime example of a badly stuffed Meta Description. Don't do this:

"Our Jewelry store proudly offers bridal jewelry, fine diamond jewelry, gold and platinum jewelry, loose diamonds, engagement rings, gemstone jewelry, custom jewelry design, Hearts on Fire...
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AT: 01/27/2012 07:06:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 26, 2012

Is Your Website Company Limiting Your Advertising?

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Meta Descriptions are probably the last thing on your mind when selecting the best website design company to create your jewelry website. But maybe it should be one of the first things.

If you are like most jewelers, you probably asked yourself how someone would find your website when you first created it. People don't just stumble upon your website the day you launch it. In fact you will be lucky to have 40 visitors in that first week unless you advertise the site somehow.

"Will you advertise the website for us?"

That's a common question we've heard through the years, and it's a question you should also be asking your jewelry website designer. Sure, th...
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AT: 01/26/2012 07:03:55 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Even Jewelers Should Tell Google to Ignore Their Parents

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Last week, while analyzing a new website for a jeweler, we came across a duplicate content situation that we'd like to share with you.

Large websites are tricky to manage and organize. Customers will find your website more user-friendly when you split your content and product catalog into useful subsets of pages rather than creating a single long list of links. In fact, a study published in The Net Effect magazine in 2009 revealed that the average person only sees the first 2 and the last 2 links in any link list.

The average person looking at a list of 4 links will be able to read all 4 without problem. Now give that same average person a list of 5 or 6 links to read and the human brain switches into what we will call "scan mode" and they uncontrollably skip the 3rd and 4th links.

Stuff like this you only learn i...
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AT: 01/25/2012 04:37:00 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 24, 2012

You Didn't Break It; But You Better Fix It

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This is part 3 of 3 Daily Golden Nuggets. We are explaining the 3 common problems that can harm your jewelry website. Each is damaging in some way or another and will harm your ranking in Google's search results.

3. Server software glitches.

Until recently, we hadn't seen too many negative effects from software glitches. Surely you've seen these types of errors yourself:

* SEQUEL SERVER database error
* mySQL error
* PHP error
* Template Error

Usually it's only a few pages on a website affected by these errors. There's not much of a ranking impact for independent jewelers to worry about if you have a small website because small sites seldom have heavy database or programming code.

On the other hand, if you have a jewelry e-commerce site you might have several errors without even realizin...
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AT: 01/24/2012 01:49:42 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 23, 2012

Your SEO Guy Can Easily Kill Your Website

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This is part 2 of 3 Daily Golden Nuggets. We are explaining the 3 common problems that can harm your jewelry website. Each is damaging in some way or another and will harm your ranking in Google's search results.

2. Programming glitches that bring down your website.

Programming a brand new website is tricky business. You should never, ever let a programmer make changes to live areas of your website without first testing them on a demo website. We've seen programmers with the best of intentions completely crash a website and not even realize it for hours.

By far the deadliest programming glitches take place when you are writing 302 and 301 redirect code by hand. Many SEO experts will dabble in making your URLs look nice for Google but mistakenly nullify your pages from Google instead.

Many SEO programmers w...
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AT: 01/23/2012 04:11:28 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 20, 2012

The Number 1 Way Jewelers Accidentally Kill Their SEO Ranking

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While preparing yesterday's Nugget about blacked-out websites and that it would affect SEO, we were reminiscing about all the things we've seen that caused websites to break and how each was harmed.

Starting with this Nugget, and continuing for 2 more days, we are going to explain the 3 common problems that can harm your jewelry website. Each is damaging in some way or another and will harm your ranking in Google's search results.

1. Forgetting to renew your domain name.

This is a biggy, and it might be the biggest issue that small jewelry store deal with. Since most jewelry stores do not have an in-house IT guy, it's easy to overlook the importance of renewing your domain name yearly. Your bookkeeper probably doesn't get a paper bill and you might think the email renewal is spam.

The tell-tale sign that yo...
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AT: 01/20/2012 04:09:45 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 19, 2012

What Happens When Your Website is Blacked Out?

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You might have noticed that yesterday a lot of very important (English) websites were blacked out or on strike. At last count there were 137 very large websites on strike with thousands of other smaller sites joining in. They were blocking their content to support the protest the internet censorship bills, SOPA and PIPA. More information is here: http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa

Whether you support SOPA/PIPA or not, it's the website blackouts that we'd like to call your attention to in this Daily Golden Nugget.

On January 16, 2011, just two days before the planned blackout, many website owners realized that turning off their website would be detrimental for their SEO. The blackout was planned for the full 24 hours of January 18, 2011.

Can a blacked out website harm your SEO, even if only for 24 hours?

YES,...
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AT: 01/19/2012 03:44:46 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Don't Dead End Your Mobile Website

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Your mobile website should be brief, only including enough information to accommodate the specific needs of the user. Of course the needs of the user will be dictated by your own advertising.

If your advertising invites customers to "shop from home using a mobile website" they will assume you have a fully functional mobile commerce system. On the other hand you can avoid the expectation of mobile commerce if you advertise that someone can "browse jewelry conveniently on the mobile website before coming into the store." Your subtle changes of words will make all the difference.

Many large retail stores already give consumers easy access to mobile websites loaded with detailed product information and consumer reviews. These types of websites are fantastic in-store shopper assistance tools. But that's not the shopping expe...
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AT: 01/18/2012 06:11:55 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Don't Let Link Building Bite You Badly

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While not all links are created equal, if you want your website to be found, and if you want it to rank highly, you will need to get some other websites to link to yours.

Initially it's easy to use your own Facebook and Twitter accounts to link to your website. Then you can create a blog account on Tumblr, WordPress, or Blogger and link to your website from each blog entry.

Now you need to get links from other legitimate sources. Start with getting your jewelry store listed in every "Dealer Locator" your designers have to offer. Next you should find out which of your affiliated associations have online membership directories and get yourself listed and linked from those.

After those basics things get a little tricky, but if you have hopes in succeeding, you need to somehow make a name for yourself so people will li...
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AT: 01/17/2012 04:19:20 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 16, 2012

Avoid the Filtering, Link From Within Content

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Linking from one page of your website to another is easy and most of the time your customer will simply use the navigation you've created in the top menu and in the left or right navigation. That's the typical, easy way of doing things.

Another typical website setup is to put information and image into the body of your page. Sounds reasonable to include words and photos in the main content area of every page, right?

As it turns out, Google has a way to identify the typical, template type setups on every website. The Googlebot reads all pages and looks for common structure elements to ignore, then concentrates on the rest. Sure, they use your jewelry website's navigation to discover all your pages, but we see no SEO keyword value coming from the navigation on sites we've analyzed.

Another place we don't really see...
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AT: 01/16/2012 04:23:03 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 13, 2012

Find Time For Google Plus

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There's a big change taking place in Google's search right now. Let's take a quick look at this change which might still be ongoing as you read this Nugget on January 13, 2012.

Social posts, user profiles, and business pages from Google+ started to appear in the Google SERPs earlier this week. For you this means it's time to jump on the bandwagon and set up your Google+ Page and start using it.

Including G+ information in the SERP has created many cries of foul play from SEO critics, web experts, and even concerns about Google breaking anti-trust laws. Where Google once upon a time suggested generic websites in the SERP, it has replaced those with information pulled from Google+.

Google is usually known for providing the most relevant results in their search, but perhaps pointing people toward Google+ is not the mo...
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AT: 01/13/2012 02:18:01 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 12, 2012

Tell Google you Currently Mean Business

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Blogs and educational articles help to increase the ranking of your website over the long term. You should build your library of well written articles, with constant usage of jewelry terminology, on a regular basis so Google will credit your site as newer than your competitor.

For long term website health and ranking you need to make a commitment to add information often. You can share educational jewelry tidbits. The best way to gather these is to simply write them down the next time an idea comes to mind. You can expand on it later at the computer.

You could also write a blog entry detailing new jewelry styles each and every time you receive new merchandise; quick use of your smartphone would create fantastic supporting photos for the blog entries.

Here are a few helpful hints to keep in mind as you write th...
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AT: 01/12/2012 04:09:04 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 11, 2012

The Jeweler's Fountain of SERP Ranking Youth

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A few years ago, we could easily rely on a large collection of existing blog entries or educational articles to rank you higher than newer websites with less information; but that just doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

To maintain more stable ranking, you really do need to keep adding new information and even update the same few pages on your website often, like your home page, events, and special offers. An easy page to update monthly is your "birthstone of the month" page, just be creative and tell people about popular birthstone jewelry and how to match it with clothing fashions.

Google uses a very fast method to check the last update time of one of your web pages. It does this instead of spending the time to re-read your whole page. If they find a new page timestamp they send the Google spider to fetch the page. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 01/11/2012 03:05:15 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 10, 2012

It's 2012; hide that embarrassing Pager if you still carry one.

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We're deep enough into January now that you shouldn't have holiday related marketing appearing on your website any more. The holiday season is over, post-holiday sales are completed, and it's time to pack away all those store and decorations for another 10 months.

Although it might seem intuitive that you need to take holiday ads off your website, there's another similar and common website problem that many jewelry store owners fall into.

In a recent Daily Golden Nugget we explained that your SEO will improve if you put coming soon pages on your website with a message that says more than just "coming soon." Once found, Google will revisit these empty pages on a regular basis. When you finally do add content to the page, it will be found by Google much faster than creating a new page and publishing it the same day.

...
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AT: 01/10/2012 04:20:24 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 09, 2012

Push Those Images Up There

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Really... All you want them to do is look around and click. Is that so hard?

Even though you might spend a great deal of time laying out your website, sometimes your site visitors just will not click on what you wanted them to.

For example, you might spend a bit of time writing a really nice website intro for your home page, maybe talking about how happy you are that they are visiting, how great your services are, and the high quality nature of the jewelry you carry. Then below that intro you have some wonderful jewelry photos that's you're very proud of. The photos link right into your product catalog where you've even written snazzy descriptions that would compel someone to buy.

But do they click that beautiful photo? Perhaps not. Perhaps your bounce rate is unusually high at 80%.

So what's the problem w...
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AT: 01/09/2012 05:02:10 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 06, 2012

Have you ever wanted to smash your camera?

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Photography; it can be so aggravating.

You will probably have the worst nightmares about photography during your entire career with a jewelry website. Hiring a professional will cost more than the website design and programming, and taking them yourself often results in blurry jewelry with gray backgrounds.

Let's face it; good-quality photos appeal to users more than blurry, unclear images. In addition, bloggers, Facebook users, and Google+ users are more likely to link to (or share) a good-quality image rather than an ugly smudge on a gray background.

Other than linking and sharing, a crisp, sharp image will also appear better in a thumbnail version that Google will display in the search results, and therefore may be more likely to get clicks and visits.

But what can you do to make your life easier other tha...
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AT: 01/06/2012 12:21:19 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 05, 2012

Set Google's Image Search On Fire

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Our last two Nuggets explained the importance of naming your images more effectively for greater SEO value. But what if you don't have the time, or the ability to name your images?

Built into standard HTML coding is the ability to include an "alt" tag and a "title" tag for every image. These are parameters that would be placed inside the HTML image tag. Here's what it looks like...

Generic HTML image tag:
<img src="IMG_0001.jpg" />

HTML image tag with alt and title parameters:
<img src="IMG_0001.jpg" alt="Zeevoog Diamond in a Diamond pendant" title="Zeevoog Diamond in a Diamond pendant" />

The alt/title parameters serve many very useful functions online, here are a few:

1. When you hover your mouse over the image, you will see the alt/title text in a popup bubble.
2. Screen readin...
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AT: 01/05/2012 04:38:12 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Images That Step Out of Line From the Rest

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What's the first thing you see at the top of every jewelry store web page, or perhaps at the top of almost all web pages? Usually the store logo is up there, and usually the logo is also a link back to the home page of the website.

Google's image search relies on some type of indicator to determine what every image or photo is about. For your store logo you should actually name the image the same as your store.

As an example, "John's Jewelry Store" top logo should have the image name johns-jewelry-store-logo.jpg. That image name is descriptive enough for Google to understand who to relate it to and how to relate it to them.

Many jewelers will also have very large images on their home page of products, ads, or their storefront. Each one of these images should also be fully named. The storefront photo should have ...
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AT: 01/04/2012 05:44:19 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Using Image Names to Attract Visitors

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Here's an easy way to improve the SEO of all the jewelry photos on your website.

Managing website photographs can be a daunting task. The initial photography is usually tricky. Slower computers cause a lot of frustration when you try to save them on your hard drive then view them. Uploading photos to your website also seems to take forever. This is what we all go through, and at the end of the day we just want to walk away from the computer.

We'd like to make a suggestion that will improve the SEO of your images by a lot, but it will also add to the amount of time you spend working on your images.

Typically the digital photos from your camera are names PIC000123.JPG or IMG_123.JPG or something similar. To increase the SEO value of your images you should rename each one using a few words like the following example...
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AT: 01/03/2012 11:30:17 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 02, 2012

A New Year's Resolution for Jewelers to Follow

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Happy New Year!

We tracked some amazing data during the last 6 weeks. It will take quite a while to process it all, but as soon as we have something valuable to share we will publish it out there as an eBook, webinar, or other online blog post. Stay tuned!

The New Year marks a time when many people and companies will start new projects or set new goals... and make those infamous unrealistic resolutions that never last past February 1st. Well, this year we'd like to provide a little suggestion as well.

Try email marketing, and stick with it.

As expected, ever since December 25th our email box hasn't heard a sound; well, maybe a few crickets. Several months ago we signed up to the email lists/newsletters for nearly 100 different jewelry stores around the world. Our signup lists includes large retailers like ...
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AT: 01/02/2012 11:21:20 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 30, 2011

Google Can Sneak Past Your Forms

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The return on investment (ROI) of your website is difficult to measure without direct website selling. Without those online sales, it's difficult to determine how effective your website, and overall online marketing strategy is. One way to measure your ROI is to have a web form to request more information.

Online forms are limited only by your imagination and can have fields to request any tidbit of information you desire. Some jewelers will ask for a birthday and anniversary; some will ask for your favorite precious metal or gemstone; then of course you have the basic contact form that only asks for a name, email and to fill out a comments box.

It all depends on your needs but once the person fills out the form you might reward them with more information, or a downloadable newsletter, or perhaps access into a protected ...
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AT: 12/30/2011 11:14:53 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 29, 2011

Speeding up Your Jewelry Website (part 2)

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As we said in yesterday's Daily Nugget when you experience a slowdown on a website it's usually because of one of these reasons:

1. your computer is slowing down
2. your smartphone is having 3G connection issues
3. the website server is slow
4. you designed your website poorly

As we said yesterday, you can't control #1 and #2. We also gave you brief directions to solve issue #3.

With issue #4 we have to give you some suggestions that might be a little technical, so hold on to these or forward this to your programmer. Here are our suggestions for programming a fast website:

*Minimize the number of blanks.
The fewer blank lines and unneeded spaces there are in your website code the faster it will run. Many content management systems will generate many blank lines while programming code processes. ...
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AT: 12/29/2011 10:06:47 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Speeding up Your Jewelry Website (part 1)

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Your customers expect to see something beautiful when they visit your jewelry website. Typically this means they want to see pretty pictures, and lots of them.

Speed should be one of your biggest website concerns. By now you must have heard that a visitor will spend 11 seconds, or 7 seconds, or as few as 3 seconds evaluating your website before they decide to leave or keep going. It doesn't matter if it's 11 seconds or 3; the fact is there are very few seconds before someone decides to leave and leave forever.

Don't waste those first few seconds with a blank screen because your website is slow.

Here's the deal... The internet lines outside on your telephone pole run at the same speed all over the world. When you experience a slowdown on a website it's usually because of one of these reasons:

1. your comput...
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AT: 12/28/2011 12:21:00 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Be nice with your 404

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One of the frequently overlooked golden nuggets on a website is the Error Page, also known as the 404 page.

A quick check in Google Analytics, Webalizer stats, or AW Stats and you will see the 404 page (usually error.html) is one of the most commonly visited pages on your jewelry website. Users will see the 404 page when they click a bad link, or when you've removed a previously existing item from your jewelry catalog, or when you've removed a page from your website.

Most inexpensive hosting companies, like GoDaddy and HostGator, will use standardized error pages. Those pages usually have the GoDaddy/HostGator information on it rather than your own jewelry store information. They infamously say "Not Found."

For branding purposes those standardized error pages give you a bad image.

Instead, create your own Er...
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AT: 12/27/2011 11:42:57 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 26, 2011

Coming Soon

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The New Year is coming soon, and perhaps so is your website.

Understanding website usability is tedious. Ultimately you never want to trick your users into thinking there's more information to read or more jewelry to look at. It can be very frustrating for users who think they found what they were looking for only to click a link and read "Coming Soon."

On the other hand, it might surprise you to find out that those coming soon pages will help your website in the long run. Google tracks the date a link first shows up on a website, and the date a page is first linked to from another website. So put up those coming soon pages, but make them beneficial somehow.

You could have this message:
"The information for this page is coming soon. We have some other jewelry information here (link) or you can browse our onlin...
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AT: 12/26/2011 11:37:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 23, 2011

2011 Holiday Season Bridal Sales

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As we close out another holiday season, we at the Jeweler Website Advisory Group hope that all our readers experienced a successful holiday season.

How were your bridal sales this season? A recent study shows that only 51% of Americans are married, and that number is declining. The study also shows that other countries around the world are seeing a decline in the number of married couples. Visit this Bitly link to read more about this study: http://bit.ly/vR22pz

With this marriage study in mind we took a close look at trends for "engagement rings" this season to see if we could find any correlation of online interest that agrees with the study.

Online interest in engagement rings shows a slight rise in from October 2011 to December 22, 2011, and there's certainly more interest than Q2 and Q3 of 2011. When looking ...
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AT: 12/23/2011 12:34:30 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 22, 2011

Grain of SEO Gold: Mobile Domain Name Usage

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Mobile websites are rising in popularity and it seems like many jewelers have the same few questions about mobile websites. We're going to answer one today.

Over the past 2 weeks, our team here has activated a bunch of new mobile websites and the #1 question was whether or not the cell phone user would automatically see the mobile version of the site when visiting the jeweler's website.

According to our own research, it's a bad idea to force users of mobile devices to see a mobile version of a website automatically, without warning.

First, the mobile version of your website should NOT use the same URL as the full version of your website. Sure, you could use fancy programming show the full/mobile website after sniffing out what type of computer or mobile device someone is using, but this eliminates choice.

We ...
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AT: 12/22/2011 10:59:40 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Grain of SEO Gold: Domain Name Variations

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This is part of our Grain of SEO Gold Series for Jewelers--short SEO tidbits.

Here's a user-friendly website technique that's not so much about search engine optimization, but instead aimed at your existing customers.

It might seem silly, but consider that the way someone pronounces their letters will affect how they hear and then try to spell your jewelry store's name or website address. Perhaps the letter "a" in your store name is completely mistaken for the letter "i", "e", or "o", in which case the customer will have a more difficult time finding your website later.

Consider registering all the possible misspelling variations of your domain name, or your jewelry store name, and have them forwarded to your primary website. You may also want to register domain names based on the common, yet completely wrong, mispr...
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AT: 12/21/2011 03:53:25 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Single Purpose Content Pages

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This is part of our Grain of SEO Gold Series for Jewelers--short SEO tidbits.

What jewelry services do you provide in your store? You probably have a page on your website with brief descriptions of each service you provide, like jewelry cleaning, pearl restringing, watch repair, watch battery replacement, and everything else. Pages like this are a bad idea because there are too many unique topics grouped together on one page.

Don't let the search engines do a lot of extra work trying to figure out how your web pages are useful. Having too many topics on a single page will lower the ranking for that page. Web page ranking is easier when the page provides a single topic that could answer a simple web search.

Web pages with vague details about different topics are more likely to rank for obscure phrases instead of ph...
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AT: 12/20/2011 01:22:22 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 19, 2011

Grain of SEO Gold: Linking to Your Bait Easily

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This is part of our Grain of SEO Gold Series for Jewelers--short SEO tidbits.

Today's SEO buzz phrase is "Link Bait" and it refers to something you've put on your website that people find interesting and that they will want to link onto.

Originally that linking process would happen only when someone talked about you on their own website, or maybe in their blog, and then manually created a link from their site to yours. But now with all those social media sharing buttons it's much easier to create linkable online content. People don't have to manually create a link to you on their blog, instead they can click a Facebook Like button and add a comment, or a Google+1 button and add a comment.

Link bait can be anything, just as long as people find it interesting. It could be a long blog post about how one of your custo...
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AT: 12/19/2011 10:10:21 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 16, 2011

Grain of SEO Gold: Page Titles

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This is part of our Grain of SEO Gold Series for Jewelers--short SEO tidbits.

Page titles are the undisputed most important search engine optimization item of every individual web page. Every page of your website should have a unique page title that serves as an appropriate headline for the content of your page.

We've found the best SEO results when we match the page title to the page's file name (i.e. the URL) and to the largest headline within the page. Tying those 3 items together have produced successful SEO results throughout all of 2011.

Watch of for default page title settings from the software you're using or the content management system you have. WordPress, Joomla, Magento, and almost all content management systems provide a default setting that auto-creates all your page titles. Most of the time that ti...
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AT: 12/16/2011 03:24:00 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 15, 2011

Grain of SEO Gold: Jewelry Website Bounce Rates

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This is part of our Grain of SEO Gold Series for Jewelers--short SEO tidbits.

Do you ever search Google for the phrase "engagement ring" hoping that your website will appear?

What about searching for other phrases like "custom design engagement ring [Springfield]"?

You're probably pretty happy when you see your website appear for your important phrases. Maybe you've even clicked on one of your own links to see where it leads to within your website. After a quick look at your own site you may even click the back button to see your other SERP page competitors.

Take a moment and think about what was just explained.
1. You searched for a phrase.
2. You saw your website in the SERP.
3. You clicked on your own link.
4. You looked at your page.
5. You clicked the back button to look at your competito...
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AT: 12/15/2011 04:18:01 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Grain of SEO Gold: Update Your Website Often

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This is part of our Grain of SEO Gold Series for Jewelers--short SEO tidbits.

Google likes fresh content.

Having large volumes of information on your website is good to help establish your online reputation, and it's good to attract the occasional organic inbound links. But Google rewards websites more now for how often their site is updated or added to rather than the volume of information available.

We're seeing many younger jewelry websites overpower the SERP rankings of older, more established sites that never update their home page or any other page of their site.

Some time ago, one of Google's more publicly recognized employees, Matt Cutts, explained that Googlebot will visit your page several times to gauge how often it changes before giving up and extending the time between visits.

Since trends,...
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AT: 12/14/2011 12:10:38 AM   1 COMMENT
Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Grain of SEO Gold: Keyword Clouds are Bad

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In honor of this very busy time of year we're going to switch-up our Daily Golden Nugget style and turn these "nuggets" back into actual "nuggets" of information rather than abbreviated training sessions.

We're going to tap into our special library of short SEO tidbits for the next 3 weeks. We're calling this our "Grain of SEO Gold Series for Jewelers"

Grain of Gold #1

Blogs are great. You should have a blog on your website because they really do help with SEO. Every blog post you create should be organized into a category or be associated with related keywords.

Many blog services, like Blogger and WordPress include the ability to display all those related keywords together. This is called a keyword cloud and in it the most commonly used words are larger than the words you use only once or twice.

Ma...
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AT: 12/13/2011 10:48:12 PM   0 COMMENTS
Sunday, December 11, 2011

Google Analytics and Last Minute Holiday Website Changes

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Have you looked at your Google Analytics data recently?
Is your holiday traffic up or down?
Do you know how your customers are finding you?

You may not be aware of it, but in the US, Google recently changed the way the SERP page works. Whenever Google or Gmail users are logged into their account, Google activates a secure web browser session.

In other words they are changing the browser from:
http://www.google.com
to
https://www.google.com

As more and more information is tied together between Google's various products, this seems like a safe measure to protect us all, however there's a serious downside. This security is going to change the way you read your Google Analytics because your search keyword data will slowly disappear.

The "https" feature is designed to block all information unless...
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AT: 12/11/2011 11:27:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 09, 2011

Holiday Smartphone Usage is Way Up Already

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It was predicted that this holiday season was going to see a huge jump in the number of smartphone users for holiday shopping.

Predictions from Google Think Insights and from data presented at the Mobile Marketing Summit in NYC on September 8, 2011 both stated that mobile would be a big player this year.

We decided to check in on the stats now that we are 2 weeks into the season.

75% increase is what we're seeing right now!

The actual numbers we're tracking are showing approximately 25,300 mobile users from a current total 38,300 mobile users. To put it differently, that's about 5.7 mobile users to your jewelry website right now.

Is your website mobile-ready or are you suffering your users through the pinch-zoom madness? Whether you have a mobile site or not, we'd like to give you a quick tip for you...
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AT: 12/09/2011 11:44:35 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 08, 2011

Current Holiday Tracking Stats and How to Use Them

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Let's check in on the ongoing statistics for this current holiday season to take advantage of over the next 16 days.

Here's the Bitly link we set up a few months back to monitor the 2011 holiday season:

http://bit.ly/2011holidayinsights

That leads us to a live Google Insights for Search page showing active data for the most popular search phrases related to Google's Luxury Goods/Gems & Jewelry category. (Of course if you are reading this after December 2011, it's going to be static, preserved data of what was.)

Using the starting date of October 31, 2011 the search interest in jewelry has risen 57% as of Sunday December 4, 2011. The most popular single word is "jewelry." Here's the list of the top 10 search phrases in their order of popularity:

1. jewelry
2. rings
3. diamond
4. ring
5. jew...
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AT: 12/08/2011 10:58:09 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 07, 2011

December's a Great Time for Keyword Discovery

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From our own measurements we know that the average number of organic visitors to a non e-commerce jewelry website are about 45 people per day. When we say "organic" we mean purely found from a search engine without any outside influence. In other words, that's 45 people without factoring in any SEO efforts, social media, or paid ads.

45 is a pretty dismal number and yet many jewelers don't know where to start to increase that number. Sure, you can create a Facebook Page, a Google+ Page, pay for ads... but really it should start with bulking up your existing website content and adding new pages to your site.

Haphazardly adding content to your website will probably waste a lot of unnecessary time. More visitors will find you through organic search engine results in the month of December during the holiday buying rush, and ...
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AT: 12/07/2011 11:07:35 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Two Suggestions to Immediately Spice Up Holiday Sales

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Headlong into the holiday season already and you are either hoping for better or already happily surprised.

We're already hearing it both ways. Depending on the location, some jewelers have higher sales, some are the same as last year, and we've even heard from one that didn't have a single phone call or walk-in at all last week!

We're pretty sure that no matter what situation you are in you would be happy to get a few more quick sales this season so here are two fast tips to fish for some extra customers today.


1. Send an email to your list.

Alright, so we published that entire Holiday Run-Up and many days of email examples, but have you used those ideas? A few months ago we signed up for email newsletters from several dozen large and small jewelry stores. We're monitoring the messages and intensity of ...
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AT: 12/06/2011 11:31:19 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 02, 2011

Spread Some Cheer: Help Your Fellow Jeweler Understand

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"Marketing Online" is the umbrella term that includes all possible sales tactics that occur through your computer or your cell phone. It's not just email and banner ads, but rather it includes anything with a sales message or a story that will eventually entice you to make a purchase.

Common online marketing tactics include:
1. Email
2. Search Ads (the ads you see on Google, Bing and Yahoo)
3. Banner Advertising
4. Press Releases
5. Facebook Business Pages
6. Google+ Pages
7. YouTube Videos
8. Squeeze Pages
9. QR Codes
10. Online Contests
11. Google Places

Every one of these marketing methods could be handled in-house, or you could hire someone to do it for you. The level of skill and proven success rate will determine the price you pay for the hired professional, and it can get expensive.<...
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AT: 12/02/2011 12:01:03 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 01, 2011

December is here: Your Web Page Needs a Purpose

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A subtle emotional shift enters as we begin the month of December and start counting down the days remaining before Hanukkah, Christmas Eve/Day, and Kwanzaa. Gift giving, holiday cooking, family gatherings, and those holiday lights that start to brighten neighborhood streets all help us realize it's that time of year again.

The season of cheer might be here, but uncertain economic times also bring many holiday frowns for all business owners. Increasing material costs means that all jewelry, not just gold, is on the rise. Do your customers prefer leather and beads this year, or will they add a new 18kt charm to their bracelet?

What we know for sure is that many retail jewelers are having a tough time choosing between changes in product lines, paying bills, stock balancing, and if some new marketing strategy will actually ...
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AT: 12/01/2011 11:53:36 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Timing Your Twitter for Holidays and Year Round

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Let's talk Twitter.

It's an annoying system that doesn't seem to make any sense, but yet hundreds of thousands of businesses use it in their marketing every day.

It's almost a year since last we gave you an in-depth discussion of Twitter. If you have yet to join Twitter then you should review the archived Daily Golden Nuggets from a year ago. The links are at the bottom of this Nugget.

What we'd like to review today is more data provided by Dan Zarrella with HubSpot.com which is referenced on this infographic: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/science-of-social-timing-1/

According to @danzarrella you can increase traffic to your website if you tweet and share a link at least 1 time (no more than 4 times) per hour. In fact, Dan shows that when you consistently Tweet 1 shared link per hour you can create a 350% incre...
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AT: 11/30/2011 10:52:40 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Timing Your Facebook for Holidays and Year Round

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Black Friday is gone and Cyber Monday is over; now it's time to tune your online abilities to less automated methods. You might have used automated email sending and automatic website content changing over the last few days, but for the next month you will need to put a little TLC spin on attracting new customers.

Radio, TV, direct mail, and newspapers are all traditional methods to attract customers; you either love or hate these methods. Social networking is time consuming and seems to have a hit or miss success rate.

So what's the suggested strategy? Actually it's one that should work throughout the year...

Back in June 2011, KISSmetrics (www.kissmetrics.com) published an interesting infographic called "The Science of Social Timing." Actually we can't give KISSmetrics all the credit because they got their data ...
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AT: 11/29/2011 09:07:43 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 28, 2011

Jeweler's Holiday Strategy for Facebook Tagging

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Here's a strategy to help increase the visibility of your Facebook page throughout the holiday season. Actually, this works not only for the holiday season but all year long.

Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ each have the ability to connect a post to someone else, and get their attention doing it. Today we're going to explain how the Facebook feature works; it's called "tagging."

When creating a status update from your Facebook wall you can easily mention someone's name, or a business name, in the update box. By the way, did you know that the official name for the Facebook update box is called the "Publisher Box?"

To connect one of your status posts to someone or to another business you simply need to type the @ symbol followed by their name. Facebook will activate a drop down list as soon as you type the first lett...
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AT: 11/28/2011 11:09:10 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 25, 2011

Black Friday Thoughts for Jewelers

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In the United States we refer to this day as Black Friday. Many businesses other than retail are closed to celebrate the long weekend of Thanksgiving. It's the only day off from work before Christmas and the Holiday Season is officially kicked off. A large percent of consumers will go shopping today.

It's time to make those lists and check them twice...

We've not spoken about Foursquare in a while, but it's still growing, and to us it's clearly the winner of the location based services. Facebook has moved away from promoting it's check-in service and Gowalla has reformatted itself more as a tourist guide map.

This Nugget was published on November 25, 2011 in hopes that our readers that morning would take action before their store opened that day.

On November 21, 2011, Foursquare announced the check-in st...
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AT: 11/25/2011 09:38:25 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 24, 2011

Thankful +Page Poll Ideas for Jewelers

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To all of you reading this in the United States, we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving and thank you for reading. And to all of you around the world, we'd still like to say thank you for being loyal followers of our Daily Golden Nuggets.

According to recorded network traffic from the past few years, today will be the lowest volume of internet usage during the holiday season. Christmas Day is the next lowest traffic volume day followed by Daylight Savings, which happened for the U.S. back at the beginning of the month.

It's pretty early in the morning here on the East Coast of the US and we have to get our own turkey in the oven soon, so we'll make this Nugget very short.

The Google+ project is very young; in fact it's still in beta testing with frequent bugs. There are several user forums where feedback is given to the ...
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AT: 11/24/2011 02:50:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Google+ Page Photo Album Ideas for Jewelers

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It's the day before Thanksgiving in the USA and while many of our readers are thinking about stuffing their turkeys, we'd like to talk about ways to avoid stuffing your Google+ Stream with over-shared photos.

Google+ created a nice marriage with Picasa photo albums and the easy to use functionality of Google's image search. You can easily upload 1 photo at a time in a shared post or you can upload multiple images at a time to your photo albums.

Unless you make a living in photography, sharing every one of your photos to your +Page Stream might start to annoy your readers. In the past we've recommended taking photos of newly arriving jewelry with your smartphone and uploading them to Facebook. The idea there was to upload 1 or 2 photos at a time, but organizing your photos on your +Page seems like it will be a lot easier.<...
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AT: 11/23/2011 12:54:37 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Google+ Page Intro to Circles for Jewelers

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The built-in Circle feature of Google+ gives all of us a new way to provide specialty information to customers who want it.

In case you are not aware of how Google+ works yet, let's explain that a Google+ Circle is the terminology and process of organizing your friends, family, and customers into specific groups. The information you post to Google+ can then be shared with the public or with specific Circles so only those Circle members can see it.

If you are interested in the greatest SEO value, then all your Google+ Page posts need to be shared to the "Public." But to create a personalized experience you will need to create a special, personalized experience for your +Page followers. Since Circles allow you to group followers of your Page into smaller audiences, you can then share specific messages with specific groups t...
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AT: 11/22/2011 01:53:15 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 21, 2011

Google+ Page Setup for Jewelers

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It's 3 days before the big kickoff of the 2011 Holiday Season and we're hoping you are all set with your online marketing. Today's topic will help you set up a last-minute local internet presence.

We're going to give you some pointers on setting up your Google+ Page. The Google+ Page and Google Places Page are two different website properties, and you will need to manage both right now. Google has hinted that Google+ will eventually absorb the features of Google Places, but let's not hold our breath on that today. Instead we need to deal with 2 Google business profiles for your jewelry store.

