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Friday, March 31, 2017

Hibu Website Review - Is It Really Worth The Money?

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

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

Gold Wolff Jewelers Website Review

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

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

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

Photos Now Appear In Google Local Pack Results

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

A Little Background


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

Comparison Of Two Bozeman, Montana Jewelers

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

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

Bloated Websites vs. Simple Websites

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

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

TamRon Jewelry Design Technical Website Review

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

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


AT: 02/24/2017 12:29:10 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 03, 2017

McGuire's Jewelers Website Review

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

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

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

Mike's Custom Jewelry #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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

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

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

Cass Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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

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

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

Bruce G. Weber #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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

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

SERP Review for Sandy Springs, GA

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

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

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

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

The Entrepreneurial Journey


At some point, you probably got the idea that you could make your favorite baubles or provide a service better than others you'd seen, and so you launched a business o...
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AT: 12/30/2016 10:46:07 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 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 11, 2016

Avalon Park Jewelers Website Re-Review

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

Tharoo and Co Website Re-Review

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

If they have made progress, it's not because I told them what to do. The disclaimer at the bottom of all my reviews says that I don't write these to solicit business, and the only way they will find out about the review is if they search for their name online. Fewer than 5 in 190 have ever ...
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AT: 11/04/2016 11:38:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 28, 2016

Weiss Jewelers Website Review

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

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

First Impressions


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

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

Matthew's Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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

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


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

Jeweler's Choice #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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

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


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

How Jewelers in Jurupa Valley, CA Compete

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

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

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

Garland Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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

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

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


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

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

Pascale Jewelers SERP Review

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Pascale Jewelers SERP Review daily-golden-nugget-1518-45
I find it interesting that, in this world of shopping malls and big box stores, there are still times when people automatically think of a specialty store for a specific need. Local retail jewelers are specialty stores because they focus on a single product category, but at the rate that JBT reports jewelers going out of business, it seems like the small local retail...
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AT: 08/19/2016 01:53:35 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 05, 2016

Pugh's Diamond Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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

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

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

J. Schrecker Jewelry #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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

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

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


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

Cairo GA SERP Review

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

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

Instead, this is what I saw:

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

Marco Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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

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

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

Happy Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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

This week I used the phrase "jewelers Newport, RI" to search for my review candidate. Instead of choosing a jewelry store from the first page of the Google res...
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AT: 07/08/2016 11:03:44 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 24, 2016

Kaplans Fine Jewelry and Troubling Responsive Designs #FridayFlopFix

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

Hancock Jewelers#FridayFlopFix Website Review

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

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

Murphy's Mountain Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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

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

Precious Metalsmith #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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

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

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

Island Butterfly Jewelry and Jubilee #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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

Jewelers in Orange CA - #FridayFlopFix Website Reviews

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

I've included my commentary in the screen capture:

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

Walter's Jewelry #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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

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

Walters Jewelry FridayFl...<br />
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AT: 05/13/2016 12:30:51 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 06, 2016

Orca Jewels #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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

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

Trimarco Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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

Maintain Your Momentum No Matter Where You Are


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

In my ca...
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AT: 04/29/2016 09:18:18 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Hellberg's Jewelers Website Review

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

I find my website candidates by searching Google using the Chrome browser set to incognito mode. Incognito mode is good to use whe...
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AT: 04/20/2016 12:16:41 PM   0 COMMENTS
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 18, 2016

HUR Jewelers #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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

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

Keywords Don't Belong In Your Meta Descriptions #TBT

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

What Are They?


