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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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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
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
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
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 />
							<span class=VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


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
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
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 />
							<span class=VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 02/26/2016 01:21:17 PM   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:

VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 02/12/2016 02:01:38 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
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:

VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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:

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AT: 08/28/2015 12:54:39 PM   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
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:

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AT: 07/31/2015 12:35:04 PM   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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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 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
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
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
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
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 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...
VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 01/09/2015 01:05:40 PM   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
Friday, December 19, 2014

Sam's Fine Jewelry Website Review

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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
Monday, December 08, 2014

Jewelry Photography Pointers for Great Results

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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
Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Google Shopping and Double Management of Your Inventory

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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
Friday, October 31, 2014

TR Jewelers Website Review

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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
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 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
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
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
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
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, 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
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
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
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
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
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
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, 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
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, 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
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
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
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
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
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, 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
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
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, 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
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