Google+ Pages will help you win your local market, so you need to step up and get this done. Google+ Pages will be important for you because they are already showing up in the Google SERP. Here's an excerpt from the Google+ Pages...
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AT: 11/21/2011 11:51:16 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 18, 2011

Extending Your Jewelry Store's Holiday Well Wishes

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Every year your mail boxes are filled with holiday cards from friends, family, and sometimes even business relations who want to simply say how important you are to them. The typical "Happy Holidays and a Prosperous New Year" are among the common phrases inside holiday greeting cards.

Your Facebook Likes, email subscribers, Twitter followers, and Google+ Circles are supporting your business, and are very important to you as well. A message of holiday cheer and heartfelt warmth can make their holiday a little happier.

Sending messages to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are easy and you shouldn't feel worried about message overload during the last days of the season. On the other hand your email subscribers might be getting tired of hearing from you by the time December 20th comes around.

Depending on how much you've...
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AT: 11/18/2011 00:01:17 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 17, 2011

Jewelry Store Holiday Hours

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Many jewelry stores we've worked with do not have regular 9am to 5pm or 10am to 6pm store hours. Some have morning and afternoon hours and close for lunch, and many personal jewelers have morning hours some days and afternoon hours on other days. Most of the jewelry stores we know will also be closed on Sunday and Monday every week throughout the year.

Naturally these store hours start to shift during the holiday season. However you change your store hours, you need to make sure your customers know about it.

For starters, make sure you have an easy to find page on your website dedicated to your store hours. Yep, a dedicated page that actually says "Store Hours" as the link/button name in your navigation.

We've also seen some jewelers post their store hours on their home page, which might be a good strategy to cha...
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AT: 11/17/2011 00:01:58 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Last Minute Reminders Ideas for Jewelers

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It's crunch time! Well, maybe not really, not yet, but that's the mindset we want you to be in today. Imagine it's the last few days before the holiday. This year the major holidays of Hanukkah, Yule, Christmas, and Kwanzaa are all within the 7 days of one another, and last minute reminders on December 19th could really boost your season end sales.

All of our Daily Golden Nuggets so far have concentrated on selling new merchandise, but one of the easiest last minute reminders should be about jewelry cleanings, prong checking, and watch battery replacements.

You have to admit that most of us will want to look our best when entertaining family and friends over the holidays. Not only do people dress to impress but they also want their jewelry to impress. What good are those 2ctw., IF, D earring studs if they are so dirty t...
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AT: 11/16/2011 00:01:20 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Tis The Season for Jewelry Product Positioning

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Marketing campaigns in early December each year shift from talk of Black Friday and Cyber Monday to campaigns mentioning the "12 Days of Christmas." Many of these marketing campaigns will align themselves with the 12 items in the popular song in hopes to create memory retention.

If you are looking for ways to create memory retention, you don't have to limit yourself to the overly popularized use of those 12 days and items; instead, you should try to be a little more creative. Let's look at some ideas that might spark your own.

The Holiday Season comes jam-packed with many religious traditions, cultural traditions, and popularized TV/movie/theatre traditions. Any one of these can be adapted to help your own brand or specific product positioning.

Creating branding or product positioning for your store or jewelry shoul...
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AT: 11/15/2011 00:01:00 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 14, 2011

Holiday Tools for Jewelry Gift Buyers

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It's the season of giving. Combine that with the social web and you could come up with some creative ideas to weave through your website, email, Facebook, and Twitter marketing. If all your holiday marketing is simply attempting to sell, you will quickly lose your audience, so how can we spice up your website and email messages?

A good place to start is to think about what people do during the holidays other than buy gifts. They get together with family, catch up with friends, decorate their homes inside and out, watch seasonal movies and TV shows, bake, sing carols, and anything else you can think of. What are your traditions during the Holiday Season?

Actually that's a good question to ask on your Facebook Page: What are your Holiday Traditions? You could even make it a contest and have every shared story entered int...
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AT: 11/14/2011 00:01:28 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 11, 2011

Cyber Monday Suggestions for Jewelers

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We've spent each day this week reviewing important marketing tips and SEO ideas as they relate to key shopping days in the holiday season. Today's topic is Cyber Monday, the heyday for those of you that have e-commerce websites.

This year Cyber Monday falls on November 28, 2011. Cyber Monday of 2010 was reported to have 1,028M in online sales according to comScore, but according to our own data it wasn't the highest day for online visitors to jewelry store websites. The biggest traffic day award goes to December 20, 2010, the Monday before Christmas.

The philosophy behind Cyber Monday is that disappointed shoppers from Black Friday and the weekend are still trying to complete holiday shopping but ran out of time over the weekend. Many e-commerce websites will announce Cyber Monday specials to capture the online sales. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 11/11/2011 00:01:57 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 10, 2011

Small Business Saturday SEO Suggestions for Jewelers

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As mentioned a few days ago, American Express is trying to popularize Saturday, November 26, 2011 as the day when people should go out and buy local, not online, and not from big brand stores. This is the 2nd year in a row they are promoting it and they call it "Small Business Saturday."

Those looking to support their local community will visit the stores they already know about. Other shoppers might make an extra effort to read their local newspaper or direct mail circulars and ValPak, Money Mailer, or similar ad mailers.

Smartphones are everywhere and we are already inside the mobile age. Mobile websites are a thing of "today" not "tomorrow." However, if you don't have one yet there are still many things you can do to beef up the chances of being found on Small Business Saturday.

The first thing you need to do i...
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AT: 11/10/2011 00:01:35 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Black Friday Email & Social Suggestion for Jewelers

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Black Friday emails continue to surge every year. According to Responsys.com there was a 67% increase in Black Friday emails in 2010 from previous years.

Black Friday shopping starts very early in the day, so if you're planning on sending an email that day you need to send it out at 3AM or 4AM local time so shoppers are reminded of your deals and include you in their shopping schedule.

Here are some suggested subject lines for Black Friday, a few of which come from Responsys.com.

"Wake Up! Don't Miss BLACK FRIDAY DEALS"
"Black Friday Deal Buster Specials on Jewelry"
"Black Friday Only - Free Necklace with every Pendant"

Naturally that last suggestion of a free necklace would be a loss leader. Take a look at yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget for some recommendations on low cost suppliers.

Within the...
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AT: 11/09/2011 00:01:20 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 08, 2011

Thanksgiving Email Suggestion for Jewelers

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Advertising in the days leading up to Black Friday will be flooded with "Door Buster Deals" that entice those potential shoppers looking for the best deals of the Holiday Season and you can easily participate in that advertising strategy with minimum, last minute investments.

Hopefully with our Lookbook suggestion yesterday, you have a clearly defined strategy of which products you will be pushing for the holiday season, but if you haven't yet selected a line of jewelry with retail prices of under $200 and under $100 then we've got some ideas for you. It's these price points that consumers will be attracted to on Black Friday, and it's these items that you need to announce in your Thanksgiving Day email.

Yes, we're actually suggesting you send a Thanksgiving Day email this year. According to Responsys.com there was a 46% ...
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AT: 11/08/2011 00:01:30 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 07, 2011

Black Friday Holiday Jewelry Lookbook Preview Ideas

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Today we're going to give you some ideas for email and website content that you should launch on the Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving. That's 2 weeks from today, so if you jump on this right now, you can still get it done.

To begin, we'd like you to take a moment and think about all the emails your vendors have sent you in the past week or so. This year it seems like many vendors are promoting their low-cost jewelry lines. These low-cost lines include silver charms, woven jewelry, alternative metals, and we've seen a few specials on traditional jewelry including pearls.

Black Friday shoppers will probably be more interested in finding gift items for people on their list than directly interested in spending time looking at your expensive ring showcase; so stay focused on the holiday buyers on Black Frida...
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AT: 11/07/2011 09:18:42 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 04, 2011

Holiday Event Email Announcement Ideas for Jewelers

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How's your holiday planning shaping up?

We assume many of you are doing last minute post card printing or are just about to mail out the invitations for November's pre-holiday store events. There are lots of last minute media buys being offered for strategic newspaper and local magazine and advertising.

What's happening with your online stuff? Have you planned your website content yet? Website theme? Email marketing strategies? Suffice it to say we've thrown a lot of ideas at you in the past 35 days, but if you've not taken any action yet you will miss the season.

Today we're going to throw more actionable email marketing ideas at you. As usual, these ideas are based off successful campaigns from previous years.

Let's start with emails focusing on upcoming events. You might have a few important events i...
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AT: 11/04/2011 01:05:52 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 03, 2011

Holiday Facebook Photos for Jewelers

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We avoided deep Facebook marketing topics during our official Holiday 2011 Run-Up. We hate Facebook entirely, but every time we try to do the research, analyze the data, and publish our findings, Facebook changes their interface again and voids all our work! It's rather frustrating.

Let's take a step back from our own work and look at what other experts are saying about using Facebook during the Holiday Season. We'd like to share some thoughts from Crystal Vilkaitis; she's the director of social medial for SnapRetail and she works with independent retailers teaching them how to use social media.

Crystal suggests to use Facebook for photo sharing on Facebook. As we already know, photos and videos attract a lot of attention in Facebook, and she agrees. In a recent blog post Crystal suggested a few strategies for Faceb...
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AT: 11/03/2011 12:10:53 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 02, 2011

302 Strategy for Jewelry Store Holiday Marketing

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During the first week of October one of the jewelry website SEO strategies we gave you was to add your holiday website content to your website immediately so Google could find it and serve it up to holiday shoppers when the time came.

Well, that time is just about here. Many national brands launched their holiday websites yesterday, November 1, 2011. Let's look at them:

Blue Nile: http://www.bluenile.com
1. Their background was changed to include their signature snowflake.
2. BlueNile's website design signature is the home page large red ribbon. That red is now darker, less noticeable.
3. As of yesterday they added a small red bow next to "Find the Perfect Gift," which in...
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AT: 11/02/2011 01:04:52 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 01, 2011

All Gold Ring Roads Lead Back To Your Store

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There's a tactic we commonly use when creating AdWords campaigns that allows us to target online ads to appear to people who have already visited your website. The idea is that if someone took the time to browse through your website, they were probably interested in your jewelry, but weren't interested enough to purchase at that moment; so we keep showing them ads to make them remember the jewelry store.

This is a very successful strategy that Google AdWords has enhanced greatly in the last 12 months or so. Google explains the effectiveness in the fact that people are targeted with specific offers. These offers were not, and will never be, visible on the regular website, making the person feel like they found a special deal or even say to themselves "wow, thankfully I didn't buy that a day ago."

We're explaining this proc...
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AT: 11/01/2011 12:10:46 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 31, 2011

Scary Email Tactics You Should Follow

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Officially we have closed the last chapter on our Holiday 2011 Run-Up. The book was getting to be too long and we wanted you guys to read it instead of being frightened to death by its magnitude. If you haven't downloaded it yet, you can still do so from our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/JewelerWebsiteAG.

We still have a lot of important research data that will help you make the most of your marketing dollars during the most important part of your year. Although not included in the Run-Up book, it makes sense for us to continue presenting our findings.

A few weeks ago, and on page 32 of the Run-Up, we gave you several days of subject line examples for your holiday email marketing. They were straight forward examples to get you thinking, but we didn't present ...
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AT: 10/31/2011 01:46:51 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 28, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: Holiday Mobile Website Tuning

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We've had an entire month of Holiday 2011 Run-Up Daily Golden Nuggets. All together, they are published as a 121 page book and available from our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/JewelerWebsiteAG.

Today's Daily Golden Nugget is the last one from the Run-Up book. There are a few lingering topics we didn't cover, so look for those throughout November.

Today we need to talk about your mobile website, and the need to appeal to the smartphone users. Regular phone owners will not be looking at your mobile site, so your target should be the technology users. Just like all marketing, you need to know who your target audience is and then how to appeal to them.

Some of the data we are presenting today comes from the Holiday Mobile Marketing Summit we attended in NY...
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AT: 10/28/2011 12:59:23 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 27, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: Mobile AdWords for Jewelers

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Over the last 6 months we've monitored an average 97.52% increase of mobile visitors to jewelry websites across our network. The actual number of mobile visitors to a single website is pretty small each month, as in about 60 visitors, but that number has nowhere to go but up.

Did you know that you can create mobile AdWords ads? According to Google, 1 in 3 mobile searches have local intent.

According to what we mentioned yesterday, 87% of people walking are using their cell phone. Of those surveyed, it was found that people use mobile search 77% of the time spent on their phone. Finally, 33% of that 77% are searching for something locally.

What does that mean with real numbers?
100 people walk by, 87 of them are using their cell phone.
Of 87 people, 77% or 67 of them are using a search engine.
Of those 67...
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AT: 10/27/2011 01:16:32 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: Mobile Marketing for Jewelers

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Of all the chapters in this Holiday 2011 Run-Up, this might be the most important. Consumers are using smartphones today, right now, this exact minute. The data is undeniable and we're going to step through it and show you what the experts are saying and how you can use mobile technology yourself.

In the past 12 months we've heard many retail jewelry store owners tell us that "their customers do not use smartphones" and they don't need to create a mobile website even though those same jewelers themselves have an iPhone or an Android. This is similar to what we heard in 2003 when jewelers claimed their customers didn't use the internet and they didn't need a regular website.

We have our own in-house mobile research methods, and we've been tracking mobile usage for more than a few years, but to get a broader view of the mo...
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AT: 10/26/2011 01:12:32 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: Continued Learning From Google's 2010 Data

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Search has become a natural part of the everyday consumer buying cycle. Consumers want to be informed, save time, and above all not be disappointed with their purchase. Search gives them all that, even when it comes to buying jewelry.

According to Google Think Insights, the average consumer will spend 11 days researching jewelry before making a purchase. Although not all research was entirely online, 91% of those surveyed said they started their research online and then followed through with going to the store in person or returning to the website on their PC at a later date.

For 2010, consumers reported that the most important source for their online research was a brick and mortar store's website, followed by e-tailer online websites. Search engines ranked at #3 for the source of online information. Many retail jewele...
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AT: 10/25/2011 01:27:42 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 24, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: Learning From Google's 2010 Data

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Google collects data, a lot of data. They collect usage data every time you use their search engine or any of their services and the Android phone. This data is available through a few different online sources; the one we use the most is Google Insights for Search. Many of the ideas we come up with are based off actionable data we see from Google Insights. We have 32 pages of Google Insights for Search charts in our final Holiday 2011 Run-Up eBook.

In 2009 and 2010 Google extended the standard Insights service and published several reports referred to as "Think Insights." We've combed through their Post-Holiday Learnings for 2011 to find the usable golden nuggets jewelers should know about.

Let's start with the key Takeaways from the Holiday 2010 data:
1. Because of the economy, consumers shopped promotional periods...
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AT: 10/24/2011 11:40:06 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 21, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: Website Tuning and Customer Retention

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We have two last topics to cover today that will complete our week long of Holiday Run-Up Google AdWords directions.

The first topic is fine tuning your AdWords landing pages for those gift givers. As we previously explained, the gift giver has a predetermined budget, and they will spend that budget even if the gift recipient would never have spent that much on themselves. You should fine tune your website to help those gift givers.

First, let's add a bunch of new links inside your product catalog. You need specific links that say:
"Gifts for Under $100"
"Gifts for Under $200"
"Gifts for Under $300"
"Gifts for Under $500"

These links don't have to be real pages; in fact they could be fancy URLs that lead the user into a special search page for your website. You're going to need your web programmer's he...
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AT: 10/21/2011 12:19:53 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 20, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: Holiday Bundles to Help AdWords

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As we navigate through the murky and expensive waters of Google AdWords during the holiday season, there are a few other things that could help close that sale.

Have you ever seen those holiday gift baskets at your favorite big box store? Here in New Jersey we have several Costco and BJ's stores. Right now, in the middle of October, they already have shrink wrapped holiday gift baskets for sale. There's a basket bundle of video games, another for movies, and of course a basket of edible goodies.

These baskets present the gift buyer with a perceived greater value. Among those bundled items is probably one quality item and then the rest are lower cost to produce or perhaps even closeout items from the manufacturer.

The movie "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" had its ups and downs in the ratings a...
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AT: 10/20/2011 01:11:38 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: AdWords Trademark Issues & Ad Copy

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Over the last 2 days we've given you ideas for targeting Pandora jewelry in your AdWords ads. Since the price point on Pandora is so low, the product lends itself nicely for gift givers on a limited budget. We're going to continue talking about Pandora today but before we give you specific ad ideas, we need to offer you some advice on Google AdWords trademark policies.

The procedure explained below will work for any vendor, not only Pandora.

Google AdWords monitors ads and will automatically disqualify and disable them when found to violate a trademark. It doesn't matter if you are a Pandora "Gold Store" or a "Silver Store," you are still not allowed to use the name "Pandora" in your AdWords ads without some type of permission.

Permission is easy to achieve if, and only if, you have a written contract with Pandora....
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AT: 10/19/2011 01:10:32 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: Your Holiday AdWords Budget

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Speaking of budgets, let's talk about your holiday AdWords budget. From January through October you should be spending your advertising budget on targeting keyword phrases that return the highest ROI. Perhaps these are long tail phrases like "pandora rose bead," but certainly not simply "pandora bead." The long tail phrases (those 3 words or more) are usually much less expensive than the 1 or 2 word phrases.

Here's the cost as of today's measurements:

"pandora bead"
Extremely high search volume and competition
Top ad position costs $3.29 per click

"pandora rose bead"
Extremely low search volume and medium competition
Top ad position for less than $1.50 per click

During December you should expect to see the AdWords click prices to spike up to $35 for most generic jewelry phrases. Last year we mea...
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AT: 10/18/2011 10:58:48 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 17, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: Understanding AdWords for the Holidays

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You can spend 10 months trying to fine tune your Google AdWords campaign, really learning the ins and outs of how to attract your target customers to your jewelry store, but nothing you learn is going to prepare you for the affect that the Holiday Season has on AdWords.

The Holiday Season is about gift giving, and the holiday gift giving mentality is different than the rest of the year.

As you are most defiantly aware, jewelry is the gift to give throughout the year when someone is celebrating a birthday or job promotion, to say thank you, or to cheer someone up. Jewelry is given during economic hard times as a way of saying better times will come and during economic good times to celebrate what you have.

However, even though the Holiday Season has religious celebrations at its core, gift giving can greatly overshado...
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AT: 10/17/2011 01:27:20 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 14, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: Cyber Monday Email Ideas

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Cyber Monday is the Monday immediately following Thanksgiving Day in the USA. Last year the company comScore tracked $1,028M (that's a Billion) in online sales that day. Sales were up 16% from 2009.

Cyber Monday got its name from the idea that holiday shoppers who were discouraged by their in-person weekend shopping experience would continue their shopping on-line that Monday morning.

This year Cyber Monday is November 28, 2011. Your strategy, should you decide to accept it, is to remind your customers early that morning about your jewelry store and what you have to offer. Even if you don't have an e-commerce jewelry website, you still need to get their attention.

According to our research we expect that on Cyber Monday morning, your customers will be tempted by emails from Macy's, Kay, Tiffany, David Yurman, Jar...
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AT: 10/14/2011 12:01:18 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 13, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: Black Friday Email Ideas

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Today's Daily Golden nugget is a continuation of the holiday email research from the website Responsys. During the Holiday 2010 Season, Responsys tracked emails from more than 100 large retailers and published a report of holiday email trends.

We've taken their generic retail research data and reworked it for the retail jewelry store. The ideas presented here come directly from Responsys, with a little jWAG tweaking.

Let's turn our attention to the flurry of emails sent to consumers on the morning of Black Friday. For 2011, Black Friday in the USA is November 25th.

Any emails for Black Friday should be sent out during overnight hours, perhaps about 3am or 4am, so customers can find them waiting on their Smartphone first thing in the morning. Remember that many shopping malls and large department stores will open a...
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AT: 10/13/2011 10:57:47 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: Thanksgiving Day Email Ideas

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Many large retailers and department stores have started a new trend of promoting online sales on Thanksgiving day and even opening their retail stores late in the evening on Thanksgiving Day. Responsys.com tracked a 32% increase on Thanksgiving day email traffic in 2010 and according to comScore, online sales for Thanksgiving Day 2010 jumped 28% to $407 million.

With this data it's obvious to us that that people are reading emails from their smartphones after their Thanksgiving dinner. They might be relaxing on the couch with the family, even watching the big game on TV, but secretly they are planning their holiday purchases.

You don't need an e-commerce website to benefit from a Thanksgiving Day email blast. You could use the email to plant an early thought and/or direct the person to your mobile website so they can view...
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AT: 10/12/2011 12:06:12 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: Pre-Black Friday Email Ideas

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During the months of November and December, email marketing experiences a huge spike in usage as the entire retail industry seems to remember that they can contact consumers through this "old fashion" communication method.

We have been monitoring emails from a handful of jewelry stores over the years, but we know that some of the best holiday email research comes from the website Responsys. For this Daily Golden Nugget and for this part of our Holiday Run-Up 2011, we're going to directly reference their research.

During the Holiday 2010 Season, Responsys tracked emails from more than 100 large retailers and found that every holiday related message contained one of the following types of messages somewhere in the body of the email. As usual, we've modified these where appropriate to make your job easier.

- Shop our h...
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AT: 10/11/2011 12:11:36 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 10, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: Website Holiday Themes

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Just like you would decorate your store, once the Holiday Season starts you should add a holiday theme to your website.

Above all other marketing campaigns, this theme change will signify to your visitors that the holiday season has arrived. The theme change should take place whenever you start your holiday marketing. If your first holiday email or print ad is November 15, 2011 then that's when the website theme should change. Otherwise we don't suggest changing the theme until the evening before Thanksgiving.

Here are some good suggestions from what we saw during the Holiday 2010 Season and previous years from a few retail jewelers.

Let's start with some suggestions to modify the header of all your pages. You could add a specific link to your header navigation menu. Last year Land's End added the word "GIFTS" w...
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AT: 10/10/2011 10:56:09 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 07, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: Don't Forget Video

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Every few months we like to remind you that the internet is not just about your jewelry website, or about Facebook, or Twitter, Google+, or any number of blogging sites, etc., etc., etc... It's also about video.

Where would our Holiday 2011 Run-Up be without some new information about video? So let's get to it.

In the past, we heavily recommended the Flipcam as one of the best portable video cameras. Even though these hand held video cameras are still available today, Cisco has officially discontinued the product line and will not support it after December 2012. These are still fantastic cameras and if you can find one in a store lower than $150 you should surely grab it.

Those who are video camera challenged might have video capability already hidden in their pocket, that is, if you have a smartphone. Most smartp...
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AT: 10/07/2011 12:30:29 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 06, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: Ninja Keyword Analysis

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Today's ACTION ITEM is to find out what keywords people are using to find your website, and then to make sure the content on your website is suitable. Not only that, but we'll show you how to find important keywords that other jewelry stores are not competing for.

First you need to navigate over to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

This is Google's public location for their AdWords Keyword Research tool. If you have an AdWords account, you should log into that instead and go to your Reporting and Tools tab, then the Keyword Tool option.

Once you get to the Keyword Tool, you will find a form at the top where you can type in a "Word or phrase" or a "Website." To start this exercise let's type "www.jamesallen.com" into the website ...
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AT: 10/06/2011 12:29:00 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: Importance of Product Reviews

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Review websites are popping up everywhere. Not too long ago, the only review sites we worried about were Google Places, CitySearch, Yelp, InsiderPages, MerchantCircle, and a few others. In the Spring of 2010, Google was so hungry for reviews they created new HTML tags to tell Google when a review was showing on a page.

Since then, reviews online have exploded because digital marketing agencies realized the power behind the tool. Does your marketing agency get it yet?

The review services mentioned above are typically out of your control, or you may have to jump through a few hoops to manage the reviews. Other online reviews can appear on your Facebook Business Page or on your website, and these are easier to control.

Your first ACTION ITEM for today is to contact your web programmer and tell them you want a review...
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AT: 10/05/2011 11:40:21 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: Content Answers Questions

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There's an idea among first time website owners that it's best to slap up a website with perfect jewelry photos, prices, and a Buy Now button and they can sell online. At the other end of the scale there's another camp of first time website owners that feel it's best to slap up a website with basic information about the jewelry store and they will attract new customers into the store.

Both of these ideas are completely erroneous. There is no way to slap a website together and become a success. What's worse is that we know, and our staff has attended, many seminars at jewelry trade shows where both of these myths are perpetuated.

You might be familiar with the phrases "Business card Websites" and "E-commerce sites from vendors." The business card site is a basic 1, 2, or 3 page website that puts your name online. The e-c...
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AT: 10/04/2011 11:02:44 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 03, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up: Add Important Content Pages Now

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This is Day 2 of our Holiday 2011 Run-Up preparations for your website. We want you to start adding all holiday related content to your site now so Google and Bing have time to find it by the time Thanksgiving comes around. For our European readers, that's the 3rd Thursday in November.

Google will take a while to find your new website content and show it in the SERPs. So what you need to do this week is figure out what items and brands you will carry during the Holiday 2011 Season and put that information on your website.

Let's explain using an example.

We noticed a recent ad for Alamea Hawaii that we liked so we'll give them a mention here. They produce hand-crafted wood and titanium rings. Their website is http://www.alameahawaii.com and they make a good candidate for t...
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AT: 10/03/2011 11:38:20 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 30, 2011

Holiday 2011 Run-Up Begins Today

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Starting today and continuing for the next several days (yet to be determined) we're giving you our concentrated action SEO, SEM, and mobile marketing action plan for the Holiday 2011 season.

Welcome to the Holiday 2011 Run-Up!

Last year's Run-Up presented a 9-part Online Marketing Plan; how many will be in this year's? We don't know yet because we're still putting it together.

The 2011 jWAG Run-Up will have the most recent search engine optimization techniques, best search engine marketing ideas, methods to improve your online catalogs, and mobile marketing ideas presented as action items to plan for and then execute on specific days of the holiday season.

BE WARNED: This is where we tell you exactly what to do so you have the best chance of winning sales over your local competing jewelry store. We're not...
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AT: 09/30/2011 01:16:18 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 29, 2011

Part Two: 9 Tips Jewelers Need to Work With SEO Pros

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This is the final part of our long series on Black Hat SEO and recommendations on avoiding it.

Yesterday we gave you the first 4 of 9 tips every jewelry should be aware of when hiring an SEO Professional to work for you. These are very blunt directions that will make working with your SEO professional much more rewarding.

Please read Part One here: http://bit.ly/nnfjKL

5. As for those ROI reports, don't be unrealistic with your expectations. The web is not a static ecosystem. Obviously you want more traffic, more customers, and higher profits, but traffic and customers cannot be created or destroyed; they instead are stolen from other websites.

As soon as the efforts of your SEO Pro start working, you need to realize that your competitor will step up their SEO game, too. T...
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AT: 09/29/2011 01:18:08 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Part One: 9 Tips Jewelers Need to Work With SEO Pros

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Over the last 6 days, we've given you Black Hat SEO discussions and examples of how to avoid them. Unfortunately there are a lot of SEO "professionals" out there that want nothing more than to take your money and promise you results.

A quick Google search for "link building services" returns 35,300,000 results and tons of ads, meaning there is big business in link building. Do you think all those paid link building services will openly tell you that they use Black Hat techniques? Remember that Black Hat SEO refers to anything you do that will trick the search engines into ranking you higher in the SERP.

If you're not doing your own website SEO you will eventually need to hire someone to do it for you. Between today and tomorrow we're giving you 9 very blunt directions that will make working with your SEO professional mu...
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AT: 09/28/2011 12:24:53 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Black Hat Doorway Pages vs. White Hat Landing Pages

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We're continuing our topic of Black Hat SEO techniques that will cause your website to be banned or seriously penalized by search engines. Today's topic is about "Doorway Pages".

A Doorway Page is any page added to a website simply to target a specific keyword phrase, but instead of being useful to the reader it usually has very little content on it and leaves the visitor feeling dissatisfied.

Some SEO companies have automated software that will create dozens of doorway pages for your site. For this process you only need to plug in your list of keywords and the software will search the internet for brief information or definitions of those keywords and create these nonsense pages.

For example, an automatically created doorway page for the phrase engagement rings would have your store name, address and then might scr...
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AT: 09/27/2011 10:02:08 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 26, 2011

Black Hat SEO: Link Farming Kills Rankings

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We're continuing our topic of Black Hat SEO techniques that will cause your website to be banned or seriously penalized by search engines. Today's topic is about "Link Farms" and bad link building.

Link building is the process of posting a link to your website on another website. This can be as simple as putting a link in your next Twitter status update, or posting a link to your Facebook wall. On Google+ you can build a link to your website with a Public post. Building links slowly in this way is considered to be the correct, organic way.

Any time you pay someone to put a link on their website pointing back to yours it is considered paid link building. All the search engines hate the paid practice of link building and consider the process within the SEO boundaries of Black Hat.

However, Google has at least sai...
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AT: 09/26/2011 12:43:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 23, 2011

Black Hat SEO: Thin Content Jewelry Catalogs Kill Rankings

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We're continuing our topic of Black Hat SEO techniques that will cause your website to be banned or seriously penalized by search engines. Today's topic is about "Thin Content".

The highest ranked websites usually have the best original content, and a lot of it. Typical well ranked websites have a lot of interesting information on every page. The exact amount of interesting information is unknown because Google won't tell us. Many SEO experts say you need at least 250 words of unique content, but we feel you need at least 400 words.

"Thin Content" is the phrase given to a website, or a web page, that has very few words on it, say less than 250 words per page. We're going to review the common thin pages that so many jewelry stores have created without even realizing.

As we work with jewelry stores, we find many ha...
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AT: 09/23/2011 11:19:38 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 22, 2011

Black Hat SEO: Spinning Yellow Sapphire Articles

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We're continuing our topic of Black Hat SEO techniques that will cause your website to be banned or seriously penalized by search engines. Today's topic is about "Article Spinning".

Websites with the highest ranking in the SERP tend to also have a lot of pages. Each additional page added to a website creates extra visibility in the search engines. This visibility happens simply because you are giving them more information and more words to help categorize your website.

Most news websites rank highly for a variety of topics. CNN.com and MSNBC.com are highly ranked for many random keywords simply because a keyword phrase was mentioned in an article. Your local newspaper will also rank highly for local searches and local topics.

There will be a time when you want, or need to have your website rank for new keyword ph...
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AT: 09/22/2011 11:53:45 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Black Hat SEO: Engagement Ring Keyword Stuffing Example

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Today, and for the rest of the week, we are continuing our topic of Black Hat SEO tactics that you should NOT be doing on your website. Black Hat SEO refers to unethical technology strategies or website content that will negatively affect your SERP ranking or will get your website banned from search engines.

Today we are explaining Keyword Stuffing and we'll give you an example of it. But first, let's give you a little background information for the benefit of website beginners out there, or to refresh your memory.

In order to have a web page appear in the SERP for a keyword, you need to use that keyword on your page. If you want your website to appear for the phrase "champagne diamonds," you will need to use that phrase on your website.

The question you should ask yourself is how many times the phrase "champagne ...
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AT: 09/21/2011 12:16:10 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Black Hat SEO: Explaining Hidden Text

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Instead of giving you ideas for online marketing and SEO research, we're going to spend today's Daily Golden Nugget explaining something you should absolutely NOT be doing on your website.

Let's start by explaining that a search engine is simply a machine that follows a set of programming rules. In the early days of the web, the search engines would read a website and evaluate its credibility according to simple factors like how many times a word was showing on the page, or how many links go to a page, what was written in the meta keywords, how many words were bold, etc.

Early web programmers quickly learned how simple the process was to get ranked highly in a SERP. If the competition had the phrase "engagement ring" on a page 10 times, then you simply needed to have the phrase 11 times and you would rank higher.

Na...
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AT: 09/20/2011 01:05:25 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 19, 2011

Is That Designer Brand Good Enough For Your Website?

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We recently had a customer request to have the brand Phillip Gabriel put on their website. We did so, and they said we misspelled the vendor's name. We realized that Phillip Gabriel uses the name Phillip Gavriel in their logo, but seem to switch back and forth between Gavriel and Gabriel on official documentation, such as their footers on the phillipgabriel.com website.

This brand, from Royal Chain, has made a curious choice for their jeweler customers--do they market their brand as Phillip Gabriel or Phillip Gavriel?

Our jeweler, for example, saw it as an error that we used the spelling "Gavriel" instead of "Gabriel," and we wanted to dig a little deeper into this. Could Royal Chain be hurting themselves, and the retail jewelers trying to sell this brand?

Not unlike BVLGARI/Bulgari, which you'll see uses both, too...
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AT: 09/19/2011 01:46:40 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 16, 2011

How Jeweler Should Use Bold and Italic in E-Commerce

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This Daily Golden Nugget will demonstrate one possible way to use the HTML 5 tags of <b>, <strong>, <i>, and <em>. If you missed the previous two nuggets you should check them out before reading this one.

Previous Nugget on <b> vs. <strong>: http://bit.ly/??????
Previous Nugget on <i> vs. <em>: http://bit.ly/??????

The product detail page on every jewelry e-commerce website has some sort of table presentation of information. Usually it shows the metal type, carat total weight, diamond shape, etc.

Here a full example of typical information found on a jewelry product detail page:

14k White Gold 0.85ct Diamond Engagement Ring (this is the item title)
The center diamond is included with this sophisticated three-stone cathedral engagement ring that features two...
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AT: 09/16/2011 11:20:54 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 15, 2011

Italic vs. Emphasize HTML Example for Jewelers

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This Daily Golden Nugget is 4th in a series about HTML 5 issues that the jewelry store owner should know. This topic, and the previous Nuggets this week, are not too technical so please read through them all so you and your website are prepared.

Today we are going to explain the difference between the 2 different ways you can italicize words on your page, and give you solid examples that you, the jewelry store owner, will understand.

As an introduction, let's begin with the tags themselves. We have the "Italic Tag" and the "Emphasize Tag," and in their default functionality both will make words italicized on your web page.

Here's what they look like:
<i>Art Nouveau</i>
<em>Art Nouveau</em>

So why are there two ways create italic text?