The meta descriptions are the approximately 150 character descriptions you see in the search engine results pages. What you put in the meta descriptions does not count towards your search engine optimization; rather, it's there simply to exp...
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AT: 03/17/2016 11:27:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 01, 2016

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

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

Google established their own set of website quality guidelines to ...
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AT: 03/01/2016 12:37:08 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 26, 2016

Pruett's Jewelry #FridayFlopFix Review

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

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

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

Pruetts Jewelry FridayFlopFix Re...<br />
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AT: 02/26/2016 01:21:17 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 19, 2016

Tallmon's Jewelry #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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

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

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

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AT: 02/19/2016 08:48:32 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 12, 2016

Dominique's Jewelry #FridayFlopFix Website Review

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

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

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AT: 02/12/2016 02:01:38 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 29, 2016

The First Place #FridayFlopFix Review

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

Last Friday night, my dear friend Cindy Edelstein sent me an email w...
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AT: 01/29/2016 08:08:33 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 22, 2016

Kent Jewelry #FridayFlopFix Review

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

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


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

Organic Search Engine Results from 2015 #TBT

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

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

Global...
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AT: 01/21/2016 09:56:21 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 08, 2016

David Reynolds Jewelry and Coin #FridayFlopFix Review

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

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AT: 01/08/2016 01:03:13 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 06, 2016

Holiday Season 2015 Keyword Data from Desktop Search Impressions and Clicks

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

For today's Nugget, I sorted through the 16,000 keywords collected from desktop ...
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AT: 01/06/2016 12:49:28 PM   0 COMMENTS
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 25, 2015

Christmas Specific SERP Review

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

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

Christmas Specific SERP Review 1415-ch...<br />
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AT: 12/25/2015 08:58:47 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 18, 2015

Highlands Jewelers #FridayFlopFix

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

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

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AT: 12/18/2015 01:10:53 PM   0 COMMENTS
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 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 20, 2015

Jewelsmith Inc Website Flop Fix

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

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


AT: 11/20/2015 12:17:32 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 06, 2015

Baxter's Fine Jewelry Website Review

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

My search this week to me to Warwick, RI, specifically the Google search for "j...
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AT: 11/06/2015 01:04:59 PM   0 COMMENTS
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 23, 2015

Bell Family Jewelers Website Review

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

Bell Family Jewelers Website Review 1370-serp-95

Bell Family Jewelers appears first in the...
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AT: 10/23/2015 12:35:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, October 16, 2015

Trends Jewelers Case Study

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

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

Thomas Michaels Designers Website Review

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

The local search phrase I'm using this week is...
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AT: 09/11/2015 06:30:40 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 04, 2015

Kuehn Sisters Diamonds Website Review

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

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

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


AT: 09/04/2015 11:03:57 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, August 31, 2015

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

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

Kevin Main Jewelry Website Review

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

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

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

Getting New Websites Indexed in Google #TBT

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

New Websites


People don't race to shop at your store as soon as you build a new website. Before that can happen, Google needs t...
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AT: 08/27/2015 11:05:10 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 21, 2015

Horrible Retail Jeweler Websites Near Grand Fork

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

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

Beaudet Jewelry Design Website Review

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

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

Beaudet Jewelry Design Website Review 1315-serp-jewelry-stores-Eug...<br />
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AT: 08/07/2015 11:44:07 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
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
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 />
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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 />
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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
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
Monday, May 25, 2015

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

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

Google started showing mobile friendly websites in search results earlier than April 21st. Reports from Search Engine Land stated that the mobilegeddon rollout seemed to be slo...
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AT: 05/25/2015 11:33:26 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 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 />
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AT: 05/15/2015 11:24:59 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 08, 2015

Goldirocks Jewelers Website Review

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Goldirocks Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1250-36
Way back on May 3, 2013, I reviewed the website for Alletti Jewelry. In that review, I explained that they were using the GoDaddy WebsiteBuilder and showed why it was a pretty bad content management system (CMS).

Recently. I came across a different retail jeweler's website using the new version of GoDaddy's Online Store CMS. The store is Goldirocks Jewelers and their website is VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 05/08/2015 06:14:51 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 07, 2015

Replace Ugly URLs With Easy To Understand Words

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Replace Ugly URLs With Easy To Understand Words daily-golden-nugget-1249-80In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm revisiting the URL restructuring topic from March 15, 2011.

I consider URL restructuring to be one of the more advanced SEO techniques that you can employ after a deep review of how your website is performing in organic search. It's the process of turning your long, messy looking website addresses into shorter, easy to understand addresses.