The original <i> tag was created...
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AT: 09/15/2011 11:09:41 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Bold vs. Strong HTML Example for Jewelers

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We are in the middle of a week of Daily Golden Nuggets all relating to the hardships jewelers will face when we are all forced to use the up and coming HTML 5 technology.

On Monday this week we talked about web browsers and how their advancements are forcing us to make changes.

On Tuesday this week we told you about a few common HTML programming tags that are being phased out and gave you a clues how to protect yourself.

Today we are going to explain the difference between the 2 different ways you can bold words on your page, and give you solid examples that you, the jewelry store owner will understand.

As an introduction, let's begin with the tags themselves. We have the "Bold Tag" and the "Strong Tag," and in their default functionality both will make words bold on your web page.

Here's what they look...
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AT: 09/14/2011 11:07:55 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Dead HTML Tags That Jewelers Should Avoid

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A few short years ago, changing your website meant you needed to hire a programmer. The expense was always high and many websites were never changed (practically abandoned) after they were initially created.

Today most, if not all, websites are created using various types of content management systems (CMS for short) that give you, the jewelry store owner, the power to edit your own website.

We understand that the technical stuff behind your website is of complete disinterest to you. You have diamonds to mount, rings to size, employees to worry about, and bills to pay. We know that you are probably a complete neophyte when it comes to web programming, and that's okay.

On the other hand, like a rolling stone through the desert that gathers a little dirt, over time you might have picked up a few little HTML programmi...
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AT: 09/13/2011 11:42:50 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 12, 2011

Web Browsers On Growth Steroids

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HTML is the programming language for the web. Any web page you look at through a web browser needs to be presented using the Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML for short.

In the early days of the World Wide Web, HTML was pretty simple. In those days all you needed was a way to show words on a screen, some images, and create links from one page to another. The functionality of HTML quickly expanded and new web browser versions kept coming out to support the expansions.

HTML blossomed into different versions and by time early public awareness of the web came about in 1996, we were already using HTML version 3.2. That was quickly replaced by HTML 4 in April 1998.

The next version of HTML, version 5, promises to solve a lot of programming issues between proprietary web browser techniques and programming methods. One ...
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AT: 09/12/2011 01:30:00 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 09, 2011

Unexpected Blogging & Bounce Back Disasters

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In Daily Nugget #227 we explained the importance of lowering your bounce rate. In that Golden Nugget, we explained that you should try your best to lower your bounce rates as much as possible. You can read the full Nugget here: http://bit.ly/iExxJP

Google interprets bounce rates and uses them to judge the quality of your overall website when compared to particular phrases or topics. Google actually refers to topics as "themes" and that's a common word amongst website SEO professionals.

We've always said, and continue to teach, that you should be publishing educational articles or blog entries on your website. Each additional post increases the overall visibility of your site by giving Google more information to index and provide back out to users.

Blogging works. It's an amazing...
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AT: 09/09/2011 10:54:34 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 08, 2011

Advantages of Getting a New Jewelry Website

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Yesterday we answered a question posed by one of our readers. She wanted to know the disadvantages or drawbacks of replacing her current jewelry website with a brand new one. We couldn't quite think of specific disadvantages so instead we wrote out 3 hurdles in the website redesign and programming process.

Today we'd like to give you 3 specific advantages to having your jewelry website redesigned and replaced. We could probably list 100 reasons, but we're simply going to pick the top 3 we feel are important today.

1.
With a new website comes a new design; at least we hope you will get a new design!

In the real world, we can each identify building architecture from different periods. Many of us can easily identify building and interior decorating styles from our own lifetime. Can you remember the late 1960's? ...
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AT: 09/08/2011 10:33:52 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 07, 2011

Disadvantages or Drawbacks of Getting a New Jewelry Website

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We received an interesting question recently from a well established jewelry store. They wanted to know the drawbacks or disadvantages of "getting a new website." We thought the question was interesting enough to answer as today's Daily Golden Nugget.

To answer this question, let's first assume you have had a website for at least 2 years, and you are thinking of getting a new one.

So what are the "disadvantages or drawbacks of getting a new jewelry website?"

Before we itemize a list we'd first like to say that we really don't see a disadvantage of making a new website that runs with current standards of technologies, website usability, and design that appeals to the current market. With that said, let's outline the hurdles you need ...
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AT: 09/07/2011 01:15:47 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Website Pop Up Disasters for Zale Corporation

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Here's a website usability and conversion optimization tip for you: Kill those pop-ups!

Have you seen those annoying pop-ups on websites? Some pop-up as soon as you arrive on the page and some will pop-up when you try to leave the page; both are very annoying.

As of today, here's an annoying example of a pop-up: http://www.reeds.com/

The REEDS Jewelers website shows an immediate message for "First Time Visitors" that says:
"First Time Here? REEDS would like to welcome you with an extra savings of $25 off any online purchase of $150 or more. Enter coupon code FTV25150* at checkout. *Excludes Roberta Z Ideal, REEDS Diamond, Chamilia, David Yurman, Everlon, Swiss Watches, and Swarovski. "

Sure, that's a great offer for a jewelry store, but the pop-up is so immediate and ann...
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AT: 09/06/2011 12:27:56 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 02, 2011

9 Things Jewelers Should Test On Their Website

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Yesterday's Nugget was pretty long to get through, but we really needed to explain how to use Google Website Optimizer ( http://bit.ly/qEVCUP ). It is such an important tool and it's easier than Google Analytics. Although, if you are still wondering what you would want to test then today's Daily Golden Nugget is for you.

Some basic things to test with Google Website Optimizer:
1. Captions on images
2. Font size, line spacing, and font family
3. Adding or reducing white space around the site
4. Culling your content or swapping it with bullet points
5. Font and link colors, underlined or non underlined links
6. Button sizes and colors
7. Jewelry photography methods using different background other than pure white
8. Headlines
9. Repositioning your call to action message<...
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AT: 09/02/2011 12:14:38 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 01, 2011

Google Website Optimizer in Plain English

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This Daily Golden Nugget is probably a little more advanced than most others. Thankfully, though, it's not too technical because the Google tool we're going to explain takes care of all the confusing tech stuff.

We want to introduce you to the world of website split testing, also known as A/B testing.

As we've said in the past, your website is never really complete. You need to keep working on it to improve your conversion rates, lower your bounce rates, and overall increase your sales. But other than simply watching the daily sales reports, how do you know if your website efforts are getting better?

The answer is A/B testing, and with it you can create 2 variations of the same web page and have Google run its magic until the better of the pages appears.

The magic is built into the Google Website Optimizer t...
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AT: 09/01/2011 11:24:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Website Usability Results for Jewelry

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Today we'd like to tell you about one of our secret analysis tools. It's easy to use, colorful, and it will help you improve your website's usability.

When done correctly, usability testing can greatly improve your website's conversion rates.

We'll tell you about the secret tool we use in a little bit, but let's first tell you some of the things you can learn from usability testing.

List of What Usability Testing Shows You:
1. Most popular page of your website.
2. Where users move their mouse while surfing from page to page.
3. Where users click.
4. How far users scroll down on your page.
5. What part of your page is most visible in a browser window.

Google Analytics will provide data for #1 and #3, but the rest requires another type of tracking program.

Here's some specific data we've be...
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AT: 08/31/2011 11:19:44 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Hiring Someone To Help With Conversion Rate Optimization

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In case you're just tuning in, this post is one in a series of training for jewelry store owners. Today's topic is "Conversion Rate Optimization" and how to find someone to help you measure and improve it.

Measuring your conversion rate on any single web page will be tedious. We've previously said you could use the free Site Overlay tool inside Google Analytics to do it, but before you even get to the actual testing you need to outline your goals and how you will achieve them.

The Jeweler Website Advisory Group exists simply to share website education with jewelers. We actually hope you will take our ideas and use them directly, but if you don't have the time, then you will need to hire someone to help you.

Here are some things to think about when looking to hire an ad agency, web designer, or even an in-house empl...
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AT: 08/30/2011 01:34:18 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 29, 2011

Conversion Rate Optimization Thoughts for Jewelers

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Over the last two weeks, we first covered email topics and then landing page concepts that could create a continued experience and answer questions presented in your emails. Let's now move on to the next step in your internet marketing for jewelers' education: Conversion Rates.

Way back on January 22, 2010 we published a brief vocabulary lesson explaining Conversion Rates. Here's the link http://bit.ly/nTn9NW in case you want to read it. That lesson names the following 6 potential methods of determining conversion rates:

1. Email Newsletter Signup
2. Question submitted through the Contact Us form
3. Registration for an event
4. Fill out a form to receive a discount offer via email
5. Comment on your blog
6. Setting up a wish list

Of course, with e-commerce the ultim...
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AT: 08/29/2011 12:26:17 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 26, 2011

Landing Page Planning for Jewelers

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This Nugget is one in a multi-part series about email marketing and landing pages to capture customer attention and increase business for retail jewelry stores.

Every email you send needs some sort of additional call to action. Every email should not be viewed as just an email solicitation; instead, it's the first contact for a larger marketing campaign. Call it the tip of the iceberg, if you will.

In the email, offer a link for the person to continue reading on a well designed landing page; that is the second step of your marketing campaign. Let's break down some elements of what you could have on that landing page.

Good Landing Page Elements
1. Appropriate campaign related photo/video
2. Relevant and interesting copy
3. Another call to action


1. The Photo:
When it comes to selecting the pho...
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AT: 08/26/2011 12:45:45 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 25, 2011

The Psychology of Landing Pages

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Our previous 8 Daily Golden Nuggets covered many topics of email marketing. Today we'll switch gears into a new topic that is directly related to all your email marketing, and that's your website Landing Page.

Every marketing strategy should have a message and a call to action.

Typical calls to action are:
• "Visit our store"
• "Visit our large showroom"
• "Give us a call"
• "Fill this bag with unwanted gold and bring it to us to sell"
• "Visit our website"
• "Click this link for more information"
• "Sign up for your own wish list"
• "Scan this QR code for more information"

We assume you will have website links in all your digital advertising. Those links shouldn't simply direct people to your website home page, or to a web page which is only somewhat ...
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AT: 08/25/2011 11:32:46 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Emails of Giving.

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Geesh, this extended series on emailing strategies and statistics is getting pretty tiring! After 7 previous Nuggets covering topics like what day to email, who to email, who's name to use when emailing, and even the time of day to email, thankfully today is the last day.

We've explained some reasons why it's good to use quality paid email services (they keep you honest) and a few of the features from each. They all have short term trial periods so just try them out.

Last week we voiced our opinion that we don't believe it's worth the trouble to send fancy HTML and image emails to your customers any more since most email programs automatically block HTML images.

Today we'd like to tell you about a controversial strategy for sending emails that is so far out of the box that you'll have a hard time letting go enough t...
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AT: 08/24/2011 11:20:30 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Sure Fire Way to Avoid Email Open Rate Disasters

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Those fancy email systems are pretty cool. You know the ones we're talking about: they allow you to magically insert your customer's first name in the subject of the email and in the first line of the email?

Example--
Subject: "John this is a great offer"
Body: "Hi John, ... "

Let's ask a question.... What is your opinion about this type of personalization? When you see your name in the subject of an email do you automatically think its spam?

Please cast your vote on Twitter by tweeting out either of these messages:
"I vote that my name in an Email Subject is spam @jwebag"
Or
"I vote that my name in an Email Subject is NOT spam @jwebag"

You could also cast your vote by writing on our FB wall at http://www.facebook.com/JewelerWebsiteAG
<...
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AT: 08/23/2011 12:18:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 22, 2011

Jewelers Using Facebook as an Email Service

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EDIT: This Nugget is Defunct because Facebook took away this feature.

In the previous few Daily Golden Nuggets we've analyzed emails and given you some times of the day, days of the week, and months of the year to send your emails. We've also explained the differences between HTML emails that have photos and plain text emails, and when to use each.

There are a variety of companies that you can purchase your email service through like iContact, Constant Contact, and AWeber. But what about Facebook?

Have you ever given a though to using Facebook for email marketing? Let's explore some ideas for doing just that.

First, forget about your personal Facebook account. We've been saying it for more than a year, and many other internet marketing professionals will say the exact same thing: Do not use your per...
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AT: 08/22/2011 01:45:21 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 19, 2011

Time to Kill Your Existing Newsletter Email Schedule

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In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget, we gave you some email statistics and suggested a few strategies that might improve your open rates. Those were based around the time of the day, and as a recap it seems like it's better to send your emails in the evening and overnight instead of during the day.

Today we're going to give you a 12 month plan for when to send emails.

At the bottom of this email, you will find the links for the research we're using to write this Nugget. It comes from 3 different sources that we are boiling out the important conclusions for jewelry stores. Most of the data is quite general since it includes all emails sent throughout the USA. Where possible, we will narrow our conversation to "retail" statistics.

Let's first consider the best days of the week. The last time we carefully reviewed em...
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AT: 08/19/2011 01:28:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 18, 2011

Email Open Rate Statistics for Jewelry Stores

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Today we'd like to give you some quick statistics regarding email marketing, and how they relate to your jewelry store.

At the bottom of this email, you will find the links for the web pages we're getting our data from. Feel free to look over it all yourself.

First, let's talk about the time of day to send emails. A few years ago our own research showed that the best time of day to send emails was 1PM local time. That statistic is no longer true. Now that users are able to read emails in a wide variety of ways, we are not constrained to post-lunch time email reading.

Naturally you can send your emails at any time of the day, but what time will have the best chance for someone to read it?

It turns out there are 3 different times, and each has a different audience. You could have as much as a 20% chance of s...
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AT: 08/18/2011 12:41:31 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Requirements for Your Email Newsletters

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As you may recall, we send these Daily Nuggets out using a process in our own office. At least 3 people are involved in preparing these every day and the Nuggets are tested on different email readers and cell phones before sending them to you. It's part of our job to do this for you and we spin these out fast enough using our internal process instead of paying an outside service.

On the other hand, you need to spend time selling jewelry and not fiddling with sending email, so it would behoove you to pay for a service.

Let's name check some services. We do not specifically recommend any of these, and each one will work depending on your needs.

1. Mail Chimp - This is built into Gmail and could make your life easy.
2. Constant Contact - This is probably the de facto standard when you want easy to set up newsletter...
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AT: 08/17/2011 11:12:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Don't Call Your Email Newsletter a Newsletter

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A year ago (Aug 17, 2010) Wired Magazine published an article detailing how "The Web is Dead." It came with a fancy chart that shows how websites are fading away as peer-to-peer (i.e. social networking) and videos are taking over. Take a look: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/

We just want to mention this because it did create quite a bit of hubbub in the internet marketing world and the data does not correspond to other reputable sources like comScore.com. If you look at that chart it actually shows you that email is also dead; even more dead than the web!

It's not true; email is far from dead.

Email is very much a viable form of communication and marketing; in fact, the summer of 2011 marks the 40th birthday of email.

If you haven...
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AT: 08/16/2011 01:15:01 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 15, 2011

Are You Spamming Your Customers?

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What's the difference between email you send to your friends and family and the email you send out in bulk to your customers?

Constant Contact is one of the popular, easy to use email newsletter management systems. They provide colorful email templates that you can manipulate and turn into beautiful masterpieces of email creativity.

Perhaps you sit and marvel at the beauty of those email newsletters before sending, only to have your excitement crushed by those built in statistics that show how few people open the email (called open rates).

There are many reasons for low open rates, including spam filters, firewalls, poor subject lines, and customers who don't view images in email. You can only track when an email is opened if the person views images. Have you ever see that "Having trouble viewing this email? Click ...
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AT: 08/15/2011 11:13:37 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 12, 2011

Is Your Product Catalog a Mute?

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Every so often someone asks us how we can keep producing educational material on jWAG yet we never ask for money. Other internet marketing training companies for jewelers charge something monthly, so how do we do it? jWAG is funded by the web services company Sapphire Collaborative (www.sapphirecollaborative.com). Almost all the educational info presented here is put to use inside every website they create. Mobile websites, SEO, e-commerce, Facebook marketing, Google Places... The Sapphire Collaborative staff handles it so you can keep running your store. Give them a call today at 888-872-0274.

In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget, we covered the topic of writing quality descriptions on your product pages. Today we're taking a step back and would like to talk about the category/section landing pages of your online catalog...
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AT: 08/12/2011 12:30:46 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 11, 2011

Writing Successful Product Descriptions for Jewelry Website

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In layman's terms, search engine optimization is a delicate balance of information you show on your website: programming code used to make your website, ways that people can find your website, and how you treat people once they try to use your website.

We agree with the top reports from organizations like SEOmoz and Search Engine Land. They usually indicate that the Titles of your website pages and the quality of the content on your pages are the most significant website ranking factors.

The "quality of the content" is a strange phrase that many SEO guys will throw around but no one ever really defines it. That's because it's an indefinable concept that may change from website to website or industry to industry.

The search engine companies will never publicly say how they rank the content on your website. Google do...
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AT: 08/11/2011 11:08:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 10, 2011

301 Redirect Example

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Today's Daily Golden Nugget is an example of how to create 301 redirects from your old website to your new website.

Many web design companies or consultants will build you a new jewelry website design without considering how it will destroy your current website's ranking.

We've covered the topic of "301 redirects" several times in our Nuggets and training. It is an important service that you need to ask your website guy to do. However you will need to do the redirects yourself if you've decided to do your website yourself or hire a young programmer.

So let's explain exactly how to create 301 redirects for your jewelry website.

First, you ...
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AT: 08/10/2011 10:56:57 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Let's Thank Lucy For This One.

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I'd like to tell you a little story today, and with it perhaps a little education lesson. To begin, I ask you to sit on the floor around this old black and white television...

Saturday August 6, 2011 was Lucille Ball's 100th birthday. Google commemorated the day by changing their logo to look like a 1960s black and white TV with movable channel knobs and a volume switch. On the TV screen the name Google appeared just like the opening credits from the "I Love Lucy" show. The Google doodle was actually a playable TV displaying 6 different "I Love Lucy" clips on each of the channels selected from the movable knob.

Over the last 12 months Google has created some amazing logo doodles. (In case you don't know, each of those unique Google logos are called "doodles.") Some of my favorites are from Earth Day 2011, the Bunse...
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AT: 08/09/2011 12:03:49 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 08, 2011

5 Types of Online Jewelry Catalogs, Part 5

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This is the last Nugget in our series explaining the different types of online product catalogs that retail jewelers could have.

Many newcomers in e-commerce (jewelry or otherwise) think they will set up websites overnight and start taking orders tomorrow. Certainly, this is possible if you have a Type 1 catalog we described a few days ago, but the reality is most run forward blindfolded with a poor execution strategy and lofty expectations. They end up with very bitter feelings of the entire experience and blame their web programmer for dysfunctional websites when in fact the jeweler should have researched the process.

Let's try to shed some light on the most difficult type of product catalog you could ever set up. We're trying to include all the details your hired website company doesn't tell you. After all, they just ...
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AT: 08/08/2011 11:39:09 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 05, 2011

5 Types of Online Jewelry Catalogs, Part 4

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This is Part 4 in our series of Daily Golden Nuggets explaining the different types of online product catalogs that retail jewelers could have.

In the previous three Nuggets, we've covered three basic online product catalog concepts. We know that you are extremely busy running your jewelry store and setup of those previous three types could potentially fit into your schedule.

On the other hand, the Nugget today and tomorrow are great ideas, but they do require a commitment of time, or an employee.

In case you've joined us in the middle of our conversation we are reviewing the TYPE 4 CATALOG today. Here're the types of catalogs we've identified:
Type 1: Vendor Controlled Websites and Catalogs ( VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 08/05/2011 12:25:27 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 04, 2011

5 Types of Online Jewelry Catalogs, Part 3

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This is Part 3 in our series of Daily Golden Nuggets explaining the different types of online product catalogs that retail jewelers could have.

The internet provides unlimited opportunities for marketing, sales, and interacting with your customers. Most internet users have no idea what happens behind the scenes to control a website. This series of Daily Gold Nuggets is trying to shed some light on the back office management of 5 different types of product catalogs that a jewelry store could have on their website. So far, we've explained the easier types to set up.

In case you've joined us in the middle of our conversation we are reviewing the TYPE 3 CATALOG today. Here're the types of catalogs we've identified:
Type 1: ...
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AT: 08/04/2011 11:27:50 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 03, 2011

5 Types of Online Jewelry Catalogs, Part 2

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This is Part 2 in our series of Daily Golden Nuggets explaining the different types of online product catalogs that retail jewelers could have.

On the surface, there might not seem to be a big difference between one online product catalog compared to another. Many include the same common features like wish lists, order history, and customer accounts. But from behind the scenes you as the jeweler need to figure out how to maintain the system and weigh the importance of ease of maintenance to customer satisfaction and how that all affects your overall bottom line.

In case you've joined us in the middle of our conversation, we are reviewing the TYPE 2 CATALOG today. Here're the types of catalogs we've identified:
Type 1: Ve...
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AT: 08/03/2011 11:25:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 02, 2011

5 Types of Online Jewelry Catalogs, Part 1

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We have conflicted feelings when it comes to independent retail jewelry stores trying to compete in online e-commerce. On one hand we know it's a good idea, but on the other hand there are sensible business decisions as to why a jewelry store should avoid it.

Truthfully we would like to see all jewelry stores create some type of online catalog, even if it's only a small sample of their inventory that showcases the quality of their jewelry.

The options for e-commerce or online showcases might seem limitless, but there are really only a few types. Let's review the different types and explain how you could use each of them, as well as the SEO strategies you should employ.

As usual, we have way too much information to tell you in a single Daily Golden Nugget so we're splitting this one up over several days. You may wa...
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AT: 08/02/2011 01:57:49 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 01, 2011

Passionate Designers Can Be Your Secret SEO Product Strategy

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Let's talk about buying shows, holiday inventory, and internet advertising.

We're right in the middle of the trade show season and every show you go to will have plenty of options for holiday inventory and new trends that could work in your store. What is the most important reason you select new inventory for your store? We'd love to hear your feedback on that.

We attended the JA show in New York City from July 26th to 28th and asked some very hard questions to many vendors both large and small. Today we're going to review some of our findings.

We tried to divide our time equally between small designers, new designers, and well established jewelry manufacturers. We asked all of them what marketing assistance they offered their retailers, specifically how each one would help the retailer add content to their websit...
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AT: 08/01/2011 12:24:12 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 29, 2011

Real Life Meta Description Example

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In yesterday's Nugget, we explained some basic strategies of meta description writing for the different types of pages in your website.

Today we're looking at a specific way to write your meta descriptions.

It is important to remember that only 150 characters of your description will appear in the SERP. This is a standard across all search engines. The search engines do not use the meta description for SEO ranking, and no one other than us tech-heads will ever view the source code of your website, so it's a waste of your time to write more than 150 characters.

Be wary of any SEO professional that wants to create long descriptions. Find the most concise way to say what you need to about a page.

Let's say you want to write a description for your page showing a collection of custom made wedding and engagement r...
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AT: 07/29/2011 01:52:09 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 28, 2011

Meta Descriptions are Your Online Jewelry Window Displays

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Increasing the popularity of your website now goes well beyond the basic search engine optimization techniques, but as Google's machine learning techniques have improved we've had to think way beyond the number of times a phrase is mentioned on a page, your page title, and whether you use the bold-tag on a page.

If you are new to the Daily Gold Nuggets and want to learn some of the basics of SEO, please refer to our online library from January through about May 2011 where we published many specific SEO strategies.

There are only so many times you can talk about the same common topics of SEO before we bore you to tears, but today we are going to once again revisit the topic of Meta Descriptions and give you an attack strategy for dealing with this tedious task.

What you will need to get this Nugget completed:
1. A w...
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AT: 07/28/2011 10:43:51 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Tablets in Your Jewelry Store

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Happy Anniversary to the Daily Golden Nugget! Any of you jewelers out there want to send us an anniversary gift?

Our first Nugget covered a very advanced topic that most of you hadn't heard of at the time: QR Codes

Today we're going to step into another new realm with an idea that you probably haven't thought of before: Tablets in your store.

The iPad revolutionized mobile technology in early 2010 and since then hundreds of companies have come out with their own tablets, many using the Google Android OS.

During our August 2010 Live Event 2 web broadcast we demonstrated how you could use an iPad as a sales tool in your store. At the time, we suggested using it for showcase displays, to display messages at your repair take-in counter, and the advanced idea to use it for your Lady's Night events where you could ...
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AT: 07/27/2011 11:38:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Google Places Pages in Flux

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Since the major change to Google Places last week, several features of your Places account have vanished.

Some places accounts are missing descriptions and some are missing the store hours. The missing description was a bug and should be fixed, hopefully by the time you read this. We've already seen the store hours starting to show up again.

It seems like all of the places pages are missing the Payment Terms and Additional Details part of the Places page. The Additional Details area of your account is where we always recommended adding the brands that you carry, jewelry services, credentials, and other random keyword phrases like "diamond wedding rings."

These changes are certainly disruptive to the users who have come to expect these details. We see these changes as to detrimental so we went searching through man...
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AT: 07/26/2011 01:19:53 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 25, 2011

Major Updates to Google Places

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Early last week, there was an important video announcement from one of the Google+ developers about Google+ Business Profiles. Originally they were going to keep G+ Business Profiles to a limited group, similar to how they have the trial period for current users. However they changed their mind and they are just going to allow everyone in (without a trial period) as soon as they are ready.

They are rushing, but they are not starting from scratch.

As we expected, Google is making huge strides forward to integrate Google Places and Google+. As of June 22, 2011 the appearance of all Google Places listings (i.e. your store's listing on Google Maps) now matches the fancy gray, red and black design that you see in Google+ and on google.com search.

The update to Google Places is definitely a step toward the Google+ inte...
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AT: 07/25/2011 01:23:58 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 22, 2011

Yahoo Local and Retail Jeweler Online Reputation

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Before we close out this week's discussion of online reviews, let's reference back to the study we gave you in Monday's Nugget: http://bit.ly/oVuu21

Since it accounts for 57% of your online reputation visibility we need to talk a little about Yahoo! Local and how to manage your business listing there.

Yahoo! populates their listings with a phone book database. Unless you manage your own listing, any information you find there will be limited to that found in public phone records.

Only registered Yahoo! users can write reviews or edit listings on Yahoo! Local. You will first need to create a Yahoo! account to edit your own business listing.

To get started go here: http://local.yahoo.com

When you're on that screen, search for your st...
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AT: 07/22/2011 01:14:02 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 21, 2011

Reviews: Don't get caught doing this; you will be ruined.

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In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget we told you about Citysearch.com and presented a case study of Roslyn Jewelry in NYC who has bad reviews dating back to 2002 and obviously spammy reviews in the past two years.

Citysearch requires a monthly PPC advertising commitment of at least $299 before they allow you to rebut your reviews. Instead of paying, Roslyn took the frugal approach by creating 4 bogus user accounts each with 1 review. These reviews were posted on the same date, which is a red flag for bogus reviews.

As we said a few days ago, online reviews are forms of user generated content that will help or hurt your business. On the other hand, if done correctly they are also forms of direct marketing.

If you find yourself in the same unfortunate Citysearch position as Roslyn, and you want to take the frugal appro...
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AT: 07/21/2011 11:41:18 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Citysearch Reviews can Devastate Your Business

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So what do your customers really think of you?

From our recent research study we've found that online review sites account for a lot of your business visibility.

Citysearch.com might show a 5 star user rating for your business and no one notices you because the 5 stars are almost expected now. But there can be a particularly devastating effect to your business if your ratings are low, and you would feel it.

Several members of our team are currently working with a large supplier that has a disastrous online reputation. Every review site has dozens of complaints about them, but until we got involved they simply didn't know how to fix the problem. Let's use our experience and give you some ideas that will help in your own reputation management.

Sometimes those online reviews can illustrate a long standing probl...
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AT: 07/20/2011 10:58:07 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Jewelry Store Reputation Management

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Yesterday, we gave you our three month research study results to illustrate how online user generated content is out there, and potentially damaging until you lock it down.

InsiderPages, Yahoo Local, and CitySearch are the top 3 review sites you should worry about. Let's look at a case study to show exactly what you need to pay attention to.

We randomly searched InsiderPages.com for all jewelry stores within 20 miles of our office to find a good example.

We found:
188 jewelers with 5 star reviews from 1 or more reviewers.
178 jewelers with 4 star reviews, mostly from a single reviewer.
52 with 3 star reviews, many from 2 or more reviewers.
13 with 2 star reviews from 1 or more reviewers.
20 with 1 start reviews from 1 or more reviewers.

These review systems are always wrought with spam. Some b...
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AT: 07/19/2011 10:46:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 18, 2011

Study Results: Small Business Online Social Presence

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We'd like to tell you about a little research project we started on March 13, 2011 and concluded July 1, 2011. We'll explain what we did, give you our results, and then explain why this is important for jewelry stores.

Our goal was to determine how many small businesses are actually using online reviews, social media, Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook, etc. as part of their online strategy.

Our target market was Houston, Texas, where we chose the unofficial diamond district on Richmond Ave. as our test epicenter.

We don't actually have anyone physically in Houston. This test was purely via the internet by searching in Google Places where we randomly selected independent restaurants, hardware stores, toy stores, various boutiques, and many other types of retail businesses. We tried to get a completely random sampling of...
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AT: 07/18/2011 12:40:28 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 15, 2011

Google Plus Business Predictions for Jewelers

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I really didn't expect my review of Google+ to take all five days this week. This will be my last interstitial Daily Golden Nugget (for at least a few days).

Yesterday I started a list of features I foresee being integrated into Google Plus. Google's public company status prevents them from publicly announcing what they are working. The GOOG stock is actually doing very well since the launch of Google+.

Yesterday they reported their quarterly earnings were up and they've officially reached 10 million Google Plus users. I read a report on SearchEngineLand.com explaining how many people have not accepted invitations sent to them. Those of us that have are starting to realize the more compelling nature of Google Plus over Facebook.

When using Facebook, I usually keep a browser tab open. I occasionally look at that ...
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AT: 07/15/2011 01:28:18 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 14, 2011

Google Plus Hangout Notes and Future Features.

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As I poke around Google+ I see hints of future features that will eventually merge the online digital world together. So many obvious features relate to white collar jobs. However, there is nothing yet for retail businesses specifically, like useful tools that retail jewelers can use to talk to jewelry customers.

Yesterday, one of the Google+ engineers requested feedback on how the videoconferencing Hangout could be used for business. Within (literally) minutes there were 303 responses! However, not a single one related to retail businesses.

As of today, I will predict your vendors using the video Hangouts to talk to you; but I still don't see a good use for video conversation between you and your customers. If the video quality were better I could argue the idea of showing jewelry, but honestly the video quality sucks ...
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AT: 07/14/2011 11:12:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Huddles and Hangouts: Useful Google Plus Features for Jewelers?

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Google Plus continues to dominate tech news on many websites as Google publishes new tweaks of the service every day. I've been reading and testing to figure out how and why you, as a retail jewelry store owner, should get involved in Google+.

I suppose I should tell you about the video chat feature called a Hangout. Google gave us a brand new way to video conference between people. This feature allows you to video conference up to 9 friends to communicate directly through your webcam.

In a Hangout, you can all see each other in small thumbnail videos while the person talking is presented in a larger video window. The Hangout also has a chat, and a way to watch YouTube videos together.

It's quite fascinating and I know I'll find it useful when I want to hold a conference with my team when I'm traveling, but at the...
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AT: 07/13/2011 01:25:22 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Google+ Circles for Jewelers

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During the jWAG Live 1 event, I was approached by John S. Cryan IV who stated, "Matt, you seem to be a Google Lover," to which I replied, "my data tells me more than 95% of jewelry store traffic comes from Google, so why shouldn't I be?"

As of today, the statistic is down to 89.7% with Yahoo holding on at 4.2% and Bing up to 3.8%.

89.7% of traffic is a lot, and that's why the Google+ Project is going to be so valuable for jewelry stores. It's going to be very easy to attract customers from some other area of Google right into your Plus account.

It seems like the invitation feature for Google+ is still working, so just reply to this post if you'd like me to send an invite. When you get the invite, DO NOT create a business account. Business accounts are not available yet. You need to do this as yourself.

Gett...
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AT: 07/12/2011 11:47:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 11, 2011

Introduction to Google+ for Jewelers

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Hello, I'm interrupting this regularly scheduled Daily Gold Nugget to bring you some direct reporting from the construction site.

Normally our Daily Nuggets are written from a compilation of data we've either measured or had direct experience with. Personally, I don't like to feed into the noise of so many SEO professionals that say one thing or another about SEO and you never know who's right. Thankfully, my team specializes in jewelry SEO and all our research data is specific to that sector.

Today, and maybe for a few days this week, I'd like to talk to you directly about Google+. First, let's get you up to speed on the nomenclature since I might refer to it as "Google Plus," "G+" and even "GP."

I finally got an invite to Google+ on Friday, July 8, 2011 and dove right in. I sent out emails to all of my customers...
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AT: 07/11/2011 11:08:20 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 08, 2011

Does Twitter Still Matter Now that Twitter and Google got Divorced?

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Many changes in Google took place over the last seven days.

Google+ was announced
Google changed their user interface
Google and Twitter got a divorce... but we don't know who ended up with the engagement ring and wedding band.

Since October 2009, Google and Twitter had an agreement to supply a direct real time feed from Twitter to Google. This feed was an important part of the Google SERP when breaking news was searched, or for times when someone happens to search for a hot Twitter topic.

Any time a TV show suggested to join them on Twitter for a live conversation, you could be assured that the Twitter feed would appear in the SERP when someone searched for the TV show's name while it was broadcasting.

On July 3, 2011 Google's agreement with Twitter expired. Google has turned off all real-time search r...
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AT: 07/08/2011 02:12:51 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 07, 2011

Panda Update and Low Quality Jewelry Website Pages

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We've spent the last several Daily Gold Nuggets talking about the changes Google implemented with its Panda Update, and gave you suggestions on how to avoid having yourself negatively affected.

Over the next few months, we will report on new information about the Panda Update process as we learn it. But before we conclude this current set of Panda-specific Nuggets we have one more topic to talk about today.

After careful consideration, we believe we see a correlation between a Panda recommendation and something that we've previously told you about, so let's review.

According to the Panda process, Google will lower the overall ranking of your website if you have any low quality pages. If you review this page ( http://bit.ly/lPUebd ) you will see their explanation "that low-quality c...
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AT: 07/07/2011 11:55:25 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 06, 2011

The Panda Sniffs Out Trusted Website Designs

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We're continuing on our journey to explain the effects of Google's Panda Update and how it changes the way websites are examined and ranked.

Until Google unleashed their Panda on the web all website ranking was based on a mathematical model that measured clear quantitative items like:

* How many inbound links does a site have?
* How many words are on each page of the site?
* How many times are important keyword phrases used on the page?
* Are your page titles written well?

As a SEO company, we will admit that it is easy to win in a mathematical numbers game if you know how to correctly count the numbers. Websites who have enough money to play the SEO numbers game rank well in Google all the time even though their websites might suck.

One of the most important numbers to play recently is counting t...
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AT: 07/06/2011 12:27:00 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Panda Update and Outsourcing

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Search engine optimization is easy, but tedious. We've been saying that for a while now.

You are the best qualified person to manage the SEO process for your website, but let's face it; you're busy running your jewelry store and don't have the time to learn the ins and outs of the process.

Worse yet, the process changes often and learning the new techniques is also tedious.

It is our opinion that the Google Panda Update is really trying to snuff the SEO industry and give you the power to rank your website highly without really trying, and by just being yourself.

Any SEO company you hire should be able to write articles, blog entries, and tweak the copy on your website. However, many SEO companies outsource their copy writing to India, Philippines, and South America--all places where the American Dollar is wo...
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AT: 07/05/2011 10:34:52 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 04, 2011

An Idea to Avoid the Panda's Paw

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Happy birthday to the USA! We know most of our readers are enjoying their day off so we'll try to make this one short.

We introduced Google's Panda Update on Friday and we wanted to continue talking a little about it today. It seems the idea behind their new update scheme is not to affect ranking every day but rather to apply their Panda Update after a regular period of web growth.

Every day, new websites are created from nothing. This includes websites by regular business and SEO professionals that are trying to game the system. Google has finally implemented a deciduous method of removing the website to remove unwanted websites from the SERP.

After every pass of the Panda, the Google team reviews the changes to the SERP and applies their new found heuristics back into the next version of the Panda Update.
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AT: 07/04/2011 01:16:18 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 01, 2011

Basic Explanation of Google's Panda Update

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We follow news and blogs from a few jewelry industry websites, groups on LinkedIn, Twitter conversations and articles from Instore Magazine and MJSA. When we see something interesting, or perhaps a developing trend, we try to pay attention to it and report back on it here.

We're hoping that you value the SEO education and real world evaluations of websites, mobile websites, and how you can use them.

In other words, we're hoping you value us as experts in our field, and that the jWAG.biz website is an excellent resource for you.

Other jewelry industry sources have yet to take on the challenge of explaining how Google ranking has changed since February 2011; instead, they stay with familiar topics of Facebook, Twitter, Google Places, and marketing ideas. Maybe it's because the changes are too new and no one wants to a...
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AT: 07/01/2011 02:00:25 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 30, 2011

Don't fall in love with your website design.

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Yesterday Google announced their Google+ (that's Google Plus) service which looks like their first large step into competing with Facebook. They also announced a major design change to all the Google services.

It seems Google did some heavy usability studies and we're going to take this opportunity to explain what they did, compare it to what we've previously said about usability, and perhaps you can learn something new.

We use the phrase "website usability studies" when referring to all the research that shows us how a person uses a website. This includes watching how they move the around the screen, what they click on, testing the same words in different colors, and changing images to see if one image is better than another.

Ultimately the usability studies tell us "what get's the click" so we can correctly design ...
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AT: 06/30/2011 11:29:17 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Front Line SEO: Jewelry Product Catalogs Part 2

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When Blue Nile opened their virtual doors, they created what has become a general standard with how online jewelry catalogs are presented.

They've since evolved their design to be testimonial-centric, but their original design was copied so much from 2001 - 2003 that only we old-timers actually recognize the degree of Blue Nile's influence on the whole industry. And now we realize there are serious SEO problems with it.

A popular convention started by Blue Nile is a section like this on every product detail page:
"This Item Comes With"
* Free Shipping
* 30 Day Returns
* Free Gift Box
* Free Appraisal

Another popular convention from Blue Nile is a section that looks like this:
"Need Assistance"
* For assistance or customization, please call one of our knowledgeable sales people Toll Free.
* Not...
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AT: 06/29/2011 11:57:40 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Front Line SEO: Jewelry Product Catalogs

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Today we'd like to review some SEO basics about the product catalog of your jewelry website.

Because of our own recent experience and some announcements from Google over the past 12 months, it's time to review our previously published work.

On August 17-18, 2010, we held a live broadcast detailing many ideas for the design and structure of a jewelry product catalog. Some of those ideas will be updated in this brief Daily Gold Nugget.

1. High Word Count
You need to have at least 300 words of text for each product item. Preferably we'd like to see you with 400 words. This is up from 250 words that we said last year. The total word count should include as many details about the item as you can think of. Details should include the construction of the item (prong count, width, diamond count, ctw) listed within the ...
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AT: 06/28/2011 11:32:02 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, June 27, 2011

Jewelry Shops on Google Mobile

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This has been a big year for changes with Google as they try to figure out how to change from a purely mathematical search engine into something more socially controlled.

They are reaching out into the real world trying to gather data on how we all use the internet when we're away from our computers, i.e. mobile.

On June 20, 2011 they changed the way Google Mobile search works. If you allow google.com to detect your location automatically they will show you a list of popular nearby places. They've made a specific change to how m.google.com looks so you have fewer taps on your screen to find popular places.

Their top places usually include restaurants, coffee shops, and bars, but their default options on the next screen usually include "jewelry shops."

The phrase "jewelry shops" seems odd to us since we'd not ...
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AT: 06/27/2011 11:46:41 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 24, 2011

What Should be on Your Holiday Mobile Website?

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Christmas Eve is 6 months from today and we want your website to be ready. We know you are already planning your holiday ads and looking at potential styles for your holiday inventory, and you should be planning your website right now, too.

All week we've been reviewing holiday shopping data published by Google at http://www.google.com/think/insights. We're giving you the more relevant data for retail jewelry stores with ideas of what to do with it.

Mobile phones with 4G technology are more widely available this year. Most (if not all) smartphone plans now require some type of data plan with internet browsing. Google says the mobile market each holiday season since 2008 has risen 300% due to faster cell phone speeds. Is it possible to still have 300% mobile usage growth...
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AT: 06/24/2011 11:05:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 23, 2011

Reasons Jewelers Should Embrace Mobile Websites

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The mobile market for retail jewelry stores is still very young.

BlueNile and Tiffany already have mobile versions of their sites. We couldn't find a mobile version of the James Allen site. We're not referring to smartphone applications, only mobile websites that easily work in cell phone browsers without needing to pinch zoom.

According to http://www.google.com/think/insights mobile shopping during the holiday season has been increasing more than 300% year after year since 2008. Their data shows mobile shopping spikes for the weekend of Black Friday and then again mid to late December.

According to the research Google published in January 2011, during the 2010 holiday season they tracked 59% of smartphone users using their phones for holiday shopping.

Sinc...
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AT: 06/23/2011 12:17:45 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, June 22, 2011

25% Are Only Here for the Discount

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Christmas is just about 6 months away from this week and for the last 2 days we've been explaining how people are starting to search online for holiday gifts. We have some more holiday preparation action items for you today relating to Facebook and Twitter.

As previously explained, we're grabbing some of the important information from www.google.com/think/insights and giving it to you with key takeaways. Unless otherwise noted, all the data presented here comes directly from Google's reports for retail stores.

We left off yesterday explaining that you should use phrases like Sales, Coupons and Customer Loyalty to create a few strategic landing pages that also include the primary jewelry website phrases of engagement rings stores, vintage inspired rings, jewelry store, etc....
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AT: 06/22/2011 01:15:07 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Seeding Your Jewelry Website With Holiday Discounts

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Christmas is just about 6 months away from this week and already people are starting to search online for holiday gifts. We're going to continue our discussion from yesterday and provide a few more ideas.

Since 2009, Google's been compiling data about holiday shopping experiences and then publishing it through www.google.com/think/insights. We're grabbing some of the important information and giving it to you with key takeaways. Unless otherwise noted, all the data presented here comes directly from Google's reports for retail stores.

Google referred to consumers as "Pavlov's dogs, trained for coupons." Like we explained yesterday, the consumer is always looking for some type of free offer or discount. You don't simply have to discount your jewelry. You could make them...
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AT: 06/21/2011 11:29:02 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, June 20, 2011

Black Friday Preparations

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It's that time of year again; time to start preparing your website for the Holiday Season.

Christmas is just about 6 months away from this week and already people are starting to search online for holiday gifts.

Since 2009, Google's been compiling data about holiday shopping experiences and then publishing it through www.google.com/think/insights. We're grabbing some of the important information and giving it to you with key takeaways. Unless otherwise noted, all the data presented here comes directly from Google's reports for retail stores.

From August 2009 through December 2009, Google surveyed to find out when people had started their online research. 44% of those surveyed said they started the process before August 30th that year.

Actual holiday purchasi...
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AT: 06/20/2011 11:29:54 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 17, 2011

Interesting Findings When Analyzing a Jewelry Website

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While recently cleaning up an old jewelry website and the jewelry product catalog, we noticed something that dates back to our Daily Golden Nugget #183 (read it here http://bit.ly/erFrbU) and we'd like to tell you about it.

In #183 we said that you should include Alt and Title attributes for all the images on your website. Our feeling is that if you make your website user-friendly it will rank better. In this case, the Alt/Title image attributes are used by screen readers for the visually impaired.

We also mentioned in last Friday's Nugget #230 (read it here http://bit.ly/m1N2D0) that the Alt/Titles also help get your images indexed in Google's Image search.

Just to add some more proof of the importance of the Alt attribute, there is a report from...
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AT: 06/17/2011 11:28:21 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 16, 2011

Not All Sharing is Created Equally

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We've recently written a few Daily Golden Nuggets about social sharing, "Like" buttons and generally how to increase the traffic to your website through social sharing. But now we realize that some of the directions we gave you might be misunderstood, so let's clear them up.

Sharing a link to your website on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Reddit, LinkedIn or any other social network will increase the number of visitors on your site. Not because the search engines found the shared link and use it for ranking, but simply because other random people saw and clicked on the link.

That's easy. Share a link = increase traffic from people clicking that shared link.

On the other hand, if you only want to spend time sharing links that help your search engine ranking then you have to be very specific with your sharing.

Any ...
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AT: 06/16/2011 11:51:55 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Ideas for Succeeding with Groupon

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As you might already know, we usually don't publish Daily Golden Nuggets unless we have enough data to substantiate what we're saying. Although recently we've published a few "Front Line SEO" nuggets that were based on developing SEO observations, we felt they were important enough to talk about.

Today we'd like to finally examine Groupon. Is it worth it for a retail jeweler? What's the typical result? How can you make it work for you?

Groupon recently filed for their S-1 and is moving forward with their IPO as soon as possible. They've had an amazing success in only 30 months, but is their business model actually a success for the retail stores that use it?

We've spoken to a few jewelers that have used Groupon and to many other retail business owners outside the jewelry industry. They've all reported the same e...
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AT: 06/15/2011 12:29:10 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Social Buttons Make the Numbers Game Easier

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Today we're giving you a specific example of how you should use Twitter Share and Facebook Like buttons on your website newsletter pages.

We assume you send your newsletters via email. From within the newsletter, you should allow your readers to share it to their favorite social network. You might only have 300 people on your email newsletter list, but allowing sharing gives you the chance to reach thousands of new customers.

Many email newsletter companies (like Constant Contact, iContact and Aweber) allow short term archival of your newsletters on their website. Mostly, this allows user to read the newsletter through a website instead of their email program.

However, for several years we've tracked the impact of jewelry store email newsletters and how to archive those newsletters directly on your website instead ...
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AT: 06/14/2011 01:09:46 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, June 13, 2011

If Only We Could Still Be Hermits.

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We'd like to revisit social signals for your website.

A "social signal" is an internet service or feature that allows you to share your web pages to other members within your online circle of friends.

Wikipedia currently maintains a list of 198 popular social networking websites. Each of them has their own method of sharing links and information amongst friends.

Search engines are slowly tapping into the popular social networking sites and beginning to measure and include intra-member communications (i.e. sharing and liking) in organic search results.

According to Wikipedia the top social websites listed by member totals are:
1. Facebook
2. Qzone (China)
3. Habbo (teen website)
4. Twitter
5. Windows Live
6. Bebo
7. Vkonatakte (Russia)
8. Tagged
9. Orkut
10. LinkedIn

Faceboo...
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AT: 06/13/2011 10:22:12 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 10, 2011

How to Get Engagement Rings Into Google's Image Search

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Some 37 Golden Nuggets ago we told you websites with absolutely clueless concepts of SEO might be able to rank higher than your own site. Google is trying hard to balance out the search results between random quality content and websites that try hard to be in the top 10.

Other than writing content and managing your on page and off page optimization factors, you could also try and place yourself into other areas of Google's search engine.

At the top right of Google's website you always see options for the different search types: Web, Images, Video, Maps, News and Shopping.

The Web search is naturally the most popular. Video Search includes results from various video websites. Maps and News search results require in-depth conversations on their own.

That leaves Google Image search, and this search should be e...
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AT: 06/10/2011 10:40:59 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 09, 2011

Best Search Engine for Organic Traffic to Jewelry Websites

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Many jewelers criticize us that almost everything we teach refers to Google in one way or another. This is simply because in our tracking we see the highest percentage of organic traffic coming from Google.com.

Today we took a random sampling of the sites we work on and looked at an average percentage of all the current traffic in the last 30 days. Here are the results:

Organic Traffic for May 2011 to Jewelry Websites:
Google: 85.39%
Yahoo!: 6.41%
Bing: 5.94%
Search: 0.83%
AOL: 0.95%
Ask: 0.48%

It's amazing that Ask is still holding on as a search engine. It's also pretty surprising to see Search.com and AOL showing up as organic sources for organic jewelry website traffic.

Obviously you see how much traffic comes from Google. More than 85% of organic traffic for jewelry websites comes fro...
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AT: 06/09/2011 01:30:40 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, June 08, 2011

New Content Using Unforgettable Moments

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We talk a lot about creating web pages with content on a specific topic. Don't give Google too many choices to decide and keep 1 page per 1 topic.

Prior to 2011, we used to say that every page of your website should have a minimum of 250 words. But then we bumped that number to 400 words per page in February 2011 after Google unleashed major ranking changes that decimated many thin websites.

It was previously known that a thin website is one that has many pages of content but each page has fewer than 200 words in the body copy. In February 2011, Google started lowering the ranking on websites that have about 250 words on every page. That's why we jumped our recommendation up to 400 words.

It's a little challenging to write 400 words on a page while at the same time be completely original in what you write and rema...
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AT: 06/08/2011 01:08:30 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, June 07, 2011

The Importance of Lowering Your Bounce Rate

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Next time you log into Google Analytics, take a look at your bounce rate. The jewelry websites we track range between 45% - 55% overall website bounce rate.

If your own bounce rate is below 45% then you are doing a much better job than the average jeweler.

As a reminder, the "Bounce Rate" is a measure of how many people first landed on your website, decided it was ugly/disorienting/wrong color/wrong size/misrepresented/etc. and they immediately click the Back Button in their browser.

Launched in March 2011, Google now gives individual users the ability to block results from your specific website. As first, this feature is not visible on the SERP. It becomes visible when you click one of the results and then click your browser's back button.

When you return to the SERP page you will see a sudden bright yellow...
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AT: 06/07/2011 01:54:50 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, June 06, 2011

Front Line SEO: Google Plus One

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"Sometimes it's easier to find exactly what you're looking for when someone you know already found it. Get recommendations for the things that interest you, right when you want them, in your search results."

That's the exact quote from Google's +1 page located at google.com/+1/button/.

The "Plus One" feature was in beta testing for a while, and we've been peeking under the hood of that beta for several months to get an idea on how it will work.

On June 1, 2011 as many of you were probably packing for the JCK show, Google officially moved the +1 service from beta to general use and once again changed the way we have to deal with search engine optimization.

From now on, you should see a [+1] button on the Google SERP next to the title of each result. Specifically, y...
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AT: 06/06/2011 12:40:36 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 03, 2011

SEO Seminars at Trade Shows

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This is a new Daily Golden Nugget Format. As of today we are opening our Nuggets to anyone who is on our email list. From now on you will receive the unabridged versions of the Nuggets. Remember you can remove yourself from our email list at any time by simply clicking reply and telling us to remove you.

SEO Seminars at Trade Shows

JCK Las Vegas officially opens today. Of course Luxury at JCK started a few days ago, but most jewelers arrived yesterday and today.

Undoubtedly every trade show you attend now (JCK, Smart Show, regional show, buying group) has website companies that tout how great their services is, and there are website seminars from experts.

If you have the opportunity to attend a seminar, please do. Always strive to broaden your internet education. On May 31, 2011, Rob Bates, Senior Editor ...
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AT: 06/03/2011 12:40:08 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 02, 2011

Jewelry Website Optimization: FAQ Pages

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Today's Daily Golden Nugget comes from the secret vault of traffic building and link magnet techniques that we typically reserve for our own website optimization and it's a technique we employ when getting paid the big bucks.

Today we are giving this secret technique to our jWAG members.

Every jewelry website needs to have content added on a regular basis. You need to keep the search engines interested in you and you also need prove to your customers that your website is a living, breathing, real representation of your jewelry store.

The best way to prove you are alive and kicking is to do the unexpected...

Read your customer's mind.

There are ongoing and ever evolving trends in world, and sometimes even the economy and politics will influence what people search for and how they find your website. But ...
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AT: 06/02/2011 01:24:42 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Design Wise: Font-a-licious

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Choosing a font for your website is a daunting task. Naturally you'd like to stay true to the brand you've created, but forcing your fonts to show up in all web browsers is usually a nightmare in setup and then a constant bandwidth hog for your website.

For a long time already, there have been techniques to force browsers to display your chosen fonts. You could use CSS rules to download a font if the user needed it. Many companies also provide ways to convert your computers font file into a smaller, downloadable website font file. Regardless of the method, as we said, the bandwidth requirements are large.

In order to maintain a branded image with a special font, many websites are forced to convert their headlines into static images. Although they look good, this process completely fails the very important SEO strategy o...
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AT: 06/01/2011 12:35:21 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Flash 10, Google and Beyond

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In August 2010 we presented a Daily Nugget about Flash and it's usability with Internet Explorer's 64-bit web browsers that is installed as the default browser in Windows 7. Today we're providing a follow up to that Nugget with new Flash developments that affect everyone.

As a recap, Adobe Flash does not work properly in any 64-bit web browser. All popular browsers are available in 64-bit versions, but Internet Explorer is the only one that comes installed and activated by default in Windows 7. Many non-technical internet users don't understand that IE 64-bit cannot run Flash. The result is a lot of user disappointment and seemingly non-functioning websites.

The obvious solution is to switch to IE 32-bit and not use any 64-bit browsers... thus losing the blazing internet speed that we all would love to experience.
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AT: 05/31/2011 12:24:11 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 30, 2011

Increase Ranking on Your Video Pages

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Ten Nuggets ago, we ended our short series on YouTube with the topic of transcripts. The goal of that YouTube Nugget series was to help your videos rank in Universal Search results.

But there's another benefit to transcribing your videos...

If you're going to take the time to make a video and upload it, most likely you're not going to let it sit all alone on YouTube hoping your customers will actually find it. No, in reality you should also be embedding your video into your website.

Many retail jewelers have large video libraries on their site. They are great educational resources and when you can show off visits to Antwerp or a South African diamond mine you are proving your local experience and superiority over all the other jewelry stores.

The typical format of a video library page on your website would s...
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AT: 05/30/2011 11:38:37 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 27, 2011

Sitemapping Your Website

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It's Memorial Day in the United States, which means all our subscribers there are probably watching a parade, sitting out next to their pools, on the beach, or having a back yard barbecue.

It's not supposed to be a work day, so let's keep this Daily Nugget brief.

Sitemap pages were very common back in the early days of the web because none of us really knew anything about navigation menus or buttons. If you wanted to get from one page to another on a site you simply looked at the sitemap page.

All pages of a website used to be listed on sitemap pages; of course, that was back when a large website was 20 pages. Today you can click through 20 pages of a site faster than counting to ten.

In the early 2000's, the sitemap page seemed to fall out of usefulness. But then as SEO strategies matured, we all realized...
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AT: 05/27/2011 09:48:45 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 26, 2011

Front Line UI: Sizing Tricks with Google Preview

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One of the more difficult tasks of SEO for e-commerce websites is getting your product catalog pages to rank anywhere in the SERP; getting them to rank on page 1 is even harder.

It's nearly impossible to rank a single product's detail page in the SERP unless you have a lot of detail that looks like paragraph content. For this Nugget we're going to ignore the product detail page and instead focus on the main landing pages for each product catalog category.

We're referring to the category landing page as the main page someone sees when they enter your online catalog and clicks on "wedding rings" or some other primary category. You might have subcategories for "princess cut diamond wedding rings" or "round diamond wedding rings," and each of those are considered sub-landing pages.

A typical landing page has several row...
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AT: 05/26/2011 11:32:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Front Line UI: Help with Google Preview Images

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We've mentioned the Google SERP Preview feature a few times in this last week, and we want to talk about this a little more since it has another hidden effect on your website.

When Google introduced the preview feature in November 2010, they also provided some basic guidelines that would improve the preview's effectiveness for your website. Let's examine the important guidelines.

1. Keep your pages clearly laid out and structured, with a minimum of distractions or extraneous content.

This is great advice, especially from the world's largest search engine. So many jewelry stores say they want a "clean looking" website yet when the final site is created, they've cluttered up every page with content or images in every last pixel.

Every page of your site should be dedicated to a single topic, and everything on th...
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AT: 05/25/2011 01:12:57 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Front Line SEO: Devilish Dropdown Menus

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Yesterday, we explained the value of footer links on your website. Today we'd like to talk briefly about header navigation links and menus.

In a Google training video last year, it was explained that Google didn't penalize you for putting a small amount of hidden text on your site when that that text is part of navigation or interactive information. We wrote a Daily Nugget about that video earlier this year.

In that training video, Google didn't say how much, if at all, of that hidden information would be use for ranking, and at the time we didn't have any valid data either, but we do now.

Using Google's SERP preview feature in recent testing, we've consistently noticed that jewelry websites don't rank at all for words hidden in dropdown menus. Our tests were far from scientific, but the results were consistent acr...
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AT: 05/24/2011 10:54:10 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 23, 2011

Front Line SEO: Secret Copy in Bottom Links

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The Google SERP includes a little magnifying glass so you can see a preview of a web page before clicking on it. This feature is very helpful for consumers because they can quickly see your web page before clicking. This saves them the extra time looking for something, because they already know what to expect on your website.

This preview feature provides a pretty good insight into why Google ranks your page, and it's becoming a secret tool when reverse engineering your SEO or that of your competitor.

Many times Google will highlight words or blocks of text in that preview image that correspond to the search query.

Here's an example from a site we were just analyzing using the search phrase "wedding rings."

Our target site was ranked 5th on the SERP for that phrase. The preview images highlighted "Choose fr...
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AT: 05/23/2011 12:57:20 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 20, 2011

Don't Panic From SERP Updates

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Google updates their SERP daily.

Some people still think that Google rolls out changes in large batches that cause major ranking shifts. We used to call those large batch changes the "Google Dance" because while the roll out was taking place you could see different search results in different locations and the SERP would change with every page refresh.

The days of the Google Dance are supposed to be long behind us. Instead, they roll out changes to the index every day in hopes to have fewer disruptions.

For larger websites this means you have a better chance for your new content to be read, indexed, and appear in the SERP within 1 day. Changes to your Google Places account or Merchant Center will appear in the SERP within a few hours.

After changing pages on your website, you should check the Google SERP eve...
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AT: 05/20/2011 11:08:14 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 19, 2011

Front Line SEO: Local Search Results

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Some more explanations from the front line of new SERP results we've seen recently.

Do a search on Google for "engagement rings" and you'll see results including many national brands, products from Google's Merchant Center, and even listings of related searches for engagement rings.

What you don't see in those results are local stores because Google "local" search wasn't triggered. Although you might notice ads from local stores if they target your town.

Google's Local SERP is triggered as soon as you include a town or city name in the search query; let's say "engagement rings Houston." This search request will return some websites and some Google Places results.

What we'd like you to look at are those Places results. They now have a lot more information on the SERP, but unfortunately the information is beco...
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AT: 05/19/2011 01:16:29 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Front Line SEO: Meta Description Snips

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The meta description of your web page is supposed to tell your potential visitor what your page is about.

Google and Bing show the meta description on the SERP and it's your job to write a 150 character description that compels people to visit your website.

Did you know that the search engines don't always show your meta description? Even if you spend 20 minutes crafting the perfect description, there is no guarantee that the search engines will even use it. Instead, they might use something more appropriate to match the person's search query.

Google is becoming extremely aggressive with rewriting the descriptions shown in the SERP. Recently, we've analyzed a few sites for the phrase "engagement rings." That's a very tough phrase to rank against if your name is not Zales, BlueNile, James Allen or Jared. The best...
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AT: 05/18/2011 11:00:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Front Line SEO: Dating Your Pages

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Google measures fresh content by the time stamp of the physical file found on a server. If you upload your website on November 15, 2010 then many of your pages will have that November 15 time stamp.

Time stamping on files is also how Google determines original ownership of intellectual property. If your time stamp is oldest then your images and articles will be considered the original source of that particular information.

There is a growing problem with this time stamp concept when using content management systems. In a Google training video in 2010, someone asked what Google was doing about management systems that create a static page, but populate it with new information daily.

When Google checks the time stamp on a web page, it ignores the page if the time stamp is still the same as its last visit. In other wo...
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AT: 05/17/2011 01:32:22 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 16, 2011

Can Your Website Be Simplified?

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In the past, we've said that your website doesn't need to meet the standards for web programming set forth by the W3C organization. W3C creates the guidelines for the perfect world of the web, and they are pretty tough to meet.

In general, you should try your best to follow their guidelines because they result in cleanly programmed websites that work well with web browsers and search engines. The W3C guidelines also help us all to achieve faster websites, mobile websites, and an overall faster internet.

If ever a website were to "go green" by today's standards, it would be to follow the W3C standards.

However, it's easy to lose sight of those guidelines if you are programming your own website, using a content management system or even a program like Dreamweaver. You might even want to throw those guidelines out the...
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AT: 05/16/2011 01:38:57 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 13, 2011

YouTube Transcripts

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This is it. Today's Daily Golden Nugget is the reason we spent the last 7 Nuggets explaining YouTube.

The video title, description, and tags are all important for SEO, but if you really want to trounce your competition you need to follow the directions in this Nugget to create Captions and Subtitles for your video.

Transcribing video correctly is a difficult task. It's incredibly time consuming and best left to people who know how to write in shorthand or steno. For people without those skills, even being a fast typist, it could take you 2 hours to transcribe only 30 minutes of video.

However, we don't want you to do that. Instead, we want you to use a shortcut that YouTube provides, and then modify it.

A few days after uploading your video, YouTube will attempt to transcribe the words within you video. If...
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AT: 05/13/2011 12:31:58 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 12, 2011

YouTube Annotations

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You can record a video and put it on YouTube in a single afternoon if you really wanted to. But this next topic is a more serious approach to online marketing.

YouTube gives you the ability to add annotations into your video and to create interactive experiences between your video and the viewer.

Specifically, the annotations can be used to add pop-up information, provide links to related videos, create quick subtitles and to spotlight areas of a video. We're not going to specifically tell you how to add annotations; you would have to read through the YouTube directions for that. Although, to get to the Annotations tab you first need to go into the edit setting for the video, then simply click the word Annotations in the top list of available tabs.

YouTube has several ways to add pop-up information and links to a v...
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AT: 05/12/2011 01:16:41 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Subtle, But Important YouTube Settings.

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There is an important message at the bottom of today's Nugget, so make sure to take a look.

We didn't mean to drag on this explanation of YouTube over so many days, but giving simple directions about YouTube SEO seemed incomplete without going through the other hidden marketing techniques built into the system.

The next feature we need to tell you about is called "Ratings." Although this feature has been around a very long time, you could think of it as the "Like" feature from Facebook, including a cute "thumbs up" image on the Like button. Although, unlike Facebook, there is also "Dislike" button which also includes a thumbs down image.

The thumbs up and thumbs down ratings will help your video gain popularity in the general search. Now, let's be a little honest. This ratings feature probably will not bear much i...
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AT: 05/11/2011 11:00:54 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Video Contest Magnets

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We're continuing our discussion about using YouTube today for SEO and attracting customers.

A few jewelers have already done what we're about to tell you and have had amazing success with it. Even if you don't have the skills to create a professional video, some of your customers might, and you can reward them for it.

One of the standard features of a YouTube video is to allow "video responses."

Some people like to simply comment on a video and some people are so motivated (through anger and passion) that they get their camera and create a video reply.

Some people are simply capitalists at heart and will do anything for a penny, or maybe even a diamond.

You could run a contest through YouTube. In your simple video, you could just stand there and hold a diamond, or a diamond ring, and tell people that ...
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AT: 05/10/2011 11:34:39 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 09, 2011

Socializing Your YouTube Videos: Part 1

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Last week, we explained how to optimize your YouTube videos for the search engine. Today we're reviewing the settings that allow your videos to be used socially.

*Video Thumbnail:
After YouTube finishes processing your video, they will randomly select 3 frames from the video and provide them as options for the video thumbnail. This is the thumbnail you see in the SERP, within all the YouTube pages, and as the still frame before the user presses the play button.

Of the 3 options YouTube gives you, select the one that is most compelling.

*Privacy:
There are three privacy options for your video. Most of the time, you want to set your videos as Public since that's the setting you need if you want users to find you in the SERP.

The Unlisted setting allows you to upload a video and share the video with any...
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AT: 05/09/2011 12:33:18 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 06, 2011

SEO Tips for YouTube Videos

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SEO Tips for YouTube Videos imageWith your YouTube channel set up and your first video recorded on your simple camcorder, let's talk a little about SEO for individual YouTube videos.

Uploading to YouTube can be done easily through the video editing software that comes with your basic camcorder, or you can log into your YouTube account and click the "Upload" link at the top of every page.

All new YouTube accounts are limited to 15 minute long videos. If you stay within the YouTube terms of service and don't violate any copyright laws, you might have that time limit restriction eventually lifted.

On the Upload screen, simply ...
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AT: 05/06/2011 11:42:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 05, 2011

Creating your YouTube Account

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It's best to have a pre-existing Google account before you create a YouTube account for yourself. The two accounts will link nicely together. While logged into your google.com account, navigate over to youtube.com and follow the directions to create an account using your existing Google account.

Be careful with your YouTube user name.

Your chosen YouTube username becomes your "Channel" name. Do your best to select a name that matches your store's name. If your store's name is "Venus Creations" then try for "venuscreations" as your channel name. If that's not available, then try "venuscreationsjewelry" or "venuscreationsjewelers." Whatever you select, you want to make sure there's a clear association to your store's name and brand.

Once your username is selected, your video channel will be available through a si...
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AT: 05/05/2011 11:24:24 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 04, 2011

Jumping Into The Deep End of Video

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Universal search results pages contain organic web page listings, product information, Wikipedia information, local businesses and video. Recent additions also include bookmarks from friends, tweets and other social interactions.

Let's talk about video.

Both Google and Bing will include videos from sources including YouTube, eHow and TED, DailyMotion, MSN, Tudou (TF1), Allocine, MySpace, 5min, VideoJug, MTV, and perhaps other sources. However, it's obvious that YouTube is the most popular video website right now.

Video acts as a magnet to your product or service. You can use video to illustrate your specific talents and provide customer education. It also creates a bond between you and your customers that is solidified when they meet you in person or talk to you on the telephone for the first time.

Creating...
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AT: 05/04/2011 01:46:53 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Simply Smart Page Titles

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Every page of your website has a page title. It's one of the most important ranking qualities for every page of your website.

The page title shows up as the most prominent words in blue on every SERP, and it's usually these words that will entice your potential customers to either click your link, or take a moment to read the description right below it.

Composing the perfect page title is not something you will learn overnight. Many people will write long page titles that mention all the topics appearing on that page. Some people will only write a few words.

Here are the guidelines that we follow when writing page titles:
1. No more than 67 characters
2. Try to write a page title that is as short yet informative as possible.
3. Try to mention a single topic in the page title.
4. If you must mention more...
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AT: 05/03/2011 01:48:57 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 02, 2011

Hidden Text That's Not Black Hat

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On Friday, we told you that it was safe to have more than 100 links on a single web page when using them within your primary navigation. You could also hide several links within CSS dropdown menus.

The use of advanced CSS techniques in your website design allow for features that are very nicely user interactive.

CSS, which stands for cascading style sheet, can be used to create new types of interactive features that previously would take a lot of JavaScript programming. Some of the features in CSS can even contradict what some people know about SEO.

Hiding text on a web page is an old black hat SEO technique. Some people would disguise keyword rich text in black color on a black background. You could also use white text on a white background. The effect is that the text is invisible to users but not to Google. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 05/02/2011 12:27:17 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 29, 2011

100, 200 or More?

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Today is in important day for us, and we're not talking about the Royal Wedding either.

This is Daily Golden Nugget #200

In honor of this milestone, we're going to talk about that old limitation of the number of links on a single web page. The limitation used to be 100 links on any given page.

Once upon a time, Google stated that having more than 100 links on a single web page was a bad idea. Their limitation was created simply because they could not handle more than that.

As time passed, many of us SEO professionals analyzed other good reasons to keep to that limitation, namely to control the flow of PageRank on your website. PageRank is one of the factors that help you rank higher in Google. If you can collect a lot of PageRank for your website you could rank higher.