H...
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AT: 05/07/2015 06:18:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 04, 2015

SEO Ranking Comparison Between Two Competing Jewelry Websites

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SEO Ranking Comparison Between Two Competing Jewelry Websites daily-golden-nugget-1246-53
Do you have a question about your own online marketing situation or feel perplexed about something specific on the internet? Send it to me and I'll answer it as a future Daily Golden Nugget if I can.

Shortly after posting my Friday website review on the morning of April 24, 2015, one of my email readers asked me a really viable question about the SERP results from that day's review. You can read the review VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 05/04/2015 07:10:08 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 01, 2015

Wick and Green Jewelers Website Review

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Wick and Green Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1245-45
Welcome to the weekly edition of the Friday jewelry website review. Every week, I randomly choose a candidate website and put it to the test for design, SEO, usability, content, and a wealth of other website and business related issues.

I never know how they will turn out; sometimes good and sometimes bad. I always try to write these reviews in the order in which I browse around the site, providing my first reactions as I discover things.

This week, I'm searching for "Jewelers in Asheville, No...
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AT: 05/01/2015 01:42:53 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 30, 2015

Breadcrumbs Leave Helpful Trails For Mobile Users

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Breadcrumbs Leave Helpful Trails For Mobile Users daily-golden-nugget-1244-62
For today's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm revisiting the topic of breadcrumb trails in your website.

In regard to your website, a breadcrumb trail is a specially formatted set of links that helps users navigate your website without needing to click the browser's back link.

Google first suggested the use of the breadcrumb trail in 2012 as a way to help simpl...
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AT: 04/30/2015 12:43:22 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 24, 2015

McCary's Jewelry Website Review

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McCarys Jewelry Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1240-97
In this edition of the Friday website review, I'm traveling to Shreveport, Louisiana in search of my review candidate. Using the Chrome browser in incognito mode, I searched for "jewelers Shreveport, Louisiana" and saw these SERP results:

McCarys Jewelry Website Review 1240-jewelers-shreveport-louisiana-serp-89VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 04/24/2015 07:57:57 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 17, 2015

Adams Fine Jewelry Website Review

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Adams Fine Jewelry Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1235-64
This is the Friday jewelry website review where I find a random retail jeweler and review their website for design, usability, and SEO. In each one of these reviews, my goal is to show how the information from my other Daily Golden Nuggets can be directly applied to a website.

This week, I'm using the Google Chrome browser in incognito mode to search for "jewelers st joseph mo." Here's a snapshot of the results:

...<br VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 04/17/2015 09:30:38 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 10, 2015

Klutts Jewelers Website Review

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Klutts Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1230-23
In this week's edition of the Friday Website Jewelry Website Review, I'm beginning my search in "jewelers morgan city, la" to find a website review candidate. I go through these website reviews every Friday as a way to monitor and show you what's happening in the world of jewelry websites. I never know how the review will turn out, but the hope is that something is learned.

Here's the Google SERP for Morgan City:

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


AT: 04/10/2015 06:23:19 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 03, 2015

Vierk's Fine Jewelry Website Review

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Vierks Fine Jewelry Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1225-64
This is the Friday Website Review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Every week I search for a jewelry store in a random town and review their website. I never know how these are going to turn out, but they are always interesting as I examine website designs, functionality, SEO, and potential customer engagement.

Using Google Chrome in incognito mode to prevent personalized results, I searched for "jewelry appraisals Lafayette, IN." Here's the search results I saw:

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AT: 04/03/2015 12:49:46 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 30, 2015

Measured Results After Adding Schema.org Microdata To a Website

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Measured Results After Adding Schema.org Microdata To a Website daily-golden-nugget-1221-24
Whenever Google comes out with a new webmaster guideline, I wonder what they are up to. Every action they take has the potential to aide or disrupt the normal flow of the internet that we all rely on now. Take, for example, the announcement of their mobile-friendliness ranking factor and the potential for disruption that VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 03/30/2015 11:17:52 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 27, 2015

Spinelli Jewelers Website Review

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Spinelli Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1220-81
This is the Friday Jewelry Website Review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Every week, I randomly choose and dissect a retail jeweler's website to see what makes it tick. I never know what I'm going to find each week; sometimes it's something new to learn or a refresher on topics I've previously written about.