Imagine that every web page on...
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AT: 04/29/2011 11:55:13 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 28, 2011

Vetting Out Duplicate Product Content

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We recently had the opportunity to diagnose a pretty high level SEO problem on a website, and we'd like to explain it because it's a common problem that many people don't know about.

A larger jewelry product catalog site has a princess cut diamond ring categorized as a "Princess Cut Ring." Everything in that category naturally shows up on the Princess Cut Ring catalog page.

This makes total sense, however that same princess cut diamond ring is also inlaid with pave diamonds.

After looking at their Google Analytics they noticed many people were finding their princess cut/pave diamond rings after searching for "vintage rings" on Google. As a marketing strategy they added a vintage category to their catalog and copied many products from other categories into this new vintage category.

At this point, we should po...
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AT: 04/28/2011 11:28:19 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 27, 2011

New Technology is not Always Best

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Every day, the team over at Google's headquarters makes advances in Search Engine technology. A few years ago they announced the ability to read Flash websites, and then last year they further announced the ability to read deeper inside Flash websites.

Unfortunately, Flash websites still suffer from lower ranking than normal HTML websites.

In 2010, Google admitted that they have trouble reading websites that rely on JavaScript or AJAX. The Googlebot spider is not able to provide the user input needed to display website information that to us would be very simple to interact with.

The result is that websites with heavy JavaScript and AJAX programming are penalized similar to Flash websites. A simple home page rotating image is nothing to worry about, but you should worry if all the menus on your website rely on Java...
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AT: 04/27/2011 01:14:00 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Sharing is Good-Natured

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Link building is a difficult part of search engine optimization. It's better to have a real person creating links on other websites than to buy a software program to spin links for you, but it takes a lot of time.

A well-placed link will bring a lot of valuable Google PageRank, and increase your SERP ranking.

But what if your goal is to increase visitor traffic in addition to PageRank?

A good answer to that is simply to get social. Share links on social networks like Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit, Twitter and of course Facebook. Is your favorite not listed here? No problem, go ahead and use it anyway.

The goal to social sharing on these websites is to attract new people to your website. In this process, it's a numbers game; more shared links means more people see those links and potentially click. People who...
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AT: 04/26/2011 11:30:23 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 25, 2011

Collapsing Your Website for Better Ranking

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As your website grows in size, the number of landing pages and sub pages beneath them will naturally grow. There are many benefits to having a website that continues to grow over time. Slow, steady growth implies regular content updates and Google has specific reasons when newer web pages will rank better than more established web pages.

There is an inherent problem with a website when it grows, and it's simply the default navigation structure.

The typical website has some kind of navigation on the top and then either the left or right. The navigation is organized with a primary landing page and sub pages. As your website grows very large there will be sub-sub pages too.

Although Google says they will spider the entire internet, they don't do a very good job at digging deeply into every website. Their point of vi...
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AT: 04/25/2011 11:53:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 22, 2011

Pinch. Pinch. Pinch.

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Tap. Pinch. Swipe.

These are all typical actions when using a smartphone. "Tap" is the same as a mouse click. "Swipe" is the same as scrolling.

On the other hand, "pinch" does not have a counterpart action when using a regular computer. Pinching is what you have to do to zoom in and out of a website that was not designed for mobile devices. Normal web browsers do have a zoom feature, but there's usually never a reason to use it.

You should be planning to include a mobile website in your advertising portfolio already. Don't simply rely on the new fancy smartphones, fast 3G cellular networks and even faster 4G networks to support your non-mobile website.

As you plan out your mobile site, make sure it fits nicely on a small screen without needing to pinch resize to see details. Naturally, you won't be able t...
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AT: 04/22/2011 01:52:34 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 21, 2011

Speeding Up Your Images

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Good photography of your products is the only way you can sell your products online. Even if your website is ugly, good photography and good customer service will always sell jewelry.

However, there is a point of diminishing returns when it comes to your photography, and it has to do with the file sizes.

A typical jewelry product catalog will show a ring in 3 different sizes:
1. As a thumbnail on the browsing pages.
2. As a medium size image on the product description page.
3. As a large image when you want to zoom in to see details.

The lazy web programmer will use the same image for all 3 purposes, but there's a serious drawback to this. You would need to use the largest image, that is image #3, for all locations. Except that large image can be 600KB or more, and we've even seen images as large as 3MB. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 04/21/2011 12:42:05 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Clueless About SEO?

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We spend a lot of time and resources providing educational content for our members and the customers of Sapphire Collaborative (www.sapphirecollaborative.com), but the time we put into our research is minuscule compared to the total amount of time and money all SEO professionals worldwide have spent researching and writing similar educational material.

The SEO training industry is a multimillion dollar industry. Greater than that is the amount of money SEO professionals make to do the work instead of their clients.

Would it surprise you that Google is already in the process of creating ways to rank all websites correctly regardless how good or bad the search engine optimization is?

The sum of Google's knowledge and research into human patterns and behavior is enormous, and just gets bigger every day. When you allow t...
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AT: 04/20/2011 12:29:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 19, 2011

How Good is Your Spelling?

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Google has incorporated a massive dictionary into their functionality. After years of watching users, they were able to take that dictionary and create an automatic spelling correction feature called "Did You Mean."

The "Did you mean" feature showed up in November 2008, and it has a profound impact on SEO. Let's investigate why...

Whenever Google recognizes what it decides may be a misspelling, it will not return search results for that misspelling, instead it will correct the spelling and display a message saying "Showing results for {corrected spelling}. Search instead for {incorrect spelling}." This is a failsafe in case you really were searching for something with that incorrect (read: unpopular) spelling.

Prior to this automatic spelling correction, it was important to include misspellings on your website just...
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AT: 04/19/2011 01:55:26 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 18, 2011

Maintain Your Anonymity

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Everyone hates spam.

Ask someone for their cell phone number and they immediately think you will send them spam text messages.

Ask someone for their email address and they immediately think you will waste their time and send spam emails.

The internet gets clogged with spam emails every day. We directly track and block about 75% of email traffic every day because it's all spam.

Google has a dedicated department to fight "Web Spam" and all things that cause any type of digital interaction that will annoy people. This team helps to control the built in filters that block troublesome websites.

One of the things they watch out for are websites that plainly show email addresses. Freely posting your email address as bob@jewelrystore.com will invite spam. Malicious email com...
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AT: 04/18/2011 02:00:20 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 15, 2011

The WP Devil

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WordPress evolved from simple blog software into a very large open project that many programmers have contributed to. With it you can create article sites, membership sites, news sites, photo galleries, and even your own business website.

It's a great system, and it's very cheap to buy into.

However, there are major drawbacks to using WordPress. Here are a few:
1. Most WordPress websites look and function the same.
2. It's not free; you still need a hosting account.
3. It's not free; you will need to pay someone to set it up if you are non-website savvy.
4. It's not free; all the best features need to be paid for.
5. There's no guarantee that a WordPress website will be found by Google; standard SEO still applies.

Number 1 is one of our biggest gripes here at jWAG. We hear so many jewelry stores say ...
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AT: 04/15/2011 11:34:55 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 14, 2011

Contact Us Page Killers

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The bottom line of today's Golden Nugget is:
Don't require JavaScript or Flash or Java to make your Contact Us form work. You are potentially missing out on a lot of visitors who may have tried to reach you, but couldn't because of technology limitations.

Why did we start this Nugget with the "bottom line?" Because the explanation is a little history lesson that might not interest you. Keep reading if you would like to have a well rounded understanding of why JavaScript/Flash/Java are all bad for your Contact Us form.

Every few days a new computerized device is released; new computers, new cell phones, new GPS, new portable gizmos of some type that can connect to the internet.

Even though the hardware changes, the underlying programming languages of the internet haven't changed much in several years.

Co...
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AT: 04/14/2011 02:00:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Increase User Friendliness, Decrease Google Bounce Rate

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The way you build your website directly effects how customers will respond to it. A product catalog site will not satisfy customers looking for custom design rings and a website with pages of information about designers will not satisfy customers looking to buy online.

Since Google is a machine, it doesn't exactly know what people are looking for when they search.

Someone searching for "Claude Thibaudeau Rings" might be looking for information or maybe a photo of the ring their friend was wearing; but they could also be searching for a place to buy a ring online.

Since Google doesn't actually know the intent of the searcher, it can only guesstimate results. The search results will return all answers with the best ranking for the phrase "Claude Thibaudeau Rings." Those results could be e-commerce sites, blog website...
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AT: 04/13/2011 02:00:18 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Match Your Mobile and Full Sites

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Continuing the conversation from yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget, let's present another simple idea you should consider while building your mobile website.

You're going to have to make a choice between allowing your mobile visitors to see your PC website initially, or automatically redirecting them to the mobile version of your website.

Our opinion is to allow the users to visit whatever website they typed into their browser, and not automatically redirect. So, if they type in http://m.jewelrystore.com you should show them your mobile website, but if they type in http://www.jewelrystore.com then you should show them your normal website.

When visiting the normal website, you need to give them an easy-to-locate link that allows them to jump to the mobile...
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AT: 04/12/2011 02:00:19 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 11, 2011

Ride the Mobile Fad Wave Today

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As mobile websites become increasingly popular, website owners are given more dynamic features that will work on a mobile device.

Early adopters of mobile websites were limited to simple 1 or 2 page sites with directions to the store or simply an address and telephone number. Web programmers are now learning how to provide mobile websites that are as interactive as their PC counterparts.

For the jewelry store, this means you can have your entire product catalog available on the mobile website. This also means you can have customer accounts and even mobile purchases. Setting up secure certificates for a mobile shopping cart is no different than the process for your PC website.

We've heard many jewelers say "I just don't want my product catalog online because I don't want anyone to price shop." Our answer to that is...
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AT: 04/11/2011 02:00:08 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 08, 2011

Search Query Relevance

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We've covered this topic before in our trainings, but with the recent changes to Google we need to revisit this again.

Your organic ranking is determined by the information you have on your website and how your website has been shared with the world. Search Engine Optimization now includes a mix of different social networking signals in addition to how many times people link to your website.

In 2010, Bing developed a strong association with Facebook to help measure the popularity of shared websites. The shared websites were given some new weighted value in Bing's search results.

Google was much slower to adopt social networks into their organic ranking, but in late 2010 it was announced that Twitter would help determine ranking. In early 2011, Google further introduced methods to measure Facebook sharing on Busines...
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AT: 04/08/2011 02:00:34 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 07, 2011

It's In the Clouds

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One of the well known "no no's" of website search engine optimization is something called Keyword Stuffing.

Old search engines used to rank a website by the amount of times you had a phrase listed on the page. If you wanted to be listed for the old "right hand rings" you simply needed to use the phrase "right hand rings" on the page more times than your competitor.

The phrase "right hand rings" is difficult to say over and over, and that's why it's such a good example to today's Daily Golden Nugget, so let's continue with it.

The Diamond Promotion Service started using the phrase Right Hand Ring in 2005, so let's imagine it's 2005 and you are trying to sell to women that want to buy themselves an anytime gift. The common SEO strategy of that time was simply to bloat a web page with your target phrase more times tha...
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AT: 04/07/2011 02:00:59 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Alt & Title And Be Rewarded.

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Design is one of the foremost concerns for your website. Trying to figure out the aesthetics that best please your customer is very difficult. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what you personally like, because the customer will like something completely different.

You need to program your website so it best functions for your users.

Typical design concerns are:
* Width of the website. Do you want to be full screen or static width?
* Colors.
* What web browsers do you want it to work in? IE, Firefox and Safari are the big players.
* Do you want the website to work on a mobile device?
* Do you want to use a lot of images as part of the design?
* Do you want Flash? Remember Flash does not work in IE 64-bit, the standard browser for Windows 7.
* Do you want your website readable by users with visual impair...
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AT: 04/06/2011 02:00:27 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 05, 2011

Google Places 2011: Take Another Drink

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It's that time again. This Daily Golden Nugget is about Google Places and it might be the 5th time we've covered the topic now, and therefore time to play our jWAG Google Places Drinking Game... Take a drink and let's move on.

So far, in 2011 we've been covering more mundane aspects of search engine optimization. Everything we've reported on we either had firsthand experience with, or it was reported to you directly from a well established Google training video.

We've not reported on new SEO news or events simply because all SEO "breaking news" is nothing more than hearsay and speculation. Until there is real proof of something interesting, we don't want to give you recommendations or directions.

In January 2011, Google added a very large filter to their SERP results in order to fight the millions of websites of g...
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AT: 04/05/2011 02:00:30 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 04, 2011

Don’t Buy Your Friends

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Organic. Organic. Organic!

That's the battle cry of the search engines. Everything should be organically driven on the internet. Of course, us saying "organic" today contradicts what we said on Friday. For the reason behind that you need to keep reading.

If the internet was not filled with businesses trying to make money, what would it be filled with? Take out all businesses from the internet and all you're left with are bloggers, news, government and social networks.

Without businesses driving the internet there wouldn't be a need for search engine optimization. There wouldn't be a need for all this online marketing education. Instead, the internet would just be driven by interesting tidbits of the lives we lead.

Maybe that would be boring? Maybe not?

The point is that if businesses were not the...
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AT: 04/04/2011 02:00:19 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 01, 2011

Paid Results in the Google SERP

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Google has been making a lot of advancements in its paid search features recently. Honestly, they roll out new improvements every week, which becomes frustrating for us since we always need to replace the screen shots we have in our AdWords training courses.

In the past few months we've seen the following changes to AdWords:
* Keyword Research Tool
* Negative Keyword Matching for Campaigns
* Keyword Opportunity Suggestions
* Limitations of the number of URLs used in Ad Groups
* +1 Recommendations by your friends was launched earlier this week

The latest new feature will completely change the way the SERP page 1 functions because Google will now offer paid inclusion in the organic listings to qualified advertisers. The trick is that Google won't identify a "paid inclusion" like it clearly identifies the "Ads"...
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AT: 04/01/2011 11:58:02 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 31, 2011

GOTCHA! Your Website Put You Out Of Business.

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Technology has come a long way in 10 years.

In 2001, the internet bubble had already burst and some speculated that it would not last much longer. At that time, very few people had a website running with databases. The free PHP programming language that is so ubiquitous today was in its infancy back then. The few lucky websites with content management systems were mostly programmed in Pearl or expensive ASP and ColdFusion.

In 2001, if you wanted a website you had to find the smartest person you knew and pay them a lot of money to create one for you. Programmers also didn't make website management easy for you.

We've come a long way since Palm Pilots, clunky websites and search engines like MetaCrawler and AltaVista. Technology is a lot friendlier now, and even Grandma is able to send email, talk on her cell phone...
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AT: 03/31/2011 02:07:41 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Mr. Cellophane Shouldn't Be Your Name

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Let's talk Black Hat.

"Black Hat SEO" refers to any search engine optimization technique that is considered misleading for users, or for the purposes of tricking the search engines into showing your website to more people.

In one of Google's training videos, they explain that they can now process all CSS, HTML, dynamic HTML, XML and JavaScript code. This not only allows them to discover functionality on your website, but also if you are trying to use one of those methods for Black Hat purposes.

Before Google started processing code like this, you could get away with several nasty little tricks to hide extra words on your website and sway the search engines toward your favor.

One such example of hiding text is to have a white background with several extra paragraphs of repeating white text at the bottom of...
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AT: 03/30/2011 12:53:53 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Aggressive Marketing with Multiple Domain Names

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Network Solutions, GoDaddy, Register.com and Domain.com are just a few of the hundreds of companies that you can now buy your domain name from. They are called "registrars."

Each of them are trying to improve their profits, yet the prices of domain names have dropped as low as $1.99 for the .info domains. As a sales tactic, each of these registrars have started promotions to have you buy more and more domain names.

"Secure your biz, co, net, org domain name and protect your trademark" is a common slogan. But how useful is this really? Why would you want 5 domains, or 15 domains?

In reality, you only ever want to advertise one primary domain name. If you have jewelrystores.com and jewelrystore.net you should simply use the .com version. The .net becomes useful only for special purpose advertising where you can tr...
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AT: 03/29/2011 12:52:13 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 28, 2011

Change Up Your Link Bait Strategies

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No one likes to read a boring sales letter, and surly no one stays on a website that is boring looking or has boring information.

Pizazz, humor, personal interest stories... these things will make your website interesting, and if you are lucky (or skilled) you will keep them coming back; better yet, they will share your link to their friends through Facebook and Twitter.

Use your own creativity and personality to engage your readers throughout your website and on your blog. But don't fall into a trap of using the same format over and over to post new entries to your blog. Change it up every once in a while.

For example, we've previously suggested that you post photos of new merchandise when it arrives in your jewelry store. Photos of the latest shipment of engagement rings would be interesting for anyone shopping f...
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AT: 03/28/2011 01:30:11 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 25, 2011

Don't Be Droll

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The internet gets larger every day. No one knows exactly how much larger every day. In July 2008, Google estimated the web grows by several billion pages per day. Of course that was before the Twitter and Facebook craze. Every Facebook post and every Tweet is its own page on the internet.

Daunting, isn't it?

When it comes to adding pages to the internet Google has one request above all others: "Add new value to the internet."

Of course, with billions of pages added every day how can YOU add value that someone else hasn't already done?

This is a good question, and we don't really have an iron clad answer. After all, how many different ways can you write about the 4C's of Diamonds? How many different ways can you explain what pearl restringing is?

Regardless, whatever you put on your website needs to...
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AT: 03/25/2011 12:33:35 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 24, 2011

Do You Think You are Funny?

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Blogging is such an important part of website content. Using your blog, you can add real content that Google loves to index and use in the search.

You blog is a forum for so many different things. One day you can use it to showcase a new line of jewelry in your store, and the next you can use it to talk about your sponsorship of the local Little League.

Everything you post in your blog will feed Google's ability to bring you traffic. But what if you would rather have people share your blog posts on Facebook or Twitter? How can you get them to do that?

Google is a machine, programmed to do what it does and it doesn't care if your content is boring. It only cares if your content matches a search query.

To get interest from real people, you need to make your blog posts interesting. Give people a reason to b...
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AT: 03/24/2011 01:10:51 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Answer Their Questions and Show Them You Care

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The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page of your website is a great place to post all the typical questions you get from customers that visit your store.

Can you quickly recite the popular questions the people have asked you through the years? All of those popular questions belong on your FAQ page of your website.

But what about the not-so-popular questions?

People love to see you care about your customers and are willing to take the extra time to provide customer service. Answering specific questions on your website is a great way to prove you care. Here's how you can do it.

1. Put an "Ask the Jeweler" form on your website.
2. Post the questions and the answers to your website.
3. Email the "asker" the URL of the answer.

With any luck, the asker will be very happy you personally answered thei...
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AT: 03/23/2011 01:20:13 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Online Reviews

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It is important to realize that when a new potential customer finds you online, they can't immediately compare the size of your store to the jewelry store down the street. At first, they really will not care if you have a shoe box sized store or a grand palace.

A consumer is only interested in knowing that their needs will be met, that customer service will happily surprise them, and that they will have your complete attention when they visit your store or call you on the telephone.

Some people still price shop, but in truth everyone shops for service. You can create very fancy sales gimmicks to get people into your store, or you can win them over with amazing customer service and then entice them to bring in a friend.

Hopefully, a happy customer will post a raving review about your store online. The popular revie...
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AT: 03/22/2011 11:27:38 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 21, 2011

Deep Linking to Help Google Crawl

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Google will only spider and index as much of your website as it believes it will use.

If your website is doesn't seem worth while then Google will not spend computing resources to analyze your site.

If you have 100 page you certainly want all 100 pages saved in Google. So what would make your website valuable enough?

Here are some ideas:

1. Deep Linking: Getting links to your site is great and most links will point to your home page. But it would be so much better to have inbound links to sub-pages and even sub-sub-pages within your site. Google usually follows all the links it finds, and when those links point to a variety of pages on your site it causes Google to index more.

2. Change the internal linking structure of your website: Google won't dig too far into your website from the home page. If ...
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AT: 03/21/2011 12:04:20 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 18, 2011

The Universal Internet

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The Internet is not not just limited to websites any more. In fact, the everyday normal website is slowly being replaced by social sites and various online services.

A few years ago, if you wanted to put all your jewelry store information online you would have to figure out how to do it all, or hire a company that could do it all.

Do you have videos on your website? Previously, you needed to manage video content on your own and have a hosting account capable of handling that huge video bandwidth. Now that process is much easier with YouTube.

Do you have testimonials on your website? Previously, you needed to ask people to write testimonials and mail them to you. Now you can ask people to write online reviews on Google Places or Yep. You can even capture tweets about your site and post them on your website.

Face...
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AT: 03/18/2011 12:50:30 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 17, 2011

Big Brands vs. Your Jewelry Store

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As a local retail jeweler, you are faced with many advertising difficulties compared to large jewelry chain stores like Jared, Zales, Kay, JCPenny and so many others. They have millions of dollars to throw at their national advertising and branding.

These large companies create buzz around their brands and consumers naturally remember the ads, slogans, and jingles that are repeated effectively in large, unified branding campaigns.

The word of mouth alone creates online interest and random link sharing to all of these big brand websites. As a result of this link sharing, these companies gain incredibly super ranking in the search engines that will easily bury your search engine efforts as a local jeweler.

So don't fight those big brands. Instead, you need to compete on your home turf.

The local brands will not s...
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AT: 03/17/2011 10:46:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Duplicate Content Examples

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Duplicate content is a problem that could totally ruin your website. Apparently many web programmers still don't understand the cause and effect of duplicate content and even brand new website fall pray to the disasters of duplicate content.

We recently reviewed a website that did a full redesign and installed a new content management system. Last year, this website had fantastic ranking for almost all of their target keywords. Unfortunately, with the new design and CMS, they also suffered a massive duplicate content problem.

Each of their products had at least 6 identical pages created using different URLs. It seems like Google penalizes this type of sloppy programming by completely removing the website from the search results.

After our review and findings, this jewelry store is trying to correct their duplicate iss...
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AT: 03/16/2011 10:42:39 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 15, 2011

URL Restructuring and 301 Redirecting

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There are only 3 things you have direct control over that help entice users into clicking on your organic listing on the search results page.

1. The title of your page
2. The meta description of your page
3. The URL of your page

Most of the time, Google will not change your page title. Many times now, they will change your meta description to something that will better assist the user. On the other hand, they will never change the URL they show in green.

If your URL is long, it will appear with ellipses in order to truncate it into something useful for users.

Google explained in one of their training videos that they see more clicks on SERP pages that have shorter URLs than on long, convoluted ones. They also mentioned that users tend to click on pages that have keywords in the directory structure rather ...
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AT: 03/15/2011 12:18:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 14, 2011

Diversity of Link Sources May Surprise You

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Officially, Google does not want you to ask other people to link to your website. They want the linking process to be 100% natural, as in, if you write good information on your website someone will eventually link to it.

Websites with a long history eventually gather random links from the strangest of places. It's not uncommon to do a reverse link check and find links from forum websites. One recently found example was on a gaming forum where two users were arguing over jewelry. To support their point of view, one of the gamers posted links to a 4C's of diamonds page we happen to be tracking.

The better quality information on your site becomes a random link magnet for random people, not even related to jewelry. All these links eventually build your credibility.

Another great aspect of this type of random linking is th...
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AT: 03/14/2011 12:18:20 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 11, 2011

Older, Wiser, Faster Indexed Websites

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Time and time again, we see new jewelry store websites with brand new domain names launched, then fail miserably.

Brand new websites have a really difficult time getting indexed in the search engines. If no one is linking to the new site, Google, Bing, and Yahoo simply can't find it. There needs to be at least one link from some other reputable website before the engines will find the new site.

It might take 30 days before your brand new jewelry store website shows up in the search results. Even after the first 30 days, you still might not see your entire website in the search results. It will eventually get there but it might take months.

During this initial time, you might also notice that your blog entries also have a delay at getting into the search results.

As it turns out, Google tracks the longevity of a...
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AT: 03/11/2011 11:45:09 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 10, 2011

Fresh Content Matters

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This is a simple idea: the more often you update your website, the better it will look in the search engines.

Google claims they attempt to re-read the entire internet every few days. The Google spider searches for new information all the time, and when it finds something new, it rushes to read every last page. This rush to read new content is visible in your Google Webmaster Tools when you publish several new pages on your site on the same day, or when you first launch a new product catalog.

Fresh content on Facebook and Twitter is also monitored constantly. In fact, Twitter is especially scrutinized and any tweets related to breaking news are shown in a special window on a SERP. This is part of Google's Buzz feature.

Most of the time the search engines will return the oldest websites that have demonstrated popularit...
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AT: 03/10/2011 10:12:24 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Doorway Pages and Landing Pages

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What type of jewelry website would you prefer? One with a product catalog on the home page and no jewelry store details other than online selling? Or would you prefer a website that has detailed store information in addition to a full catalog of all the items you carry in the store?

It really doesn't matter which you choose, just as long as you take the time to learn what will attract buyers to your site. What attracts buyers? Words do.

The more words you put on your site the better the chances are that you will attract random organic traffic to your site. Yesterday we explained the value of adding a blog to your site. But what if you simply didn't want to do that?

One common strategy for optimizing large e-Commerce sites is to create dedicated landing pages for sections of the catalog. Another common name for these l...
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AT: 03/09/2011 10:05:07 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Blogging Inside Your Site

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"Organic Traffic" is what we call those visitors that found your website through searching any engine. The person looked for a keyword phrase and your website appeared in the search results. These visitors are your organic visitors, and they do not cost any money when they click; well, they don't cost you any money at the time of the click, but it did cost money in the form of time and labor to get you listed on page 1 of the search results.

Considering the number of jewelry stores listed in the JBT, we know that very few of them understand the needed search engine optimization it takes to get to page 1 of the search results. Once you achieve high placement, you will continue to receive free organic visitors as long as one of your competitors doesn't use their own SEO to knock you out of the top spot.

We've seen more and mor...
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AT: 03/08/2011 10:04:06 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 07, 2011

Should You Have A Mobile Website?

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Smart cell phones are everywhere. The Android is more and more popular, the iPhone is expanding its user base now that Verizon sells it, and somehow, the BlackBerry is still strongly accepted by the corporate world.

comScore.com released the 2010 mobile report on February 14, 2011 where they reported that 27% of cell phones are of the smartphone variety and 29% of smartphone users have unlimited data plans.

For you, the jewelry website owner, you seriously need to consider how your website will react when a mobile device visits it. You might spend $1000 developing a simple HTML website or $3000 for a simple Flash website, and they both may look great on a computer. But what about the mobile device?

As you consider your future website design and functionality, you need to give some ser...
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AT: 03/07/2011 12:00:05 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 04, 2011

Faster Recognition of Product Catalogs

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Some time ago, we heard a rumor that you couldn't grow your website too big, too fast, otherwise it would look like a spamming website to Google. The year was 2007 and this made us wonder if it also hurt your website to launch a new product catalog with 3000+ products, or if you should slowly add them to the site.

Fast forward to today. We now know that putting a large jewelry product catalog online overnight produces interesting, reproducible results that we have witnessed several times now.

When Google first finds your new product catalog it will spend the first day or two reading and rereading all the pages inside that catalog until it's satisfied. Then, on the third day, it throttles back to only a few pages visited regularly.

It seems like it will rush to read all your newest information (in this case, product...
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AT: 03/04/2011 01:11:04 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 03, 2011

Smarter Meta Descriptions

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Meta Descriptions are one of your best selling tools to get people to click onto your web page from the SERPs. The meta descriptions should be limited to 150 characters and either be a sales message or something that truly explains what your page is about.

If you don't take the time to write your own valid descriptions, Google will do it for you. If Google finds a valuable page of information without a meta description, it will take an excerpt from the page and show it as the description instead of leaving it blank.

Now let's shift topics to the information you actually have on a page. Each page of your website should be dedicated to a single specific topic. We see all the time that a jewelry store will combine all their services to a single page, but this dilutes your chances for getting a click. Let's look at an examp...
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AT: 03/03/2011 12:47:59 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Bloggorama Thin or Fat?

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Blogging is a great way to increase traffic to your website. A blog entry allows you to create conversational information and use words more naturally than simply trying to keyword stuff all the other pages of your website.

Let's look at a good way to use blogging to increase organic traffic to your website.

Perhaps you have a landing page for the category "Diamond Wedding Sets" and on this page you have links to 4 sub pages:
* Round Diamond Sets
* Princess Cut Sets
* Marquise Diamond Sets
* Vintage Wedding Sets

This would be a "thin" page of information because you probably only have 1 photo and 1 sentence with each of those links. You don't want to keyword stuff that page because it would be unnatural. What does that actually mean? Well, don't use the words "diamond sets" or "wedding sets" or "diamon...
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AT: 03/02/2011 12:02:39 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Typical Duplicate Content Pages

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Recently, we explained to you the duplicate content problem caused by having a search form on your own website. The search engine will enter information on that form and cause a serious duplicate content issue.

This Daily Golden Nugget will explain a more common duplicate content issue that plagues many websites.

Unless your web programmer or web host specifically implement prevention techniques, all of you will have the following issues. We're not going to bore you with how to fix it; we will leave that up to your own website people.

When you type in your domain name, you need to make sure no matter what the format, it always brings you to the same page.

Here's an example you can see for yourself:

Go to this URL:
http://krombholzjewelers.com/

But ...
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AT: 03/01/2011 01:40:41 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 28, 2011

Quality link building is a pretty tricky business.

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You can't pay for links without someone blowing a whistle and getting your website banned. There is always the potential to be reported by a stranger if you are asking to pay them for a quality link from their website to yours. Google provides an online form now for such reporting. Offenders will have their websites banned from the search engines.

You might also think that posting comments on other blogs, like Instore Magazine or JCKOnline.com, might be a good link building strategy. Unfortunately both of these sites, like all quality blog sites, will include the rel="nofollow" attribute in any links to your website. The rel="nofollow" feature nullifies any potential search traffic.

The best way to create links to your site is through blogging. However, we don't simply mean you should hire a blogging company to put a l...
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AT: 02/28/2011 12:23:36 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 25, 2011

Is it just a Hoop? Or is it a Very Specific Hoop?

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The conclusion of yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget was that it's better to include links to within the body of specific landing pages instead of overloading your navigation with a long list of links. This is an especially good technique if you want to link to subsections like education pages or even individual page descriptions for your services.

When you include a hyperlink within the body of a paragraph, that link will have a natural relationship to the words around it - a contextual relationship.

Let's say you have a page dedicated to John Hardy jewelry on your website. From the body of one of your pages you might say, "We're now carrying the new line of John Hardy Bamboo Silver Hoop Earrings as well as the Bamboo Silver Slim Kick Cuff. Come in to see this fine jewelry and support the planting of bamboo seedlings."
<...
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AT: 02/25/2011 11:02:34 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 24, 2011

On Page Linking Ideas

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How much time have you invested into analyzing how the navigation of your website works? Do the top links make sense? Do the navigation links on the left make sense? We're assuming of course that there are top and left navigations on your website since they've become standard.

Of course, if you've decided to take the discounted method of setting up your jewelry website then you're probably using a free system like WordPress or Blogger or Tumblr, and that means your navigation is, by default, on the right side. Or worse, in the footer.

Whoever dreamed up that default template of putting primary navigation links in the footer and then also made the font size so big that the poor users have to scroll down by a mile to find the navigation!? Okay, that was definitely a digression, so let's get back on the track here...
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AT: 02/24/2011 01:51:48 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Keyword Research Ideas

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Trying to figure out the best keywords for your online marketing campaign can be pretty tricky, especially if you have a brand new jewelry website.

We know that all jewelry stores want to advertise "bridal" or "engagement rings" but those phrases are so tough to conquer. You're better off permutating those phrases into "local" versions by simply including your town name.

For example: "engagement rings in springfield" or "springfield engagement rings"

As you write content on your website, as long as you add your town name right next to your money phrase, you will be able to tackle the local market.

While we're on the topic of "bridal" we 'd like to give you some valuable advice. Don't try to target the keyword phrase "bridal jewelry." This is a worthless phrase for jewelry stores because it triggers SERP mat...
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AT: 02/23/2011 01:24:13 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Jewelry Webpage Title Tags

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Every professional SEO will have their own opinion of the single most important factor that controls the appearance of your website in search results.

The one SEO factor that most professionals will agree upon is the importance of the page title tag. In the HTML code, these are the words you type between the and the tags.

Let's explore some ideas. And we'll stress IDEAS because this information is not actually confirmed by any of the search engines and is only formulated by agreements among opinionated SEO professionals... like ourselves.

The title of your page appears on the SERPs, and it's what your potential customers look at. Right below the title is a description of the page.

Your page title should not be deceptive at all. Don't make grand claims about your products or services since g...
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AT: 02/22/2011 11:28:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 21, 2011

Jewelry Photography Ideas

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Photos and images can really spice up a website, well, that is they can spice up a website if they are done correctly.

Jewelry websites are especially vulnerable to poor quality product photos since jewelry photography is actually pretty tough.

We have a skewed opinion of jewelry photography, in that we believe it should be true to the item and not photo retouched. You don't want the customer opening their eagerly awaited online jewelry purchase to be met with disappointment because your photography was too good.

It's especially important to include some type of scaling comparison in your photography, like a coin or a pencil for example. Avoid using a real hand unless you actually hire a "hand model."

A professional photographer will charge anywhere from $25 to $200 per item photographed. It all depends on h...
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AT: 02/21/2011 12:35:17 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 18, 2011

Meat of the Page

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Have you ever heard of the "table cell trick?"

It used to be that Google would only read the first 100KB of a web page. This was back when they didn't have hidden datacenters all over the world tucked away in type 1AAA shipping containers packed with 1,160 servers in each.

Yes, those statistics seem to be true. Although no one outside of Google knows how many servers Google actually has, it was last estimated in 2009 to be almost 1 million servers! It's our guess that they build their server "rooms" inside shipping containers so they can move them whenever needed (think disaster, war and acts of god).

The Google server room engineers have to think in terms of "cost per search." For them, they need to calculate the number of servers and electricity and payroll and all other possible factors it takes for each one of...
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AT: 02/18/2011 11:54:34 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 17, 2011

Watch Out For Bad Website Neighbors

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Google has a lot of built in protection for its users. Every search result page is filtered to provide a variety of answers whenever possible. Their system also tries to filter out websites that you might consider worthless.

Our own analysis has shown us that Google is constantly re-crawling jewelry websites. Some days, they download dozens or hundreds of pages per site, and other days they only look at 3 or 4 pages. Most of the time, they simply peek at a page to see if anything is different, and then they move on.

Google also monitors for hacked websites. Since they are crawling your website a few times a day, it's very likely that they would know your website is hacked before you do. We're not sure how quickly they take action, but we do know that if they discover a hacked website, they will attempt to block the sit...
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AT: 02/17/2011 12:48:18 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Google SERP Geo-Targeting

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Local search results are BIG!

Okay, honestly they aren't anything big; they're not even new. Google started development on local search results way back in 2003. They called it Google Local back then, and they tried to educate owners that they should list their businesses in the system.

When did you sign up with Google Local, Google Maps, Google Business Center or Google Places? Those are all the names they've called the service since 2003. Have you even done it yet?

In this particular case, the jewelry industry is not alone. Even though most jewelers are slow to adopt new technology, Google discovered that only a small percentage of local businesses had registered. So in August 2010, Google loaded a database of about 50 million local businesses.

Literally overnight, every town had at least 1 new jewelry ...
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AT: 02/16/2011 12:09:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Geo-Targeting Your Website with TLD and IP

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Since our team started in the jewelry industry, we've seen many jewelry stores attempt to sell online and fail miserably.

The cost involved with setting up and maintaining an eCommerce website is usually far greater than a retail jeweler realizes. The marketing is completely different than what needs to be done for the physical store, and the smallest mistake can mean a huge difference between slow building success followed by sudden overnight failure.

We've always recommended that local jewelers target their business to the internet users that are only local to the store. Trying to compete on a national basis is very difficult and requires a larger online advertising budget as well as a full time staff.

However, if you do decide to set up that eCommerce site, the first thing you need to do is figure out your domai...
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AT: 02/15/2011 01:56:29 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 14, 2011

Duplicate Content in Your Search Results

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Duplicate content is an issue for all websites and not just a situation where one website copies the information from another website.

In fact, more duplicate content issues come from your own website because of programming glitches that were not foreseen.

Duplicate content happens when information you have on one web page is the same as the information on another page. Of course, if you have a small site with only 10 pages to begin with, you might not be thinking there is a real problem for you.

Maybe there isn't.

However, any website that has any size product catalog might fall prey to duplicate content issues through a number of common issues.

One very common issue is a search box you might have on your site. Search boxes allow your users to search your site for words or jewelry. Want to find all t...
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AT: 02/14/2011 12:52:23 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 11, 2011

Moving to a New Domain Name

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By far the .com domain name extension is the most popular. It was the first one way back in the early 90s and everyone fought over them.

Today (that's in 2011, for those reading this in the distant future) it seems like there are new dot extensions every few weeks. The .co extension is newly available and now you can even register a .asia extension, if you really wanted.

Many of our jewelry stores have difficulty acquiring the domain name that perfectly matches their store. But some stores find that another store with the same name already has the .com. In these cases, we always recommend selecting the .net or the .biz options.

Just the other day there was a discussion in our office about the validity of the .co domain extension. However, the point was brought up that human muscle (typing) memory would probably k...
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AT: 02/11/2011 01:41:30 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 10, 2011

Understanding the Different Parts of a Website

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The anatomy of a website is extremely diverse. Some websites have pages of information, some have product catalogs, some have photo galleries. Even if you are using the same content management system as someone else, no 2 websites will ever be alike.

Websites are just like people: some tall, some short, some fat, some thin, some wear lots of color while others are dressed in plain, white clothes... figuratively speaking. Different parts of a website are used for different reasons too, just like your feet help you walk, your hands allow you to write and type, and your eyes let you read.

You probably never consciously think about it but your feet, hands, and eyes serve you differently. Would you attempt to walk or run using your hands in everyday life?

Consider for a moment that there are some common structures to...
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AT: 02/10/2011 12:58:07 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Is your website cluttered?

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Figuring out how to arrange information on your website is a tedious task. Sometimes even we have to scribble notes on real paper with a real pencil to determine how to organize the pages of a website into sections and subsections.

Every page on your site should be dedicated to a single topic. You don't want to put educational information about pearls on the same page as information about gold carat metal. A human might not mind, but this would confuse the search engines a little bit and work against your ranking.

Here's how it works:

The search engine maintain an enormous database of information. It's so big that it would take a few seconds to search for the phrase "engagement rings" if they didn't have multiple levels of efficiency.

Searching for "engagement rings" returns results in 0.21 seconds, but wo...
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AT: 02/09/2011 02:15:38 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Keyword Research That Wins

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Let's propose a scenario.

A. You decide to set up a website for your jewelry store.
B. You hire the cheapest website designer you can find.
C. You spend time educating that designer because they have no clue what a 100 point RB solitaire is, and yet you want a photo of one of those on your home page.
D. You realize that you can't find the right 100 point RB photo, so now you have to learn how to take jewelry photos.
E. You finally get the right photo on the home page of your website and it looks perfect to you.
F. You open your website for business.

Is that scenario realistic? Well, each step will actually happens as you set up a new website, but surely there are 26 letters in the alphabet and there are at least 26 steps to setting up a brand new website.

After a month of having that beautifully brilli...
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AT: 02/08/2011 01:42:17 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 07, 2011

How-To Blog on Your Site

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Let's jump back to the very basics for a moment. The word "blog" is a portmanteau of the words "web" and "log." In 1997, the process of writing and publishing online was considered a weblog, but then in 1999 it was shortened to just "blog."

Blogs are extremely popular now. In fact, we might even say they have become one of the largest driving forces of the internet. Everyone with an opinion (or a passion) has the ability to get online and offer a piece of their mind.

We'd love to see all our jewelry stores add a blog to their website. Naturally, we hear opposition to this all the time because "who has the time?" Right?

For business purposes you should consider your blogging time as "necessary advertising." But you should not consider it to be a chore; after all, aren’t you passionate about jewelry?

Ple...
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AT: 02/07/2011 11:41:54 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 04, 2011

Hidden SEO Treasure in YouTube Videos

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There's a really handy feature built into YouTube now that is very valuable for search engine optimization.

YouTube is owned by Google, and like all Google properties they add little features all the time to make things better. When the ability for subtitles was added a while ago, there wasn't a big celebration, no ticket tape parade, no fireworks... but there should have been!

The YouTube subtitles feature went unnoticed by many and it's been slowly catching on.

If you have a video on YouTube, you should go back to your account and take a close look at the editing options. Look for the subtitles feature. It will open in an easy-to-use interface that allows you to select a spot on the time line of your video and enter text within the video. They also allow you to enter hyperlinks.

YouTube generates a consid...
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AT: 02/04/2011 12:18:36 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 03, 2011

How Many Tweets Make a Book?

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Some time in the summer of 2010, Google changed their policy regarding how they treat Twitter.

Twitter is a very fast-paced micro-blogging website. A quick search on Google for the number of tweets posted every day returns some amazing numbers: around 1.9 Million! That's a lot of 140 character messages and we'd guess that's 44.3 Million words posted per day.

Another quick Google search for the average number of words in a book and we find different experts saying between 70,731 and 75,000, so let's take 72,865. Using that number, we estimate approximately and equivalent to 608 books (novels) worth of information is posted to Twitter every day.

Interwoven in all those "books" are millions of links to other websites. Some of the links are pure spam, and some are really good links to worthwhile information. That's a...
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AT: 02/03/2011 12:03:52 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 02, 2011

How to get your large website crawled.

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In previous Daily Gold Nuggets we've explained the need to add a lot of content to your website. Building websites with a lot of content is necessary for becoming an authority website.

However, according to Google it's not the size of the website alone that makes you an authority; it's actually the number of links you have coming to multiple pages of your website.

In practically the same breath that Google says "lots of inbound links build authority" they also say that "you have to write great content that people will want to link to."

Although it is possible to build a 1 page website and get thousands of links, it's probably not going to happen in the real world. In the real world we all have to build interesting websites that serve our customer needs and hope that people will eventually find and link to your page...
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AT: 02/02/2011 09:16:20 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 01, 2011

Dropped Out of Rankings

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Years ago, Google used to wait a few months at a time before unleashing new search engine code into the world (wide web).

As it stands right now, they have teams of different programmers working on different segments of the search engine at all times. Some teams work on web spam filtering, some on measuring links, some on basic page formatting. Each team works almost independently of any other team.

As these teams release new features, they are automatically added to a daily routine of mini updates for website ranking. Most of the time you won't notice a big change in how your web page is ranking with the new features; in fact, you are more likely to hear about some change on a blog post than noticing it yourself.

However, there will be day when you sit down with your morning coffee and discover that your website ...
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AT: 02/01/2011 09:12:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 31, 2011

Sizing and Cropping Images

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Determining the correct size of an image to use on your website can be tricky. Your website probably has a standard image size setting, and if you learn to size your images correctly your users will have a quality visual experience and a pleasant browsing experience.

The first thing you need to understand about website images is that no two web designers use the same terminology. Some designers will ask the "size" of an image when they want to know the pixel dimensions as they appear in the web browser; whereas the "size" for someone else actually refers to the kilobyte size of the file saved on the hard drive.

Jewelry photography is very difficult. You won't sell anything online or attract attention to your store if your photos are too small to see detail, of if the images are too grainy. Grainy images are also referre...
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AT: 01/31/2011 12:14:20 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 28, 2011

What is Your Bounce Rate?

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Google would like to make 1 thing absolutely clear: They do not use your Google Analytics account to help with ranking your jewelry website. However, they do use your Bounce Rate.

The Bounce Rate is a measure of the number of people that visited your website and immediately clicked the back button to leave. If 10 people visit your website and 2 of them click the back button, your Bounce Rate would be 20%.

According to several videos and reports from Google they do use the Bounce Rate of your website as a ranking signal, but they do not get it from your Analytics account. Instead, they are somehow using JavaScript to monitor when someone clicks a link from the SERP, visits your site, then immediately returns back to the SERP.

They track these bounce rates as a measure of quality. Their goal is to provide the most r...
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AT: 01/28/2011 11:28:44 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 27, 2011

How Deep is Your Tree?

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How closely do you look at the address of the websites you visit?

Some websites are built with sloppy content management systems that have long strings of variables like this EXAMPLE 1:
www.Jewelrystore.com/page.html?id=25&code=1234&var=5

Some websites are built with more appealing website addresses like this EXAMPLE 2:
www.Jewelrystore.com/12345/67890/page.html

And some websites are built with fully readable website addresses like this EXAMPLE 3:
www.Jewelrystore.com/online-catalog/diamond-jewelry.html

It actually doesn't matter how your website addresses are structured. You could have a really long website address like this EXAMPLE 4:
www.Jewelrystore.com/jewelry-catalog/diamo...
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AT: 01/27/2011 01:40:41 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 26, 2011

What is the Purpose of Your Web Page?

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Every page on the web can be classified as one of four types:

* Brand - Information about your name brand product or service that is very similar to other pages on the internet also talking about your name brand product or service.
* Informational - These types of pages are meant for educating the reader.
* Navigational - These types of pages are either landing pages, or pages on your jewelry site that help users decide where they want to go next. The navigation could be through text links, or photographs. On jewelry websites it's a good idea to use quality jewelry photos for navigation through landing pages.
* Transactional - Product catalog pages and shopping cart pages are designed to make a sale. Another type of transaction would be a newsletter sign-up or filling out a contact form.
<...
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AT: 01/26/2011 11:00:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Over Optimization is a Euphemism for Spammy

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The term "web spam" has been mentioned in many official blogs recently. Actually, the term seems to be mentioned every few months when someone complains about it, reawakens the topic.

In reality, "web spam" refers to a web page that is made up entirely of clusters of similar words that looks like gibberish.

Here's EXAMPLE 1 of web spam:

"We sell engagement ring the best selection of engagement rings is in our jewelry showcase you will find the best bridal engagement rings at our store women should look here for a variety of wedding engagement ring selections available nowhere else but our jewelry showcase in our engagement ring store where we have the best jewelry and diamond rings you could ever expect from an online jewelry store."

All of the search engines have implemented filtering to prevent you from eve...
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AT: 01/25/2011 10:43:17 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 24, 2011

Reasons Why HTML 3 is Better than HTML 5

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Today's Gold Nugget should surprise the HTML programming enthusiasts and provide at least some curiosity to the non-initiated.

There is a lot of talk in the web programming community about correct methods of programming. Officially, if you program a website from scratch today you should be using a technique referred to as Semantic Programming. This is a fancy way to explain that your web page is split into 2 components: your words and your design.

The "words" part of your web page is organized using simple HTML programming. The "design" part of your web page is the cascading style sheet (CSS for short) which includes all your font sizes, colors, background, etc.

Splitting up the words and the design like this makes your website more flexible for future change, but it doesn't necessarily make your website faster. Y...
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AT: 01/24/2011 12:42:22 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 21, 2011

Show Your Smarts in the Community

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Online marketing is not always about finding the right ads, or expensive photography, or search engine optimization, or even the right online marketing company.

Another important part of online marketing is simply you; your personality and your time--oh, and your communication skills.

It's time to brush up on your typing and online communication skills, because that's what today's Daily Golden Nugget is all about.

There are hundreds of various local online forums that you can get involved with. Here are some forums that we know of that you could get involved with today:

1. Local Chamber of Commerce community forum websites
2. Your bank's website may have local forums
3. American Express has online forums

Although Facebook is technically not an online forum, you can use it as one to interact with y...
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AT: 01/21/2011 12:35:50 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 20, 2011

Mobile Search Results

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As the world of mobile website matures, you should start wondering whether or not you will ever see your mobile website in the search results. If you haven't given it any thought then maybe you should, and if you haven't considered a mobile website yet then you should.

There are a lot of tricky techniques to setting up a mobile website. It's not as easy as it may seem.

For example, your web programmer can't simply set up a .mobi domain name and create a website that looks good on a cell phone. You actually need to make sure the web server sends the proper programming code to the cell phone, and that technique is actually pretty tough--most web hosting companies are clueless about it.

We could also say that setting up a mobile website is not as easy as buying a mobile website template and slapping it up at VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 01/20/2011 10:22:46 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Don't Stuff Meta Descriptions Like a Turkey

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Meta Description is a feature inside the hidden programming of every web page. It allows 150 characters to describe your web page.

This description is read into the search engines and displayed on the Search Engine Results Page as the 2 lines of text below the website page title. Since you're probably not looking at a SERP right now, let's describe this.

The SERP shows the title of the web page as blue underlined text. Right below that, there are usually 2, sometimes 3, lines of black text, and right below the black text is a green website address. That black text is the Meta Description, and you (mostly) have control of what shows up there.

The functionality of the meta description has changed over the years, and a lot of out-dated information is still available online. In fact, when it comes to the meta descrip...
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AT: 01/19/2011 01:19:31 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Deep, Deep, Deep Linking Inside Your Site.

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How large is your website?

The answer might actually surprise you and you can't really answer it unless you understand how your website functions.

You see, you don't just count the number of pages on your site, as in your About Us and Services pages. You need to take a really close look at how many dynamic pages are being created automatically.

As an example, let's talk about a typical online jewelry product catalog webpage. When you visit that type of page, you would first see a bunch of smaller photos of all the jewelry. Clicking on any image will then bring you to another page of full details for that single item.

For every product you add to your website, you also add another dynamic page to your site.

The same is true for the blog or newsletter archive on your website. Every blog entry creates ...
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AT: 01/18/2011 10:52:06 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 17, 2011

Does a Promise Equal an Engagement?

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Google has a massive built-in dictionary and thesaurus. Without realizing it, every time you search their site they are analyzing every word you type to find the best answer for you.

Google uses synonym matching, search history, and word association to generate the search engine results page. All those calculations happen within fractions of seconds and most of the time they return reasonable results.

Let's take a look some reasonable examples Google would associate together.

A search for the word "engagement" would certainly return matches with the words "wedding", "bridal", and "promise".

If you search for the phrase "custom made jewelry" you would also have results that include "handmade jewelry."

On the other hand, if you are in Canada your search for "custom made jewelry" would return pages for "h...
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AT: 01/17/2011 12:53:10 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 14, 2011

Your Website Is So Fat!

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In years past, there were two different types of web programmers: the organized ones and the sloppy ones.

We're not talking about their desk, cubical, or car; no, in fact we're talking about their techniques in writing programming code.

The organized programmer would make sure all their HTML code was properly organized (we call it nested) and easy to read. Being organized always takes more time, but it saves time in the future when you need to edit code.

The sloppy programmer would slap together HTML code without any regard for organization. Many times they would also write bad or broken code that would not display properly in all web browsers. Debugging sloppy code is always a nightmare.

Luckily programs like Dreamweaver can take sloppy code and automatically organize it into something easily understood. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 01/14/2011 10:32:01 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 13, 2011

H is for Header

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Today's Daily Gold Nugget could be disputed by many SEO professionals all over the world.

The topic is the Header Tag...more specifically the Header 2 and Header 3 tags. They are commonly known as the H2 and H3 tags.

Search engines claim to use these H tags as minor signals in ranking. Google even has a few videos online that specifically mention how to use these H2 and H3 tags correctly.

The SEO experts dispute their usage because they have such a small effect on ranking. In fact, only 35% of expert surveyed by SEOmoz.org in 2009 said the H2 and H3 were worth any ranking value.

We're mentioning it because we want you to know the correct ways to use these tags yourself. Every little bit counts when trying to get the coveted #1 ranking spot, so let's get these header tags wor...
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AT: 01/13/2011 11:47:55 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Are Websites Following You?

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By now, you've visited websites that seemed to have a special message just for people in your home town, or near where you work.

The popular discount offer website Groupon uses this feature constantly. They are able to sense exactly where you are and they provide special offers to you based on the town or region you are in right now.

You might think they are spying on you, but in fact this is something we call IP Based Delivery. Every computer in the world is assigned a unique number when it connects to the internet. This number is called an IP address and it's like a phone number for your computer.

Every IP address is assigned to specific towns and your computer's IP address can be looked up in fractions of a second to determine where you are.

The basic IP Based Delivery wo...
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AT: 01/12/2011 11:29:47 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Google Wonder Wheel

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What is the one keyword phrase that you would love to rank #1 for above all others?

If you can answer that question in less than a second, then either you've already done your homework or you're wrong.

Truthfully, no one can ever claim they know what keyword phrases are best for their website unless they've done a lot of homework. Sure, you might want to say "engagement rings," but we'll tell you to go back to the beginning and look for something different.

The phrase "engagement rings" is what we refer to as a "trophy phrase," in that it's the trophy you see and hope to win. However, it's very unlikely that "engagement rings" will be your "money phrase," which is the actual phrase that brings you the most traffic and the most sales.

The only way you can figure out the money phrases for your website is to do...
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AT: 01/11/2011 11:17:13 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 10, 2011

Linking to Bad Neighbors

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Occasionally, someone will ask you to link your website to theirs. Typically, you will get an email request from someone saying they will pay you to put a link on your website, or they simply might ask for a link in exchange for linking to you.

Usually, these types of requests are bad for your business and they should be ignored. But, if you entertain the request, you should first make sure their website is not a spam or black hat website.

Here's how you check:
1. Visit their website and review the PageRank value on the Google Toolbar. It needs to be at least a PR1.
2. Read through their website. If you don't like the look of the site or what they are saying, odds are Google does not like them either.
3. Search Google for "site:domain.com" without the quotes. You will get the "Your search did not match any docu...
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AT: 01/10/2011 12:38:56 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 07, 2011

Mobile Flash Repulser

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Set up a mobile website easily with CityQRCode.com. Get your own multi page mobile website with 6 different easy to understand and use QR Codes with forehead slapping ROI tracking. Your signup, the mobile website and 1st QR code are free.
As you formulate your mobile website game plan, you will have to think through various features unique to the mobile website experience.

One of these features is exactly how a website will work during that initial split second when a cell phone makes the first connection to your site.

During that first split second of communication, every computer and every w...
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AT: 01/07/2011 11:23:17 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 06, 2011

Testing Your Mobile Website for Dumb Phones

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The past few months have seen a huge surge in recent blog posts and news articles about the mobile website. Perhaps 2011 will be the year mobile websites really come of age and awareness.

There's actually a domain name extension specifically for mobile websites too; it's .mobi.

As of today there are very few mobile websites that completely mimic their PC siblings. In fact, most of the time, a mobile website is rather simple and only has basic contact information or product and service information on it.

The last time we checked, there were reports of 54 million smartphones in the USA, but there were also reports of at least an equal or greater number of non-smart phones. Keep in mind that even a "dumb" phone is still able to surf the internet.

As your website company plans out the design of your new mobile w...
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AT: 01/06/2011 11:13:57 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Community Descriptions for Photos

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Google can't read your images. It can't figure out if the image is a ring, a bracelet, a charm or a staff photo.

A photo gallery of images will not rank will in the search engine results page unless you include some really good descriptions of the images directly adjacent to the photo. But that's a lot of tedious work and you surely don't have time describe dozens or hundreds of photos on your website.

Generally speaking, a large photo gallery is never going to rank well in the search engines. But each individual image of the photo gallery has a fighting chance if you give it some word love. But again, it's a time issue.

Here's what you can do: Add a comment feature to every photo within your photo gallery. We're not talking about the Facebook comment box; rather, a real ability for people to leave comments. The...
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AT: 01/05/2011 11:26:34 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Online Product Descriptions

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We're going to try something new starting today: shorter Nuggets focused on SEO. In the past, we gave you lots of marketing ideas and essentially full articles in every Nugget email. Over the next few days, or weeks, we'd like your feedback on our new approach. If it fails, we'll go back to the previous format.

For more details on why this is happening, please read Matthew Perosi's blog post from today:
http://www.jwag.biz/blog/2011/01/04/one-seo-book-to-rule-them-all.htm

Duplicate content is the phrase we use to describe when one web page has the same information on it as another. The design and navigation don't matter much, but the information in the body of the page should never match the information on another page.

You nee...
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AT: 01/04/2011 11:09:31 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 03, 2011

SEO: Intra-site Nofollow Link Disasters

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Welcome to 2011!

We expect a plethora of SEO experts to post wonderful articles today about how SEO changed over 2010 and what the future will hold for all of us. We're staying away from the predictions and simply following forward with basic SEO discussions.

Although, our discussions are not simply old SEO techniques regurgitated over and over again. We do spend a lot of time making sure what we are saying is still valid. We search through what the SEO experts are saying and we especially look for the guys that have the analytical data to prove what they're saying.

We never believe any SEO expert who makes a claim without evidence to back it up.

Once we find something interesting, we compare it to our own jewelry-specific measurements and determine if the same finding also holds true within the jewelry ind...
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AT: 01/03/2011 09:31:41 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 31, 2010

SEO: Long Tail Keywords

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The Jeweler Website Advisory Group officially opened in January 2010 and built up its reputation throughout the year by providing SEO basic techniques and website advanced marketing ideas. This week, we went back to basics and will continue more of the same next week.

As alluded to yesterday, today we are going to tell you a little about long tail keywords and how you could put them to use on your site.

As you work on your website, you might think of specific words or phrases that you believe customers will search for. Unfortunately, your customers will rarely fit into the nice pigeon hole you would like to place them in. Instead, they will arrive at your site in some unusual ways.

Maybe you want to rank for "engagement rings" but your customers will flock to your website using the phrases "gold ring engagement wed...
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AT: 12/31/2010 09:21:23 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 30, 2010

SEO: Contextual Linking of Pages

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Here's a little tidbit of interesting information. The links throughout a single page of your website are not all created equal.

Every web page has a variety of different links. Top menus, left navigation, right navigations, breadcrumbs, ad links, and links in the copy of the page. As it turns out, Google has the ability to measure the context of the information before and after every link.

That additional context provides additional signals to Google regarding the validity and importance of the link. The more relevant the surrounding words are, the more they'll produce higher link validity.

This is a reasonable example of contextual relevance:
"We have a great selection of diamond and 14kt _engagement_rings_ available."
The words _engagement_rings_ represents a link to your product catalog page. It is pre...
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AT: 12/30/2010 10:25:26 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 29, 2010

SEO: Links Without nofollow

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In previous Daily Gold Nuggets, we've mentioned methods to get links from other businesses in your town or in neighboring towns. Building links to your site is very important and there is a huge variety of ways you can do so.

The important part to link building is making sure that the link to your website is not what we call a "nofollowed" link. A few years ago, the search engines came up with this "rel=nofollow" feature in order to prevent the huge comment spam that was building up on blog posts.

Many people were intentionally commenting on blog posts and including the link back to their website as a method of link building. The result was a huge amount of link spam and improper search results pages. The nofollow feature nullified and disqualified this type of spam and all those links, which quickly returned all search...
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AT: 12/29/2010 01:11:59 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 28, 2010

SEO: Page Title

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As 2010 comes to a close and 2011 brings hopes of a better economy, we'd like to present to you some basic SEO ideas that we've not yet covered through our Daily Gold Nuggets.

Before we get into any specifics, let's introduce you to some basic terminology and search engine ideas.

First, you need to know that there is no magic silver bullet that will make your website show up in the search engines easily. It takes a lot of hard, tedious work.

Second, if you spend just one evening researching SEO techniques on your own, you will find huge inconsistencies between what all of the search engine optimization professionals say to do. There is no way that everyone is correct, yet every one of those professionals seem to get the job done using their "proven" techniques. Google and Bing do not freely publish a real how-to d...
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AT: 12/28/2010 11:53:54 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 27, 2010

We LOVE our Facebook Fans

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One of the effective ways Facebook was used during the holiday 2010 season was by offering deals to your Facebook Business page fans.

According to a comScore survey, social media accounted for 33% of the buying influence in December. Within that one-third percentage surveyed, 9% said they were watching Facebook Business pages for deals, and another 9% said they were watching their friend's status updates for deals.

To tap into this small, but growing, market you need to understand the different strategies you could use. The easiest to implement is creating an Event on Facebook.

Throughout December, we saw dozens of jewelry stores creating events that were simply called "10% off for all Facebook Fans!" Actually the percentage varied, but that was the general idea.

To do the same, you simply need to create an ...
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AT: 12/27/2010 09:21:54 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 24, 2010

Some Holiday Season 2010 Statistics

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We're not going to talk about anything new today. Instead, we wanted to share industry statistics and our own findings for this 2010 holiday season. Everything reported is for online sales or statistics.

These statistics were reported from comScore.com
Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 25) $407M, up 28%
Black Friday (Nov. 26) $648M, up 9%
Cyber Monday (Nov. 29) $1,028M (that's a Billion!) 16%
Green Monday (Dec. 13) $954, up 12%
Free Shipping Day (Dec. 17) $942M, up 61%

The week of December 17 (Free Shipping Day) saw 52.7% of online transactions with free shipping. comScore also reported that there was a greater trend for online buyers to wait until Free Shipping Day before making the final sale. This is a clear indication that free shipping is a deal winner when selling online. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 12/24/2010 09:38:31 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 23, 2010

LinkedIn Status Updates

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The final item to talk about is Status updates. Yes, LinkedIn has status updates just like on Facebook, and just like updates to Twitter.

Your first thought is probably one of, "Oh great; another things I have to waste time on," but you shouldn't look at it like that.

Status updates on LinkedIn do not have to be once an hour, once a day or even once a week. They only need to be when you have something relevant and exciting to share with your connections.

An easy example would be "I've been hired to create a custom championship ring for a sports team." It doesn't have to be that exciting, either; you could simply say, "I've been hired to create a custom pendant for a 25th wedding anniversary."

The...
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AT: 12/23/2010 11:10:49 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Getting Recommendations on LinkedIn

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LinkedIn has a built in method for allowing one business professional to recommend the services of another. Each profile includes a "Recommend" link below each listing in the Experience and Education section.

You need to build some recommendations. This will validate your work and create an instant reputation for potential customers that have discovered your profile. Just like reviews on Google Places, the reviews here have a long term value.

But you don't have to wait for people to give you a review. In fact, if you don't ask for reviews you will probably never get them. Once you've established a few dozen connections you should wait before soliciting recommendations from people. You simply do not want to create a connection and then request a recommendation in the same day, or e...
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AT: 12/22/2010 11:48:01 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Connections on LinkedIn

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Now that we've spent the last 6 Daily Gold Nuggets telling you how to set up your LinkedIn profile, you're probably wondering when we will get to the topic of making money! That starts now, but this is not a quick race; it's long-term, business sustainable building.

First, start out with creating connections. This process will be slow and tedious. Sit down in front of a computer with your top 10% or 20% customer list. Methodically copy and paste their names from your customer management system to the search box on LinkedIn.

We're saying you should do this using a copy/paste method because typing everyone's name from a printout might take until next year, and you've got better things to do.

After you enter their name, click the blue magnifying glass to search for them. Quick...
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AT: 12/21/2010 10:24:44 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 20, 2010

LinkedIn Company Profiles

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Last week we gave you 5 days of information about LinkedIn. We're covering a lot of information and this is unexpectedly turning into a mini course about LinkedIn. We're taking this long approach because LinkedIn is a popular social network that many people don't understand. We hope you are finding this useful and we look forward to feedback. By the way, we welcome all feedback even if it's to call us idiots when you disagree.

After reviewing the information covered already, we realized we mentioned something briefly about company information on Tuesday last week, but never went back to talk about it; let's do that now.

When you were editing your current job listing you probably saw a screen that said "Create a Company Profile for {jewelry store name}" and we assume you skipped past...
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AT: 12/20/2010 10:38:33 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 17, 2010

LinkedIn Groups

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Groups are where people with similar interests can come together for discussions on specific topics. They are targeted and categorized around location, industry or activity. There are thousands of groups and initially it will be difficult to find something appropriate for you.

To start, go into the Groups area of LinkedIn and search for your town name. It's unlikely that there will be groups for suburban towns, but if you find something, you may want to get involved. Remember: this is networking and you need to put yourself out there to get noticed. Your customers might be there and happily surprised to see you.

The next thing to search for is your state or province name. This should return a plethora of groups relating to job and business networking. Look for one that seems appr...
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AT: 12/17/2010 09:24:17 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 16, 2010

Twitter and Website Settings on LinkedIn

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This is the fourth email in our LinkedIn setup strategies presented this week. So far, we've explained good methods to fill in your Summary, Specialties, Experience and Education sections.

Today, we want you to look at the Twitter settings in your profile. From your Edit Profile screen, click the tiny "Edit" link next to the Twitter setting. From the Twitter Settings screen, you can put in your Twitter account name and select it to be visible to anyone.

As we discussed last week, Twitter should be used at least once per hour. That's a lot of noise to be making on Twitter and you don't want to overwhelm your professional users on LinkedIn. So make sure you select the setting to "Share only tweet that contain #in." This is a good practice even if you only tweet a few times a week. ...
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AT: 12/16/2010 01:27:50 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Does Your Jewelry Customer Care if Your Specialty is Marketing?

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In today's continuation of our discussion on building a good LinkedIn profile, you will discover a good strategy for the Summary and Specialties sections.

As a reminder, your LinkedIn profile is an online business resume; at least that's what LinkedIn feels it should be. But we want you to take a different strategy and instead use it to build connections to your existing customers.

How many paper resumes have you seen with the "Summary" section beginning with the words "To find a job where..." or "My goal is to..." other similar words? As you browse through LinkedIn, you will see hundreds of profiles of people trying to cram the history of their life's work into the Summary. Apparently, everyone needs to go back to basic resume writing school. This strategy would be quite obviously wrong if the same information was print...
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AT: 12/15/2010 01:21:13 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Experience Descriptions on LinkedIn

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Continuing with our conversation about LinkedIn, let's talk about the different types of account available. As of the writing of this Nugget, LinkedIn has 5 different account types as indicated here:

LinkedIn Basic, Free
Business, $24.95 per month
Business Plus, $49.99 per month
Executive, $99.95 per month
LinkedIn Pro, $499.99 per month

Each account type has about the same features, but as a retail jeweler you only need to have the Basic account. You shouldn't need any of the other accounts unless you are looking to seek a new career or hire a professional employee.

As you build your LinkedIn profile, you will encounter at least one term you might not yet be familiar with through other social media sites. The basis of LinkedIn is making a connection with other business professionals. The word "connect...
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AT: 12/14/2010 12:48:09 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 13, 2010

Let's Get Linked

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You have to be everywhere online in order to achieve local dominance within your market. Actually, that's a general statement for any industry, not just jewelry. What it means is that there is no single, all-powerful website or social network for everyone. Every one of us has unique taste and needs and therefore no single website works for everyone, although Facebook certainly thinks they do.

Twitter is for noise-making. Facebook can be used for friends, family or business. MySpace has even more noise than Twitter. CafeMom is for moms-to-be. Classmates is the place to connect with school friends. There are hundreds of others and you can find a great list on Wikipedia by searching for "List of social networking websites" if you are really interested.

Your customers will come from everywhere, and that's why you need to ...
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AT: 12/13/2010 01:58:33 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 10, 2010

Tweeting for Increased Sales

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It's important to remember that Twitter is a social network. Droves of people use it every day to communicate with their friends and search for items of interest.

Like other social networks, your best selling strategy is actually not to sell, but to engage. Unlike wedding engagements, your social media engagement starts with someone becoming interested in the product or service you are offering. Interest initiates search, and in the search results, you need to somehow attract attention.

Like all internet advertising endeavors, you need to do or say something interesting while your audience is listening. But when is your audience listening?

In late 2009, Hubspot.com published research data about Twitter. One of their interesting findings stated that the best way to attract you...
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AT: 12/10/2010 02:03:19 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 09, 2010

Introduction to Listing Tweets on Your Jewelry Website

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Yesterday we gave you a very brief introduction to Twitter. And that was truly very brief considering there are hundreds of printed books, eBooks and online courses that teach you amazing twitter secrets.

Our point of view is different. We know you don't have a lot of time and we want you to get the best ideas from these Daily Gold Nuggets.

Yesterday we told you to create a Twitter account and send a tweet that said "We have a great selection of #wedding #rings that just arrived."

The words "#wedding" and "#rings" are called hashtags within Twitter. This hashtag feature allows various tracking for you, and ease of search for general users. If someone wants to find all local tweets with the word "wedding" in it they could search for "wedding," or they could search for "#wedding."

Here's the difference:
"w...
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AT: 12/09/2010 01:00:43 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 08, 2010

Introduction to Twitter

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Even though we've mentioned Twitter many times in other training, we've never specifically given you strategies to use it as a business tool.

We will admit the concept of Twitter is strange. Why would someone want to post a 140 character note to the internet for eternity? The answer is simply that the system was created for friends to share their instant messaging status updates with other friends. In fact, AOL Instant Messenger was the inspiration for the Twitter system.

High school and college students loved it practically overnight and people with way too much time on their hands and way too many friends all flocked to get accounts.

Of course, you can never simply have a useless technology stay useless, so business people and technology gurus also flocked to figure out how to make money using this new tool.
<...
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AT: 12/08/2010 01:46:54 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 07, 2010

Why Are You Selling Burgers to Vegetarians?

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Ever wonder why your marketing strategy fails, or doesn't return any real investment? You spend thousands on a billboard just to have friends say "I saw your billboard." You spend thousands on a radio ad just to have the FedEx guy say "I heard your ad on the radio today."

Each and every time you spend money on an ad, it should return enough sales to at least cover the cost of the ad. If not, well, then you did it wrong.

Wrong demographic target, or wrong placement, or wrong words, or maybe simply no one cares about what you are trying to sell. Of course, there's always the possibility that your ad slogan has some other urban slang definition and everyone's laughing at you.

Now in the second week of online marketing attempts, we are seeing random and sloppy ads from many jewelry stores.

Here's what we've see...
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AT: 12/07/2010 01:05:21 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 06, 2010

Strategies for Collecting Email Addresses

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Back in October, we gave you some guidelines on marketing for this holiday season. Today is the second Monday of the season and we'd like to review your email strategy again.

1. If you have a list already you should send an email before the end of the day today. It doesn't have to be long, just say things like "Still searching for the perfect gift? Here are some gifts that just came in on Saturday..."

2. To build your email list in person, you could ask every customer for their email when they check out. However, customers don't freely give out their email addresses any more. You have to give them a reason to want to give it, and a simple weekly or monthly newsletter is not enough anymore. Here are some good ideas that currently work:

"If you give me your birthday or anniversary we will send you a $50 gift card...
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AT: 12/06/2010 12:02:29 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 03, 2010

Does Your Sales Funnel Have Holes in It?

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If you've attended enough seminars, read enough business books, received business coaching or attended a business college you certainly will be familiar with the concept of a Sales Funnel.

We did a quick Google search to try and lock down the exact definition of it, but between Wikipedia and thousands of other authors, reporters, and bloggers it seems there isn't a single easy-to-understand definition that explains it.

In essence, the large opening of the funnel represents your broad marketing strategy. This is your newspapers, billboards, radio, TV, Twitter and Facebook. This is where you get your message out there so the world has the chance to hear you, i.e. you are making them aware of you.

With traditional marketing, you have to rely on the consistency of delivering your message before you pour the prospect fu...
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AT: 12/03/2010 01:11:07 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, December 02, 2010

Grand To-Do List of Website Marketing

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Sometimes the information we publish gets very focused on a single topic and perhaps those reading get confused with what is important from day to day. Honestly, it's difficult to really point a finger and say what's more important than another.

We're going to take a step back and try to list the most popular internet marketing ideas for retail jewelers according to specific categories. We always try to maintain or focus on local retailers, but even e-tailers can take advantage of our ideas.

Some of the items below are repeated in each category, and this list is by no means all-inclusive. The items in each list are also not in any particular order since different internet marketing experts will rank them all differently.

To attract new non-mobile customers to your store:
1. Need a website.
2. Website n...
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AT: 12/02/2010 11:43:01 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Trading Links with Businesses Outside Your Town

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Do you have a customer report showing the nearby town names and how many customers are in each of them? If not, start working on that. Naturally, if you don't have a computerized point of sale this might be a serious challenge.

When considering link building strategies, it's always good to develop a relationship with other local non-competing stores and link your websites together somehow. Relationships with popular local businesses that also have active websites would be your best target, like the pizza place, popular bakery or even the local pub. The local newspaper would be the ultimate relationship.

But let's extend this further out beyond your own town. Using the customer report mentioned earlier, you could also establish relationships with the popular local businesses in towns that have a high density of your cus...
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AT: 12/01/2010 11:35:06 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 30, 2010

What Makes Yours a Better Store?

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What's the difference between one mason and another? Both might have identical looking work, but it won't be until the cement work had a chance to weather 4 seasons before you truly know who had the better work.

Can the same be said about your service? What really separates you from the other jewelry store down the street?

We kicked this question around our office and came up with a few ideas that we know other jewelers always say on their website or in their advertising. Here they are:

1. Custom design jewelry services.
2. Different designer jewelry lines
3. Repair services - yes, everyone might do this, but what is your specialty?
4. Available parking
5. Convenient to get to
6. Newly remodeled outside
7. Newly remodeled inside
8. If not newly remodeled, do you have a unique, vintage look of inte...
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AT: 11/30/2010 12:18:08 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 29, 2010

Educational Websites Create Trust

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Today is Cyber Monday in the USA. It's said that after a 3 day weekend of holiday gift shopping in local stores, Americans will secretly spend several hours of their work day today shopping on the internet for the things they could not find over the weekend.

This is the day that the e-commerce websites have waited for; this is the day that e-commerce sites find out if their website is attractive, or if the navigation works, or if they have the right prices, or if their AdWords campaigns are on target.

Perhaps it's not a make-or-break day for e-commerce sites, but it sure is a good barometer early enough in the season to review analytics and make changes.

On the other hand, the brick and mortar stores are either reveling or reeling from the last 3 days of sales.

Starting today, and continuing for the next few da...
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AT: 11/29/2010 12:58:00 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 26, 2010

Ready? Set. SELL!

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It's Black Friday in the USA and that means millions of people are out spending money and hopefully many of you retail store owners are bringing in some good sales. Which, by the way, we hope you are reading this from your cell phone or tablet while out on the sales floor.

Speaking of cell phones and tablets, here are a few good ideas you should think about over the next week.

#1.
This one's for iPad users. Get yourself a nice photo frame stand that the iPad can sit in. A clear plastic frame will work, too. Load the iPad with some photos of items you have in stock. On Windows, you can easily load photos as if the iPad is a camera by using the standard iConnect-to-everything-iRelated-cable. On a Mac, you can use the iPhoto program to load and organize your photos.

Once your photos are loaded, place the iPad in...
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AT: 11/26/2010 09:00:07 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 25, 2010

Ready, Set, Drink!

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We might have to create a drinking game out of the number of time we mention Google Places in our Daily Gold Nuggets.

If you are keeping score this is going to be #5. Ready? Set? Drink!

According to Google's Mobile Blog, there are some nifty new features when they display local businesses through the SERP on a cell phone.

Although we've not been able to test the features on every type of phone, our initial results should be the same on all smartphones.

From your smart phone, do a Google search for "jewelry store."

On the mobile SERP you should see map. Right above the map there should be a button that says "Use my location." When you click that button you should get a pop-up notice asking permission to use your current location. Go ahead and allow that.

The SERP should redisplay with a messag...
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AT: 11/25/2010 09:00:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Last Minute Website Planning Before Black Friday

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Today is Thanksgiving Eve in the USA. Our readers in other countries might not understand the significance of this so let's briefly talk about it.

Thanksgiving could be explained as the only national holiday that transcends all races, religions, creeds, politics and national origins. It is the day when all Americans celebrate being American, and immigrants can celebrate the freedoms found here. There's more to it than that, but this needs to be "brief."

In the USA, there are two holidays that act as buffers between the summer and when it's "officially" the holiday season. Those holidays are Halloween on October 31 (which is not a national holiday, but rather a retail/fun holiday) and Thanksgiving on the 4th Thursday of November. As Thanksgiving approaches there is a subtle change in the mindset of the American consumer...
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AT: 11/24/2010 11:40:28 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Page Summaries and Meta Descriptions

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Do you know there's a built-in feature in the hidden programming of every web page that is designed specifically as a sales tool for you?

You've probably heard the term "Meta Description," but maybe you didn't quite know what it was. In a nutshell, it's a 150 character description that you can use as a sales message.

But where does the sales message show up? You've seen these messages every day of your internet life but probably never thought of them as a sales message.

Okay, to the point: The search engine results page (SERP for short) of each engine shows a list of web page titles and snippets from websites. Sometimes those snippets are created automatically, and sometimes the search engine shows the message from the Meta Description.

If you have 500 or more words on a single page of your site, the engine...
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AT: 11/23/2010 01:38:31 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 22, 2010

Do You Think Wider is Better?

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What situations can you think of where being wider is better than thinner?

Can you think of any? You probably could think of a few time when wider is *not* better--like when trying to fit a refrigerator through the typical door; or when your car is too wide to fit into a thin parking space. Perhaps your flat head screwdriver is too wide for the precision screw you need to remove.

So, can you think optimistically and not pessimistically and come up with a time when wider is better?

We're being a little playful this Monday to make a simple point: Wide Websites Are Good

What we're actually saying is that a website with many pages is a "deeper" or a "larger" or a "wider" website; depending on your point of view.

In the SEO world, we don't actually call them "wide" website, but rather "authority" websites. ...
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AT: 11/22/2010 01:35:17 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 19, 2010

Google Rich Snippets

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It's been a rather unplanned Google-centric week of Nuggets. These Google developments are important, and many times they go unnoticed unless a blogger makes a big commotion out of them. There are a few more topics we will also cover next week that should be instantly valuable for this Holiday Season.

Today, we'll explain what a Rich Snippet is and how you can use it on your website.

Way back in May 2009, Google introduced Rich Snippets in its SERP as one of the initial steps towards universal search results that show content from a variety of places. The Snippet displays important information about a web page, a product or a business that is useful for anyone searching.

For all their ability to spider, save and process meta data, Google apparently decided that they were going to reach out and let the website owne...
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AT: 11/19/2010 11:12:43 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 18, 2010

Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

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If you think it's difficult to keep track of how quickly technology changes on the internet, try keeping your head screwed on straight as you keep up with the associated names of the technologies as they change. If you feel our information also makes your head spin, you should take the time to read this Nugget; it's not technical and if you don't, well, then we are not getting through to you and you might as well quit jWAG.

Our Daily Golden Nugget #1 will forever be immortalized because above all other topics, we felt it was important to start our Nugget series with the topic of Google Maps.

Then, a little more than 2 months later, we revisited the topic again, but referred to it as Google Places.

You may not realize it today, by you are living in a transitional point in human history. The last major shift due to te...
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AT: 11/18/2010 11:26:20 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Link Building Strategy That Could Cost You Your Website.

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Name and email addresses of domain name owners are a matter of public record. Sometimes a SEO company will collect a list of names and emails from Network Solutions, GoDaddy, Register.com or any other company and they will send out random link solicitations.

These solicitations are usually pretty simple with the subject line 'Link Exchange" or "Link Purchase."

Inside there are details about the link building. Here's an example:

"I'm building a good list of links on http://www.sandiego-downtown-hotels.com; I was wondering if we can have a link exchange with your website."

Linking between websites is what makes the web, well, the web. Search engines measure the number of links you have coming to your website and rank you according to how many links you hav...
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AT: 11/17/2010 01:31:45 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Google is a Copy Cat

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Competition is good; well, at least that's what some businessmen will say. Competition keeps companies honest because it prevents monopolies, and it also spurs innovation.

In June 2009, Microsoft re-branded its MSN search engine into the Bing search engine. This engine has some very nice features, but according to our tracking of jewelry websites, only 7.63% of search traffic comes from Bing, so we don't pay attention to it much.

Although, Facebook is inching closer to becoming a full-fledged search engine using Bing, so that minuscule 7.63 might increase. Again, we'll let you know if it does.

Bing has one really good SEO feature for reverse engineering your competition's website, and that's the IP Address lookup. You can put the IP address of any website into the Bing engine and find out all the other websites ho...
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AT: 11/16/2010 01:18:16 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 15, 2010

Google Claims It Can Read SWF Files

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The internet changes every day and it's difficult to completely keep up with new technology. In jWAG we prefer to test out new things first and see if they are useful before simply reporting on the news like every other technology blogger is inclined to do.

However, last week Google made an announcement that is well worth reporting on, and one that certainly contradicts what we, and many other SEO professionals, have been saying for some time now.

So here it is: About 2 years ago Google announced that they would collaborate with Adobe to develop a way to read text from a Flash website, more specifically a SWF file. Then in June of 2009, Google announced that they had made strides with reading and understanding external files that are loaded into Flash. The more complex Flash files are built in layers, and sometimes the te...
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AT: 11/15/2010 01:45:35 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 12, 2010

Your Final Holiday Story-Time

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This is the last in our series of Daily Gold Nuggets explaining how storytelling through your emails, blog or Facebook posts will build better long term (buying) relationships with your customers than direct advertising.

This story should be sent out after Christmas, but before you take your usual winter vacation break.

You should be writing from home with friends and family around you. Share a special event or perhaps something funny that happened over the holiday. If your readers have followed the first 5 stories, they are already predisposed to following through to the end.

As mentioned previously, if your holiday was uneventful then recount a story from a previous year. Your story could also include your plans for New Years Eve festivities. Wish them the best conclusions of their holidays and a happy New Year....
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AT: 11/12/2010 09:06:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 11, 2010

Using a Missed Mafia-Offer to Increase Long Term Readership

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This week's Daily Gold Nuggets explain that storytelling through your emails, blog or Facebook posts will build better long term (buying) relationships with your customers than direct advertising. This technique is usually only employable during this time of the year when your customers are more open-hearted to hear stories and share their own experiences.

The next story you share should be sent 7 to 10 days before Christmas. In it, share details about your customer holiday party or your office party. Of course, if you are not having one of those parties this year then you should simply reminisce moments from previous years.

If you held an in-store event, then share the photos and tell your readers how much your party-goers enjoyed themselves. Was there a gift exchange or a contest? Include those details, and use real n...
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AT: 11/11/2010 12:47:35 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Your Holiday Storytelling has Lower Stress

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So far, in this week's Daily Gold Nuggets, we've been explaining that storytelling through your emails, blog or Facebook posts will build a better relationship with your customers than simply trying to shove ads in their face.

The storytelling continues again, but the next story needs to be a few days after the last. In this next story, you want to tell your readers that you are finished decorating your store, and show the photos from the process. A good solution is to take photos from your smart phone and upload them to Flickr or DailyBooth or Picasa. Then, as you write this next part of your story, you can link to those photos that are already online.

Don't make the mistake of taking photos and uploading them to Facebook through your phone. Photos uploaded to Facebook will automatically post to your Wall. You don't w...
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AT: 11/10/2010 11:41:39 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Building Your Social Media Personality

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We're continuing on the subject of building a social media persona to interact with your customers on a personal level. Your Facebook Business Page is where you build business relationships, introduce offers and engage customers. The one flaw with a business page is you have to continually interact with your fans to keep them interested in your business.

We know it's difficult to find the perfect balance between interaction and offers in all social media. We also know that many of you have personal accounts that you use for business. The strategy we started explaining yesterday will help build a level of trust with your customers. This type of trust will endure even if your customer doesn't hear from you for a while.

Let's continue explaining how to build that trust during the holiday season.

Since it's still ear...
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AT: 11/09/2010 12:13:23 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 08, 2010

Holiday Season Story Time

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The Holiday Season 2010 seems to have already started - last week in fact. TV commercials are already talking about pre-Black Friday sales, and "don't wait until Black Friday" specials.

You are about to enter your busiest 7 weeks of the year, and today is the Monday when you should start seeing a surge of traffic on your website. Every Monday from now through January should show a surge of traffic.

Other than holiday selling, something else happens during this time of year. People are much more open to personal bonding. It's part of the gift-giving season; it's why greeting cards are sent simply to say hello and it's why people want to get together in person. People are all inspired to open their hearts during this time of year.

We don't want to sounds like a Scrooge, but this is also when you can forge unbreakab...
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AT: 11/08/2010 11:21:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 05, 2010

Explanation of an Important Bit.ly Limitation

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We use the Bit.ly URL shortener all the time in our emails, posts, Facebook, printed material... everywhere.

A URL shortener is service that allows you to take a really long URL that would be impossible to remember or type, and turn it into a 12 character URL that is much easier to share with others.

There are 2 important reasons to use URL shorteners:
1. For ease of distribution through emails, Facebook and especially Twitter.
2. For tracking the number of clicks on the link.

We happen to use the Bit.ly service, but there are dozens of companies providing the service now. To find the once best suited for you simply google "url shortener" for a list.

Once you have yourself set up with an account, you can start using the Bit.ly in every one of your ads, both off-line and onlin...
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AT: 11/05/2010 10:30:08 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 04, 2010

Effective Facebook Status Update Strategy

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Yesterday's Daily Gold Nugget concluded with the statement that the better targeted your emails are, the more frequently you can send them out. Today we will expand on this idea.

According to Ted Nicholas (a very well known sales and copy writer) every ad or email you create should have enough ROI to at least pay for the cost to create it. If not, then throw it out and start over.

Ted also explains that you should test your message on small groups before sending it to your entire list of customers. Here are some strategies so you can put this into direct practice using the Facebook Update feature we explained yesterday.

We have a few assumptions here.
1. We assume you have more than a few hundred Facebook Fans that like your Business Page.
2. We assume that a good percentage of your fans are actually ...
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AT: 11/04/2010 01:16:00 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Sending Facebook Updates

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A little more than a week ago, we reported through these Nuggets how Facebook could zap you if you didn't follow their rules. One of those things is sending too many emails to your Facebook friends from your personal account.

There is however, a way to send out an "update" to all the fans of your Business Page. You can even target the specific people to send to. Here's how...

Go to your Business Page.
In the left margin, under your image, click "Edit Page."
This will take you to the Management Page, where your Basic Information will be showing.
Now click on the "Marketing" link in the left margin to get to the screen that says "There are many ways to Promote Your Page."
Click on "Send an Update"
The next screen will look like an email compose screen, but it has a subtle difference.
You will see the "Audi...
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AT: 11/03/2010 10:28:39 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 02, 2010

There's a New Search Engine: Blekko.com

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Today's Daily Gold Nugget is sort of an "FYI." We want to make sure you are aware of a new emerging technology that may impact your bottom line eventually if it catches on.

After rumors and reviews from some initial 8,000 beta testers, yesterday, November 1, 2010 the new search engine blekko.com opened to the public.

In the past 30 days, we've measured all inbound search engine traffic for the jewelry websites we host. Here are our results:
Google 69%
Yahoo 17%
Bing 10%
AOL 2%
Ask 1%
Search 1%

Google has clear dominance for creating inbound traffic for jewelry stores. That's why we don't bother providing SEO services or analyzing SEO results from other search engines. We also know that if you strive for organic search excellence in Google, your efforts will also...
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AT: 11/02/2010 12:50:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 01, 2010

Tips to Write Copy, Part 4 of 4

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This is the conclusion of a 4-part series providing specific instructions and examples of how to write effective copy for your website and emails.

Each day we're providing you 3 tips.


10. Write As If Your Reader Is 10 Years Old.

If you've been following our works for a while you should know we always write our educational material and our sales letters so they are easy to understand, without ambiguity. Okay, "ambiguity" is a larger word than we normally use. The point is that you need to write your emails and web pages so the average person will immediately understand what you're saying.

Don't make someone need to stop and think about a word. Don't be too creative where a new vocabulary term is stuck in someone's head for the rest of the day. You want the image of the jewelry stuck in their head rather ...
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AT: 11/01/2010 12:07:11 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 29, 2010

Tips to Write Copy, Part 3 of 4

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This is a continuation of a 4-part series providing specific instructions and examples of how to write effective copy for your website and emails.

Each day we're providing you 3 tips.


7. Consider Seven Dollar Pricing.

Many online marketing guys claim that any selling price ending in a 7 will outsell a similar one ending in any other number. So $997 or $977 should sell better than $999. And $499.77 will outsell $499.99. You could even try $477.77.

We've been doing this for more than a year with our own pricing at Sapphire Collaborative (www.sapphirecollaborative.com) and we've noticed one thing. Fewer people say "$49.99, oh $50... okay." Does that sound familiar? Instead, we hear "okay, that's $47."

One other point of note: We've also learned the magic number for online sales is $487. Any item...
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AT: 10/29/2010 12:08:27 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 28, 2010

Tips to Write Copy, Part 2 of 4

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This is a continuation of a 4-part series providing specific instructions and examples of how to write effective copy for your website and emails.

Each day we're providing you 3 tips.


4. Offer more than one freebie with purchase.

It's so easy to throw in a bottle of jewelry cleaner. That's why you have them stacked behind the counter in a cute pyramid. But let's step up your sales game and make the customer feel really special. What if you had 2 pyramids of stacked jewelry cleaner? One small bottle and one large bottle. You could advertise a free small bottle of jewelry cleaner with all purchases, but then as a closing tactic you could offer the larger instead. However, a better way to insure repeat purchase is to surprise them with the larger bottle saying something like, "We're giving a free small bottle ...
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AT: 10/28/2010 01:47:52 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Tips to Write Copy, Part 1 of 4

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In yesterday's Daily Gold Nugget, you discovered 4 actionable ideas to use on your home page and in your holiday emails. Starting today, and continuing for the next 4 days, we'll give you specific instructions to write your copy.

Here we go.


1. You Need An Attention-Grabbing Headline.

It needs to be much larger than the rest of the body copy on your page. You should apply some specific styles. You want a Sans-Serif font, bigger, and enough white space above and below the font so it stands out.

People will skip a headline if it's too crowded by the words and images around it. All fonts have a built-in padding to create minimal white space, but that's never good enough for a headline. You will need a proportional amount of extra spacing depending on the font size.

If we use the setting "font-siz...
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AT: 10/27/2010 12:50:45 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Holiday Email-Prep: Some Ideas

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So far, you have a lot of ammunition from us to have a pretty successful online holiday season. But we don't simply want to sit back and watch you succeed. Here are even more email ideas that we've learned from previous years.

Your emails and website don't actually need to be holiday focused. In other words, you don't need to have photos of Christmas Trees or Menorahs. Instead you just need to show photos and tell stories that remind people that the holidays are a wonderful time to talk about the future and the past.

Emotions drive purchases and if you can somehow tap into those emotions you will have successful sales.

Some specific ideas:

1. Create a relationship or longing of emotion by showing photos on your website and in your email newsletters. Go to bigstockph...
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AT: 10/26/2010 11:48:51 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 25, 2010

Blogging Success Without Sucking Your Time Up

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Can you come up with a list of 52 little tips for your customers? There are 52 weeks in a year and it would be great if you had a tip to share with your customs every week.

Here are some ideas:

* Announce the birthstone of the month each month. That's already 12 weeks.

* Give a tip each month on the colors of the season and the type of jewelry, whether a style or a specific charm, that will match the season and fashions. That's another 12 weeks.

Only 28 more ideas needed. Can you come up with those on your own?

Once you have them all written out take an evening or a weekend afternoon and type them all into your blog.

Then set up an account with Hootsuite.com and attach your Store's Twitter and Facebook Business Page.

Next grab the URL of each blog post and create a status update in Hootsuit...
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AT: 10/25/2010 11:42:48 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 22, 2010

Facebook contest policies suck

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Do not shoot the messenger on this one. We're about to give you very specific instructions on using your Facebook Business Page. You might not believe us. If you choose to ignore this Gold Nugget, we will simply laugh and point a finger at you when you get zapped.

Was that blunt enough for you? Please give us some attention for this one.

First, understand that Facebook needs to make money. They have a mostly free system, but somehow they have to pay their bills. From our point of view, their rules are put in place to prevent you from making money with their free system unless they get a cut of the profits.

In November 2009, they announced a set of new rules that totally distorted the ability for businesses to use contests to gain new fans and to protect their branding.

Here's a very strong list of what you shou...
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AT: 10/22/2010 11:11:07 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 21, 2010

Facebook Might Bite You Badly

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This Nugget might be more of a Soap Box statement than an educational piece, but it's important.

Facebook services an alleged 600 million users accounts now, but they only have around 1,000 employees. They have no customer service department, and when you have trouble, you are forced to use the online help system to get answers from other users.

Their system is very big, and even with the help system, it is impossible to figure out how to post a question. The only way you can talk to a live person is to have a paid advertising account with them.

Facebook has a very strict set of rules. They are almost absurd, actually. The most absurd is that each person is allowed only 1 account. We've expressed our dislike of this policy during our Live 2 Event in August 2010.

Since they have a limited staff, they had to deve...
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AT: 10/21/2010 01:23:42 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 20, 2010

People Needs Jobs, So Give Them One

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You know we're just coming out of a recession, right? Have you kept track of how many people are still unemployed? You should, because right now it's a business owner's market for picking the best qualified person for your job opening. Better yet, you can offer them peanuts for pay.

Your busiest month of the year is right around the corner. Do you need to hire more staff to help out? Please, before you say "no" let's try a little test.

1. Are you the only full time employee with only 2 part time employees? Hire another part-timer quick!

2. Track how much time is spent on all phone calls for 2 weeks. Double that number. Can your current staff handle that much time on the phone and also properly service their normal duties and the increased holiday foot traffic?
If not, hire someone else.

3. What are your e...
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AT: 10/20/2010 01:38:34 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Tactics for writing blogs

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Are you aware of all the little nuances of Internet Marketing that could improve the conversion rates from your blog site to the main area of your site where you make money?

Internet Marketing is a learned skill. Even with many years of experience in traditional media marketing, you couldn't possibly know the how's and why's of Internet Marketing. We're giving you a few easy ones below.

By now, you should have an established blog set up. We hope you have it on your own website rather than a Blogger or WordPress account. Here are some tactics that you should be employing in each of your blog posts.

1. Your main headline needs to be the largest words on the page.
2. You should break up your blog entry into subsections with a sub-heading for each.
3. Headings and sub-headings should be in a Sans Serif font. Good ch...
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AT: 10/19/2010 11:22:43 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 18, 2010

Website Content as a Story

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We've mentioned educational content for your website in the last 2 Daily Gold Nuggets. Before we move away from this topic, we wanted to cover another example.

We've seen many jewelry websites with pages about custom design. The best types include photos of original sketch work, CAD models, wax molds and then the final product.

These are great to show the quality of your work. But you could also include a story along with the photos of the work.

Here's how:

1. Get a photo of the customer and the original sketch together.
2. Write a paragraph or two explaining the conversation you had with the customer. Include the reason for the custom item and any emotions the customer has regarding its creation.
3. Explain your process and what you need to consider while making it. This is your art, so explain wha...
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AT: 10/18/2010 12:46:55 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 15, 2010

4Cs Educational Content on Your Website

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How many times have you experienced a customer looking for a diamond that said s/he first researched diamonds online? These are the people who come in asking for specific diamond characteristics without any real firsthand knowledge of diamonds.

Recently Ron Samuelson created a video that depicts the exact situation. We've included a link to his video at the bottom of this Nugget.

Unfortunately, the average consumer doesn't know any better. If a jewelry store sells diamonds, they probably have details about the 4Cs listed on their website. The customers don't learn any more than you tell them, and they naturally gravitate toward the best color, best clarity, best cut... until they see the price.

We suggest a new approach to 4Cs educational content for your website. Break each C down on a single page. Explain wh...
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AT: 10/15/2010 10:30:23 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 14, 2010

Educational Information on your website

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Every new web search starts with a question. Someone wants to know something and they type in a few choice keywords into Google and *poof* there's an answer.

It is very easy to search, but not so easy to find the exact answer to what is being asked. Microsoft is trying to capitalize on this idea by promoting their search engine as a "decision engine" that helps you find answers faster.

Google, on the other hand, has exploded their Universal Search results to include content from all forms of media. They also track what people clicked on in the past when searching similar keywords. They use the previous search history to help guesstimate answers for new searches.

All that said, sometimes someone does not know their next question until they are in the middle of reading about something else.

A young adult loo...
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AT: 10/14/2010 01:56:55 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Your Facebook Bio and Info Tab

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Yesterday we gave you some ideas about using your personal Facebook account. Assuming you are using it for professional purposes, we wanted to give you some ideas how to set up your personal branding with it.

Do you have a personal brand statement?

What is it that you uniquely do for people? Many business owners will refer to themselves and their company together in terms of "we," but that's wrong in this case because you want to be you and alone. So, step back and figure out what it is that you do exactly for people.

Do you specifically provide expert watch repair? Do you specifically provide award winning jewelry design? Are you the fashion expert? Why is it that people come into your store and ask for you? Write that down because it's your personal Unique Selling Point, or USP. Your USP should be interestin...
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AT: 10/13/2010 02:19:22 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 12, 2010

How to use a personal Facebook account.

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We've been reviewing many Facebook accounts recently. The one thing we continue to see is an inconsistency between how jewelers are using their personal Facebook profiles for both business and personal things.

Our view continues to be that you need to pick one or the other. If for personal use, then lock your profile and only allow personal friends, family and other professionals within the jewelry industry to become Facebook friends. But don't allow customers or employees to friend you.

On the other hand, if you choose to keep your personal life off Facebook then go right ahead and allow your customers to friend your personal account.

If customers are connected to your personal account, then avoid political postings and comments, as well as overly posting about your personal life.

Political commentary is ok...
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AT: 10/12/2010 02:53:03 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 11, 2010

Testing Keywords with your Google AdWords Campaign

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Last week we mentioned keyword research again, and currently during our Holiday 2010 Run-Up (http://www.jwag.biz/runup) we are posting a full list of the standard keywords you should be using. It took 2 years of research data for us to easily make up that list.

If you don't have our handy dandy list, you'd have to wait a few months to watch organic traffic to your site to generate the same list.

To speed up your keyword research, and also take all the guess work out of the way, then you need to have paid online advertising through some PPC system.

With Google AdWords, you could create several dozen ads to quickly test specific keywords. You can easily identify useless keyword phrases before you spend time and money on SEO keywords that are nothing more than epic failures.
<...
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AT: 10/11/2010 02:28:13 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 08, 2010

Money, Money, Money Site.

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The attention span of the everyday average customer is thinning. Until you heavily test, then create your own sales funnel, it is very difficult to know the best place to advertise.

Your sales funnel is your method of directing users to follow your online activity from one place to another until they are lead right to the website that sells your product. Your selling site is called your money site.

Of course, that doesn't mean you are actually selling on your site; it just means it's the site that has your actual sales pitch on it. That sales pitch could be your product catalog, or a landing page with a conversion form on it.

Your money site is usually your website. Every other site should be part of your sales funnel and is used to attract new customers and gain their trust. Allegedly Facebook has managed to win...
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AT: 10/08/2010 11:44:19 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, October 07, 2010

How much time does it take to do SEO?

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Search engine optimization is a labor intensive job; before you realize it, the process could suck hours of time away from you and there is no immediate gratification from the work either. But, in the long run, if your strategy is sound, there are big payoffs through increased traffic.

Through our current body of educational material, we've given you many different types of keyword research tools to use. We specifically mention Keyword Eye and Google Keywords on a regular basis.

Ever wonder how long it takes *us* to do keyword research? Here's our normal process and the amount of time it normally takes us for each step.

1. Figure out what you would like to be optimized for. Take a look at your QuickBooks sales report and determine inventory or jewelry brands to target. (25 minutes)

2. Look at the search r...
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AT: 10/07/2010 02:07:49 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Meta Descriptions Could be Dodos Soon

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The search engine optimization process is at the core of all the research and study we do at jWAG. Everything comes back to the "basic" SEO techniques. The problem is that those "basic" techniques change from day to day with the whims of Google, Yahoo and Bing.

It seems like the meta description as an SEO metric is being phased out. Just 1 year ago, we were able to test changes in SERPs ranking simply by changing the meta description of a page. But in the past 6 months our testing shows this doesn't work anymore.

Usefulness of meta keywords went the way of the Dodo Bird in the late 90s. Just like the Dodo Bird's inability to fly, it seems that meta descriptions now have inability to carry any SEO influence within the search engines.

Meta keywords and Dodo Birds became extinct shortly after people started exploiti...
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AT: 10/06/2010 02:59:30 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 05, 2010

"Checking-in" on Facebook Places

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This morning shortly after midnight Eastern time Facebook announced new features for their Facebook Places service.

On August 18, 2010 Facebook Places was suddenly available to everyone downloading the latest Facebook cel...
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AT: 10/05/2010 09:41:22 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, October 04, 2010

Simple Reasons to Issue Press Releases

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Every once in a while, you should add something a little extra into your online marketing efforts. While everyone scrambles to figure out how to use Facebook and Twitter every day for immediate buzz, it's still very important to slowly establish your website as a local authority.

(Follow this link if you don't know what an authority website is: http://bit.ly/dmRMjY)

The next time you get a new line of exclusive jewelry in your store, or run an event, you should issue a press release. The press release has the event details as well as links back to your website. Once published, these press releases last forever, and so will the links.

A very popular paid press release house is PRWeb.com. If you have the money, use this professionally recognized a...
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AT: 10/04/2010 02:42:48 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 01, 2010

Keywords are all Grown Up

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Every software program has bugs because it's simply impossible to find them all without thousands of people testing it.

Microsoft was criticized in 1997 for delivering Windows 98 with so many bugs it wouldn't work on most computers. It wasn't until Windows 98 Service Pack 1 (Win98 SE1) that people started to adopt the system.

Today, it's a common strategy of software developers to cut costs by just sending software out into the market without heavy testing. The "market" is, of course, the world. They then sit back and wait for customers to report bugs (or complain) and software patches are offered daily.

How many times a day do you get an update pop-up from Microsoft or Adobe or Java? Ironically, just as this sentence was typed this computer popped up the message "Java Update Available." The computer is mocking ...
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AT: 10/01/2010 11:03:45 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 30, 2010

Revisiting our Google Place

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Today we're revisiting and updating our very first Gold Nugget published back on July 26, 2010.

Google Places drives foot traffic right to your door, but you have to set it up in order for it to work. We covered a full 90 minute session on setting up Google Places in our August 2010 Live 2 event (DVD is available on our website).

Today we're going to expand on some of the features of Google Maps and how it can tie together nicely with Google Places.

The maps service ( http://maps.google.com ) has a lot of features. We deal mostly with the Google Places aspect, but there's also a way to view user uploaded photographs for map, videos of the area, location/tour maps created by users and a whole lot more.

We want to call your attention to the uploaded photo feature. This is p...
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AT: 09/30/2010 02:00:54 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Social Media Duplicate Content

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The phrase "duplicate content" is mentioned a lot when it comes to website SEO. Your website ranking will be lower if you have duplicate content issues.

Duplicate content on your website is a result of sloppy programming or setup. In reality, your website will feed the search engines the same information multiple times. In response, the search engine will remove you from the SERPs until you fix the problem.

Google, Yahoo and Bing are all fighting for the best "user experience." That experience includes not including badly functioning websites. It would be frustrating for the all of us if we had to deal with that every day.

On the other hand, something that we all seem to be dealing with every day is duplicate status updates on Facebook.

Just because you have the ability to cross-post between social websi...
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AT: 09/29/2010 02:58:28 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Our Last Holiday Planning Trick

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This is the last in our series on holiday planning.

Each of the past 9 Daily Gold Nuggets gave you tips and strategies for marketing through November and December this year.

Each day we told you to write some new content and add new pages to your website. Photographs were equally important to include in each new page we suggested adding.

We also gave you ideas for changing your home page throughout the holiday season including who to target and when to target them.

It all sounds like a lot of work to do during your busiest time of the year. However, there's a trick to making it work smoothly.

Ready for the trick? Here it is...

Use your content management system to set up all the pages now. And we really do me ALL the pages, including the variations of your home page.

Make them live on ...
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AT: 09/28/2010 02:56:06 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 27, 2010

Holiday Planning Day #9

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It's almost 2 weeks since we started this series on planning your strategic online holiday marketing. Many of the ideas we presented need to be implemented on your website before Friday THIS WEEK in order to have the highest chance to work before November. Clear your schedule and get it done this week.

Tomorrow is our final nugget in this series, but before we wrap it all up, let's talk about the online frenzy that takes place in the USA the final 7 days leading up to Christmas.

During those last 7 days, the home page of your website should display all types of gift ideas for her and for him. Most of the merchandise listed on your home page should stay below the $487 psychological price barrier. Your photography is especially important since many will gravitate to that.

To increase click through rates, add some re...
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AT: 09/27/2010 02:17:37 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 24, 2010

Holiday Marketing to Him

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In yesterday's Gold Nugget, we described the strategy of changing your website home page in early November to take advantage of the women shoppers that purchase earlier in the holiday season.

Today we will briefly explain how to turn this idea around to target the men shoppers that typically wait until the first and second weeks of December to shop.

David Geller explains the many differences between the sales pitch toward men vs. women. Here's one example he used last time we attended his workshop: When selling a diamond to a lady, put it in a setting so she can try it on; however, when selling a diamond to a man, hand it to him in tweezers with a loupe. Men want to know more of the technical aspect than the beauty or emotion of it.

We don't consider large diamond ring purchases to be a last minute gift item; that ...
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AT: 09/24/2010 01:58:51 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 23, 2010

Holiday Marketing to Her

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We've given you several action plans for producing content for the holiday season, but so far we haven't told you how and when to use it. That information starts now.

If we asked you who procrastinates more--a husband or his wife--what would you say? Do we need to find statistics that state 99.999% of men procrastinate more than their counterparts? We don't really have that kind of measured data other than looking at our own family and friends. But it sure seems like all the women we know can plan way in advance for all parts of life, including printing out directions.

All joking aside, let's apply this idea to our marketing strategy: "Women shop early and men procrastinate."

Starting early in November you need to restructure your website's home page with large photos of jewelry and watches "for him." The captions...
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AT: 09/23/2010 02:15:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Holiday Hours

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Quite some time ago, while we were A/B testing one of our websites, we discovered that your store hours should be posted on a page by themselves.

This single, dedicated page allows you to track exactly when people visit your website only to see when you're open.

While reviewing statistics from the past few years, we noticed a trend similar to the online activity we mentioned last week.

In November, the number of views of the Contact Us and Store Hours page increases each Saturday.

The Friday, Saturday, and Sunday right after Thanksgiving all have the highest number of Contact/Hours views for the entire season. More than double!

Then, throughout December, we have a consistent trend of more views each Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.

Here's what we can determine if we correlate the data prese...
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AT: 09/22/2010 02:26:01 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Holiday Planning with Commodity Items

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Quick! Name items you sell from your jewelry store more during the holiday season than any other month of the year.

Your sales might reflect differently than our findings, but here's what we know for sure.

According to statistical data provided by Google since 2004, we have seen higher online interest in lockets, crosses and jewelry boxes every holiday season for 6 years in a row.

Did you know that there's a psychological dollar value barrier that consumers are not willing to spend above online? We've seen that number to be somewhere between $450 and $497. Purchases of higher value than that usually trigger the need for a consumer to physically touch the product before purchase.

Lockets, crosses and jewelry boxes are relatively low ticket items, and consumers are willing to spend money on them without botheri...
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AT: 09/21/2010 02:14:37 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 20, 2010

Holiday Video Planning Starts Today

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When it comes to SEO, time is very precious. It's ticking by very quickly and if you want your website to be functioning correctly for the holidays, you need to take action before September 30.

On Friday last week, we explained a strategy of writing a description of your holiday inventory and having your webmaster post it on your website. Today we are continuing with a different spin of this idea.

Video.

As soon as your holiday inventory arrives, you need to film a video presentation of each item you are serious about selling. Production studio camera and sound quality is not needed, but lighting is very important.

You have several choices to shoot your video: Digital camera, Flipcam, or Cell Phone.

Your audience will forgive poor audio quality as long as the video image is good, and the jewelry color...
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AT: 09/20/2010 02:12:16 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 17, 2010

Holiday SEO Planning Starts Today

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It's September 17 and no doubt you already have your holiday inventory picked out.

Since you already know what your Holiday inventory will be, you need to post that information to your website immediately.

Here's why:

During our Live 2 Broadcast Event from August 13 - August 29, we set up a full jewelry website for demo and training. That website is still live at http://www.perosijewelers.com; the mobile version is available at http://demo.perosijewelers.com/mobile.

While broadcasting live, we added products, blog entries, and newsletters to that site. Then we used our Google Webmaster Tools account to submit a sitemap to Google on August 13, 2010 and again on August 18, 2010.

All search engines take at lea...
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AT: 09/17/2010 01:42:37 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 16, 2010

Holiday Calendar: Planning Days and Strategies

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This Gold Nugget is part of our extended series of data analysis for the holiday season.

This is what you need to know to properly coordinate your online advertising to previous trends throughout November and December. This data *does not apply* to January - October!

DAYS OF INTEREST we saw in both 2008 and 2009 (our recession years):

* Typically, the busiest day of the week for all online activity is Tuesday. However, for the jewelry industry, each year starting the second week of November, that day changes to Monday.

* We also see a lot of new activity starting the third Friday of November and continuing each Friday until Christmas.

* In 2008 and 2009, online activity on Saturdays and Sundays was always lower than the previous Monday and Friday. Interesting to note: the activity volume is 25% les...
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AT: 09/16/2010 02:18:53 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Homework: Holiday Planning Ahead

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Planning for the holiday season always seems like a never ending task. You select your holiday inventory during the summer months; plan your advertising in August and schedule dates for events; give your staff a brush-up on merchandise knowledge and sales tactics; and after all that, you even have to decorate your store.

Come January, you need a vacation!

For several years we've been tracking dates, times and jewelry types that should be advertised between November 1 and December 31. Over the next week or so, each Daily Gold Nugget will be dedicated to a single group of days and the strategy you should employ on your website.

The tips we give you this September should be enough time to help you with writing copy and gathering the necessary photography for November and December.

As we work through our series o...
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AT: 09/15/2010 02:05:35 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Increase sales through Wish Lists

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During our live broadcast on August 27, 2010 we demonstrated how important a wish list is for a jewelry website and, more importantly, that a customer should be able to add items to their wish list from their cell phones.

Here's another Gold Nugget idea you can implement with those wish lists for the 2010 Holiday Season: Wish List Special Offers.

Recent research data from the location based service WeReward identified that consumers are willing to change their purchase decisions with a special discount for as low as $2.00.

Let's apply this idea to your marketing while at the same time adding value for the purchaser of an item from a wish list.

How do you notify significant others that a wish list is waiting for them at your store? Do you mail a postcard or a copy of the wish list? You should at least send...
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AT: 09/14/2010 02:27:54 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 13, 2010

Your 9-part Online Marketing Plan

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Marketing is your responsibility; not your bookkeeper's, not your salesperson's, not your bench jeweler's.

Owning the store means not only making sure it runs every day, but also planning marketing far enough in the future to ensure continual profits (or at least break even in this economy).

It's time for an online marketing plan that you can get running quickly.

Here's a list of things that we have measured successfully for retail jewelers. This list alone can be used as the basis for your online marketing strategy:
1. Add new information to a blog on your *website* regularly.
2. Manage a Facebook Business Page and give your customers a reason to Like you there.
3. Link your Facebook status feed updates to Twitter.
4. Maintain a Flickr account and post new photos of jewelry daily, properly labeled.
5...
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AT: 09/13/2010 02:14:35 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 10, 2010

Your jewelry website designer will hate you for this.

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In our final Daily Gold Nugget this week, we are concluding our series on tools you can use to test your website. We hope that through these testing tools you have determined for yourself if your website needs a refreshing, or if you can continue to use the same site through the 2010 holiday season.

As promised, the tool we are sharing today is loved by consultants and hated by jewelry website designers and website programmers. We are referring to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Markup Validation Service.

Before we give you the web address, we need to give you some background about these folks. The W3C is the organization that decides the standards that websites should be programmed with. They do not listen to Microsoft; they do not ...
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AT: 09/10/2010 11:30:59 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 09, 2010

Watch Google videos and see that your SEO sucks.

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"Lord" Google provides a tremendous amount of educational material through their Webmaster Tools series. But the problem for us "mere mortals" is simply that we don't have enough time to sift through to find the relevant minutia for ourselves. Even though the Jeweler Website Advisory Group is striving to provide such relevant jewelry website related minutia, we can't cover it all fast enough (yet). We love it when another source has helped with the process.

The SEO Workers organization provides a big help with regard to Google video library series. Navigate over to http://www.seoworkers.com/tools/analyzer.html and enter your website address into the "Page URL" field. Make sure to answer their question-based CAPTCHA before clicking the Submit button.

The repor...
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AT: 09/09/2010 02:26:37 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Measuring your website page speed.

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Today's Nugget continues our topic on whether or not you should be upgrading your website. One of the frequently overlooked measurements is the download speed of your website.

In 2009, Google announced that it would measure the download speed of your website as a new part of its equation for website ranking. It's only 1 small part within a suspected 100+ other measured metrics, but you should still consider it.

Today's website tool is Website Optimization located at http://analyze.websiteoptimization.com.

Type in your website address into their "Enter URL to diagnose" field and click Submit Query.

The generated report does not provide a specific grade, but rather goes into detail about the number of individual files that make up your web page, and how to increase the download speed for each one.

The ...
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AT: 09/08/2010 02:12:31 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Anything lower than a 60 is a failing grade; start your GOB sale today.

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In yesterday's Nugget, we hoped to illustrate why it might be time to upgrade your website. In today's Daily Gold Nugget, we are giving you a common tool to measure the good, bad and ugly attributes of your website.

Navigate your web browser over to Website Grader at http://websitegrader.com and take a quick look at this tool. This website testing tool has been commonly used for several years by many jewelry trade show speakers and online experts when providing reviews of websites. It's also one of the tools we use in our own office.

On http://websitegrader.com type your website address into the "Website URL" box and click Generate Report.

They use 50 different measurements to calculate a scoring from 1 to 100, similar to the common school system grading in the USA.

Any score more than 90 means you've done a...
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AT: 09/07/2010 02:28:34 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 06, 2010

Food for thought while you're cooking on the BBQ today.

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When did you last remodel your store? 1970? 1980? Does your store look old? Perhaps the showcases are doing their job but what about the wood paneling on the walls that's a dead giveaway of a 30 year old store?

Continuing with this line of thought, is the old store design turning away customers? Another question you could ask yourself is how often do you get first time customers in the store and then never see them again?

According to Lydia Ramsey of MannersThatSell.com, first impressions account for 93% of all opinions, and the basis for doing business "is judged based on non-verbal data - your appearance and your body language." It's okay if your retail store looks old if it's your intended style, but does it look old, tired and in need of refreshing? There is a difference.

When it comes to non-in-person firs...
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AT: 09/06/2010 02:14:45 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 03, 2010

Get a real email address!

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Our last topic this week regarding domain names is actually about email addresses.

All too often, people will use free email systems for their email addresses. Google Mail, or Gmail, is very popular in the past year or so. Prior to that, Yahoo! was most popular, and of course AOL, Hotmail and a multitude of others are still around.

As the web becomes an important part of your business, email communications will become even more important (if they aren’t already). When you use an email address associated with your domain name, you increase the brand awareness with your customers, as well as establishing credibility.

There's a higher level of business credibility with using joe@jewelrystore.com instead of jewelrystore@gmail.com.

Free emails are, well, free. Your email savvy customers know this because most...
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AT: 09/03/2010 02:05:37 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 03, 2010

Properly managing your multiple domain names

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This week we've been telling you about domain names, different type of extensions and even strategies to register additional domain names for secondary websites.

Today we will explain the basics of what you could do with the secondary domain names.

Let's assume you take our suggestion and register the .net, .org, .us and .biz variants of your domain name. Once you own them, you could simply leave them deadheaded in your domain account which is the easiest strategy to protect your branding.

Another possibility is to 301 redirect them to your normal domain. If you have your domains registered through GoDaddy or Stellium Networks, you can use the built-in "301 Forwarding" feature. Again, the main reason for this is simply to protect your branded identity.

Another possibility is to point all the domain names dire...
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AT: 09/03/2010 01:50:16 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Good reasons to have multiple domain names and websites.

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The topic of domain names might seem trivial and unimportant to you since you already have a website running with a domain name. But once you have your first website functioning, what will you do for your second site?

As we're stated many times in videos and online training, each jewelry website gets on average 45 visitors per day. The trick is getting them to get off their chair and come to your "general" jewelry store. But let's switch thinking for a moment. What if you were not just another "general" jewelry store; what if you had a specialty? Do you?

We've measured SEO results that show you can attract more business to a website that specializes rather than one depicting all-purpose or general-purpose.

Let's plant some seeds of thought right now. After your first website is up and running, depicting your bus...
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AT: 09/01/2010 01:48:09 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 31, 2010

.info .me @ .my .name .mx

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Our headline today is not random characters or cell phone text messaging gibberish; those are different types of domain name extensions that you could actually get instead of the typical .com.

Most likely, if you are reading this you already have an operational website of the .com or .net or .biz variety, and registering more domain names is the furthest thing from your mind. This was a perfectly understandable philosophy until 2008 when domain name registrations opened us up to so many additional possibilities.

Have you noticed in the last few years how advertisers have gone from using http://www.domain.com to www.domain.com, and now it's common to simply use domain.com?

Our recognition of website domain names has become common place, and the various extensions are less and less misunderstood every day. Naturally t...
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AT: 08/31/2010 01:45:25 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 30, 2010

Don't get scammed by domain name thieves.

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Would it surprise you to find out that domain name con artists prey upon website owners?

The typical scam is perpetrated by sending you an invoice for domain name renewal, which looks legitimate until you read the fine print on the invoice, which usually says something like "This is not a bill. This is a solicitation to transfer your domain name to our service."

If you blithely sign the invoice and pay the bill, you are authorizing that company to hijack your domain right from you.

Domain name scams have been around since the beginning of the internet. By the late 1990s, hijacking became so common that the industry as a whole had to create a way to "lock" your domain. By default, all domains are locked, and as a general rule you are now safe from domain hijacking.

However, as with all legal contracts, your ...
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AT: 08/30/2010 01:43:49 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 27, 2010

What is the EXACT cost of advertising for each new customer?

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The last location-based service we are reviewing this week is Foursquare, "4sq" for short.

According to the buzz on the street, during the last 7 days both Foursquare and Gowalla have to worry about Facebook Places. We explained our position on the substandard Facebook Places yesterday, and Gowalla has a really cool interface that we explained 2 days ago.

Foursquare is not snazzy looking, but it's fast, has real time updates, interaction between users and 3 different types of social competitive scenarios.

They really have their act together.

Here are some of the features that wow'd us:
* Check in at the same location enough times to become the "Mayor" of that location. Compete against your friends.
* Check in at different locations, different times of the day, and at specific events to be awarded "Badge...
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AT: 08/27/2010 10:57:01 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 26, 2010

Let's give Facebook Places a Whrrl.

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Perhaps the title of this Gold Nugget is a bad pun. Today we're going to give a brief overview of the new Facebook Places system compared to Whrrl.

Whrrl has a straight forward system showing you immediate suggested things to do on the opening Home page. There's also a easy to use Check In button that, when tapped, will give you a fast, real time listing of places around you.

As people check in and make recommendations, those recommendations are pushed out to anyone else who is within the local area. We've already seen people act upon our recommendations immediately, and then reply back to us with a "did it." The same suggestions will show up on the Home page for people up to about 20 miles away.

Unlike the badges you earn from the other systems which you can use to mark your personal goals, Whrrl give you Influe...
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AT: 08/26/2010 10:55:14 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Trip Planning in Gowalla

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Of the location-based services (LBS) we are testing, Gowalla has the fewest places pre-populated in their database. In a recent interview on TechTV (on ustream.tv) the founder of Gowalla admitted that they have the youngest LBS and, from our point of view, it looks like they are trying to build a better mousetrap.

Their application is very slick and refined compared to all the others; they learned from mistakes of the other LBS companies. It loads very fast, too, which is a major benefit when wanting to check out local activity quickly. It also helps to have a fast application when the user is waiting on a checkout line and only has about 75 - 90 seconds of free time. (Yes, we're measuring free time in a matter of seconds!)

This attractive system is designed to make the "Spot" (aka the retail store) the primary point of ...
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AT: 08/25/2010 10:52:29 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 24, 2010

We're all in DEHOOD

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Today's highlight is on the location-based service called DEHOOD which launched on May 26, 2010. Even though this service came out exactly 3 months ago, it already has a lot of users and it is positioning itself completely differently than any of the other LBS'.

DEHOOD launched as a full featured social networking application that provides direct communication to everyone in your physical neighborhood the like of which no one else seems to be attempting.

For you, the retail jewelry store, you goal will be to get yourself listed in their Places database. As of this writing, their database is not only limited, it's also a bit corrupted. Admittedly, listing in each LBS is corrupted, but HOW they are corrupted really makes you raise an eyebrow.

Thankfully DEHOOD is smart enough to allow you to add your Place if not alr...
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AT: 08/24/2010 10:48:49 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 23, 2010

Introduction to mobile internet Location-Based Services

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This week's set of Gold Nuggets will help cut through the chatter of "Location-Based Services."

Today, August 23, 2010 Facebook changed some of the functionality of their website. In preparation of today's changes they've slowly been announcing new services to the world. Last week they announced Facebook Places in hopes to enter the arena of Location-Based Services (LBS).

It seems the world suddenly woke up and is talking about LBS as if it's something new that started last week. In reality the location-based technology became commonplace back in 2005, except many of us weren't quite aware of it. If ever you read the fine print in your cell phone feature, you would have know that Big Brother was tracking you.

There are many players right now vying for the LBS crown. At this point, we don't even know who will win ...
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AT: 08/23/2010 10:44:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 20, 2010

Tracking Cell Phones and Mobile Devices on Your Jewelry Website

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Here are some quick recent measurements:
* 4.2% of users searching for diamonds online are using a cell phone or iPad
* 3.6% of users looking at jewelry online are using a cell phone or an iPad
* 1.5% of retail jewelry store owners are using a cell phone or iPad for B2B

Here are some quick measurements from April 2010
* 3.2% of users searching for diamonds online are using a cell phone or iPad
* 1.9% of users looking at jewelry online are using a cell phone or an iPad
* 0.6% of retail jewelry store owners are using a cell phone or iPad for B2B

The number of users moving to the mobile space is gaining speed RAPIDLY. There are already more smart phones on the planet than regular computers.

You need a mobile website.

The iPhone seems to be the favorite for people looking for jewelry onl...
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AT: 08/20/2010 09:16:58 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 19, 2010

It was easier when we all had a 14" computer screen.

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Designing websites used to be so easy. The standard was 640x480 on a 14" computer screen. Then 17" was the standard at 800x600. Then 1024x768.

Unfortunately it's anything by simple now.

Our data research tells us that there are between 42 - 48 normal screen sizes that visit jewelry related websites every month. You will usually see the 1024x768 resolution in the list near the top with about 20%, but that's far from a standard now.

In your Google Analytics you should check out your own statistics. From your Dashboard click on Visitors on the left, then under that click Browser Compatibility.

Take a look at the sub-options for Browsers to see what your visitors are using. Is Internet Explorer still #1?

Then take a look at the Operating Systems and don't be surprised if our see iPhone, Android, Bla...
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AT: 08/19/2010 10:41:20 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Deep Linking is a slow and steady SEO winner, just like the slow tortes against the hare.

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It's a very common misconception that the home page is the only place a visitor will enter your site.

Ticketmaster sued Microsoft in April 1997 because Microsoft linked directly to a Ticketmaster purchase page instead of their home page. Since then there have been 4 other large visibility cases all resulting in dismissal.

"The whole point of putting information on the Web is to make it easier for people to access it, so companies should be thrilled that other sites want to link to them." - David Sorkin, dontlink.com

Facebook users deep link all the time, they just don't realize it. Pasting a URL into the FB Publisher box (aka making a "status update") is usually done to share something interesting with friends.

Deep linking is extremely valuable for SEO, which is something we've learned over time and testin...
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AT: 08/18/2010 10:34:26 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 17, 2010

You don't need to be Yellow any more.

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Most people look at the Search Engines right away, but there's a lot of other valuable information in there, and an answer to a very common question we hear a lot. That question is "Should I cancel my Yellow Pages advertising?"

Take a look at your list of Referring Sites. These are all the places that have links to you. Surprisingly, every retail jeweler website we've ever analyzed will have yellowpages.com, insiderpages.com and yp.yahoo.com all listed as referring sites.

What's even more surprising is that if you cancel your ad, or never even had one, you will still see traffic from YellowPages.com. It's usually pretty high quality with a low Bounce Rate and high Average Time on Site.

So save your monthly money and cancel that Yellow Pages ad when it's up for renewal. They won't remove your listing from their we...
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AT: 08/17/2010 09:28:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 16, 2010

What towns do your customers hail from?

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In this week's set of Gold Nuggets we are focusing on specific features within Google Analytics. Each highlighted feature will help you understand a little more about your website and your visitors.

Additionally, every day until August 29th we are broadcasting live webinars at http://www.jwag.tv
The broadcast schedule is Weekdays at 12:30pm Eastern time, Saturdays at 10am and Sundays at 2pm. All broadcasts are being saved on the jwag.tv website until September 4, 2010.

Now for today's Gold Nugget...

Through Google Analytics you can see all the towns your website visitors came from. When you log into your account you will notice a green color map of the world toward the bottom right of your screen. Click on the United States. From there, click on the darkest stat...
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AT: 08/16/2010 06:39:38 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 13, 2010

Get you own QR Code today.

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Starting at 12:30pm EDT August 13, 2010 we are starting our free 16-straight-days live webinar series, 90 min every day. Register at http://www.jwag.biz/live/jwag-live2-details.html.

The webinar will be archived online and available until September 4, 2010 at http://www.ustream.tv/user/jwagtv/videos

Now on with our Gold Nugget for today...

All week, we've told you about QR Codes and some ideas to build a buzz around this new advertising technique. Curiosity from the current tech savvy consumer will drive them right to your doorstep.

As a QR Code advertiser, you will find yourself in the position of teacher in addition to your already busy duties as jewelry store retailer. But our guidelines...
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AT: 08/13/2010 09:55:57 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 12, 2010

Timeliness of Updating QR Code related Websites

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We hope by now you realize that the idea of QR Code advertising is to use the barcode any place where your customers are not at home or at their computer, yet they are willing to give partial attention to reading a mobile website that they request to view.

Now that we've given you ideas how to use these you probably want to know how to get thee codes for yourself and make them work, we're going to give you those tools in tomorrow's Gold Nugget, but today we want to pause and explain the power of timeliness in QR Code advertising.

All of us at jWAG will always say it's important to keep your website updated on a regular basis, but when it comes t QR Code advertising you need to make a choice between using he QR Code to direct people to you, or offer them an incentive on the spot.

The QR Reader will direct the person to...
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AT: 08/12/2010 11:34:08 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 11, 2010

QR Code Advertising Ideas for Touristy Areas

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This is a continuation of our 5 day Gold Nugget Series on QR Codes. Normally we publish our Nuggets publicly right here, but the content in this one is for your Gold Subscribers only. We have to apologize again for how long this is, but it's worth it.

Today we have for you an advertising methodology and 2 effective ways to use QR Codes if you are located in a touristy area. These techniques were learned first hand while researching mobile advertising in Europe in July 2010.

The methodology is simple: Make sure you are showcasing regionally specific jewelry in your store. Do you have jewelry representing the area? Examples that come to mind would be Statue of Liberty jewelry in New Jersey and New York City, or manatee jewelry from Florida, or jewelry shaped like Lake Tahoe for those towns in Nevada and California. Simpl...
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AT: 08/11/2010 11:28:10 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Advanced QR Code Advertising Ideas

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This is a continuation of our 5 day Gold Nugget Series on QR Codes. Normally we publish our Nuggets in this public area of jWAG, but we're can't publishing this one except to our Gold Subscribers. This is also a little longer than what we want to publish as a daily Nugget, but it's worth it.

Today we have for you 6 effective ways to use QR Codes in your advertising.

These first 4 examples are used all over Europe. We've had first hand experience seeing dozens of people scan QR Codes in these locations.

1. Bus station signs. Think about this. People are waiting in a bus terminal or at a bus stop. Many stand around with nothing to do except play with their cell phone. Putting a QR Code on your bus stop sign will turn your ad from a simple sign into a real world method of interaction. Curiosity will make the pote...
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AT: 08/10/2010 10:19:06 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 09, 2010

Basic QR Code Advertising Ideas

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In Gold Nugget #2, we mentioned QR Codes. This week, we're giving you 5 specific Nuggets relating to QR Codes and how to use them. First, take a look at this example from Bordeaux France: http://bit.ly/ctddeW

That's a huge sign in a high visitor traffic area of Bordeaux. Confused visitors can scan that sign from their phone and get more information about the city. You could try it right now if you have a QR Code reader on your phone. Just scan your computer screen. (Search the App Store for a free QR Code Reader.)

Of course that example is 4000 miles away from the USA, so how can you apply this QR Code advertising to your jewelry store?

Cheap and easy examples of using QR Codes:
* The back of your business cards
* Store window signs
* Fliers or handouts at local events
* Store receipts

When some...
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AT: 08/09/2010 10:07:42 AM   1 COMMENT
Friday, August 06, 2010

Reasons to Create a Niche Jewelry Website

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The advances in mobile technologies and features of Google Maps Mobile have paved the way to an iron clad reason for retail jewelry stores to have mobile ready websites. Mobile ready websites are absolutely necessary to bring customers right to your front door.

But when it comes to shopping online, people prefer to buy from stores that specialize. Obviously, as a jewelry store you carry thousands of items from different jewelry categories in your store. But why not set up a website focusing on one particular category of jewelry?

As an example, you could create a website that sells crosses or cross jewelry. Here are some setup steps for you to follow to profits.
1. Find a domain name that includes the word "cross" in it.
2. Find styles of cross pendants, necklaces, rings and earrings that are not available on a...
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AT: 08/06/2010 10:34:32 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 05, 2010

Don't compete with Blue Nile; you will lose money.

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BlueNile.com, Tiffany & Co., Zales Corp (Zales and Gordon's) and Signet Jewelers (Sterling, Kay and Jared) all have their own styles of jewelry. But obviously they are not the only suppliers of jewelry in the world. There are plenty of other jewelry suppliers that are also looking to compete against these "Big 4," and that's who you should be working with.

The selection of jewelry on your website should be something different than what the Big 4 sell. Your jewelry should represent what sets you apart from the Big 4 so you are not competing directly with them. This way, you can realistically charge competitive prices for your jewelry since now you are only competing with other online retailers.

One caveat is that you should not include jewelry styles on your website unless they are re-orderable. There is a considerable...
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AT: 08/05/2010 09:53:24 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 04, 2010

Ideas for Online Jewelry Sales Copy That Work

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Since you've been working in retail jewelry industry for a while, you probably recognize the common reasons people buy jewelry and what to say to someone to make sure they buy from you.

What is your specialty? Are you able to describe the gold lockets as well as someone else in your store? Or is there someone better that can inspire that need-to-have-it-right-now feeling in your customer looking for lockets?

The point is that you should call upon the best employee at selling lockets in your store to help write the sales copy for that same set of lockets on your website.

Once your sales copy is written, you will have to test its effectiveness online. Use Google Analytics to test common things like your headlines or call to action and to determine how your visitors are interacting with your sales copy.

Once...
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AT: 08/04/2010 09:06:20 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 03, 2010

The difference between winning jewelers and losing jewelers

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Advertising is the key to any successful jewelry business; well, that is to say the advertising needs to be successful in attracting customers. Only then will the willing customers come.

In the past you would publish your ad and then wait patiently for customers. With the internet we don't have to wait too long to figure out what's working and what's not. The tool to use is Google Analytics.

Analytics allows you to see how people are using your website.

Here are some things you can learn from analytics:
* What they are clicking on
* What colors work best
* If your jewelry photography effective
* Which headlines work best

Highly successful jewelry stores usually see analytics and testing as a high priority. It's a key difference between winners and losers in both online sales and increasing...
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AT: 08/03/2010 06:56:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 02, 2010

Perhaps we were living under a rock and that's why we didn't know this.

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Doing some research over the last few days we discovered something that we admit we should have known about. We're willing to admit when we make mistakes so we're openly publishing it since it's big enough news.

There's a continual argument regarding the support of Flash on website. Some web programmers love Flash, others hate it. To use Flash, or not to use Flash on your website? It's a heated debate akin to the typical arguments between the Republican and Democratic political parties in the United States.

Web programmers waited many years for Apple to come to an agreement with Adobe so the iPhone could display Flash sites. But we were all crushed on April 29, 2010 when Apple announced it would never support Flash, but that's old news and not what today's Nugget is about.

What we discovered is that Microsoft's l...
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AT: 08/02/2010 10:26:25 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 30, 2010

If a picture is worth 1000 words, would you use a camera with a smudged lens?

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Your website is the public face of your business online. During this recession we saw a lot of jewelry stores close, and as we shut down their websites we couldn't help but wonder if the sub par images on their site contributed to their downfall.

The photography on your site is very important. Particularly the jewelry photography for product catalogs. Images need to be high quality, "pop" off the page, show color and detail well and, most of all, they have to tell a story to the person who wants the jewelry.

Photos of your store should be sharp and present well. Photos of your staff should either be coordinated or show them at their normal work station (i.e. the bench jeweler hard at work). When it comes to photos of your product, we suggest getting a light box and learning jewelry photography. Otherwise, just ...
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AT: 07/30/2010 05:58:21 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 29, 2010

What the difference between Google AdWords and Facebook Ads?

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There's a lot of hype when it comes to Google AdWords and Facebook Ads. Many leading internet marketers will say Facebook is the far superior system.

The truth is we just don't know yet. The Facebook advertising system is still young. If you sign up for ads on there today you will see a lot of features that indicate "beta" and even a few disclaimers that say things like "this data may be inaccurate."

Google has years of experience with advertising and it's their primary income, so they have to get it right. Facebook approached the advertising concept completely differently than Google, and they made it much easier.

But with ease comes sacrifice. Facebook's ad system also only allows you to target people that are related or not related to your specific fan pages.

Take a look at Facebook if you are consideri...
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AT: 07/29/2010 04:19:55 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 28, 2010

What stickers are on your front door? Visa/MC/AmEx... Google?

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What stickers are on your front door? Visa/MC/AmEx... Google? Let's face it, our society would rather chat, email or google than have to deal with someone face to face. The telephone? Yuck! Who uses that any more?

When the random foot traffic passes your jewelry store for the first time they will peek at your window display and determine if you are worth their time, and money. They might see something of interest. The first time visitor is taking a chance on you; and they will probably have an aversion to spending until they trust you. The salesmanship g...
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AT: 07/28/2010 03:20:28 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 27, 2010

What are those square dot-like bar codes becoming so popular?

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What are those square dot-like bar codes becoming so popular? QRcodeI'm sure you've seen them by now. They show up on FedEx boxes, UPS Boxes, advertising posters, bumper stickers and even at bus stops. I'm referring to the dotted pattern squares that have larger dots in their corners. These are 2D bar codes know as QR Codes.

These QR Codes can be read by smart phones once the appropriate ap has been installed. The iPhone has a few dozen aps for this that are easy to install. It's easy to get similar aps for the Blackberry, Windows Mobile and the Droid phones.

Once the ap is instal...
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AT: 07/27/2010 01:43:16 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 26, 2010

Google Maps can drive visitors directly to your doorstep, literally.

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You've got to set up your Google Places account. Right now. Go do it at http://www.google.com/places

Why you ask?

Because the Google Maps feature is so much more than getting printable driving directions from your computer.

Smart cell phones can download a mobile version of Google Maps which will lead customer right to your front door.
Once your Google Places account is set up it is tied directly into the features of Google Maps. Then, whenever someone is in your neighborhood your jewelry store will appear as a little red pin on the map whenever someone searches for "jewelry."

Better yet, the person could be anywhere in the world planning a trip to your town, yet when they search for "jewelry" they well still see your little red pin on the map. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 07/26/2010 11:48:15 AM   0 COMMENTS
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