To find this week's review candidate, I searched Google for "jewelry stores in Bridgeton, New Jersey" and was given this SERP:

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AT: 03/27/2015 11:41:41 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 26, 2015

Google and Bing Web Page Cached Dates

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Google and Bing Web Page Cached Dates daily-golden-nugget-1219-38
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to Daily Golden Nugget number 218 from March 25, 2011. Back then, Google was generating SERP instant preview images for websites, a feature that was then dropped in April 2013, but it I want to cover a different topic from that Nugget that I never wrote about in detail...

Google Cache and Bing Cache.

Both Google and Bing record the last ...
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AT: 03/26/2015 11:25:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 20, 2015

Delson Jewelry Website Review

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Delson Jewelry Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1215-66
Last week I wrote my weekly jewelry website review while I was waiting for my flight to France in Newark Liberty Airport, in Newark, NJ. Because I was sitting in the airport, I had the opportunity to present that review from the point of view of an actual mobile user.

As I usually do, I chose the first organic result from t...
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AT: 03/20/2015 09:05:48 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 18, 2015

You Should Fear Mobilegeddon

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You Should Fear Mobilegeddon daily-golden-nugget-1213-17
Over the last two weeks, I've been detailing why it's important to have a correct mobile setup for your website. Google's decision to use mobile friendliness as a ranking factor has a lot of people worried that...
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AT: 03/18/2015 06:49:38 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 17, 2015

The Use of Ellipses ... in Meta Descriptions

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The Use of Ellipses ... in Meta Descriptions daily-golden-nugget-1212-33
The ellipses are a set of three periods that has different functions depending on how that punctuation is used.

In these Daily Golden Nuggets, I often use this symbol to represent a long pause or a trailing off thought. In text messages, I use them to represent long pauses, or sometimes I even send them alone in a single text message to illustrate a perplexed reaction when I don't know what to say. A stunned silence, perhaps.

The ellipses has turned into one of the most commonly u...
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AT: 03/17/2015 07:24:42 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 13, 2015

Vinhas Jewelers Mobile Website Review

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Vinhas Jewelers Mobile Website Review daily-golden-nugget-12010-96
Welcome to the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Every week, I randomly search for retail jeweler websites to review as an educational exercise. Over the last two weeks, in the wake of Google recent announcement regarding mobile readiness, I've written several VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 03/13/2015 06:40:10 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Fix Mobile Usability Issues Found On Your Website

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Fix Mobile Usability Issues Found On Your Website daily-golden-nugget-1208-55
Search engine optimization was once a game of pure guesswork. SEO specialists would simply watch their own efforts of what worked and what didn't work, then simply follow the same steps over and over again.

Companies like MOZ.com and SearchEngineLand.com have communities of users always trying to figure out which supposed SEO techniques work, and which don't. Search Engine Land even published their of VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 03/11/2015 09:44:00 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Avoid the Faulty Mobile Redirect

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Avoid the Faulty Mobile Redirect daily-golden-nugget-1207-5
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'll cover one of the nagging mobile website issues that Google doesn't like any more. Well, I don't know if they ever liked it, but in this video they've clearly pointed it out.

It all started a few years ago when people first started dabbling in mobile websites. It's difficult to retrofit a desktop site to include a mobile version, unless you are willing to redesign the entire site again. Setting up a parallel mob...
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AT: 03/10/2015 07:46:58 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 09, 2015

3 More Important Mobile Website Design Factors

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3 More Important Mobile Website Design Factors daily-golden-nugget-1206-93
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm giving you 3 more important mobile website design factors to complement the 3 mobile design factors I gave you last week.

These mobile recommendations come directly from Google, from this video.

Readable Font Without Zooming


Even if your website is designed to be...
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AT: 03/09/2015 07:53:05 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 06, 2015

Taylor's Gold-n-Stones Website Review

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Taylors Gold-n-Stones Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1205-15
The weather in North America has been quite drastic through this winter. Snowfall and low temperature records have been broken all season long, and we're all counting the days until March 21st, which is only two weeks from now. Thankfully temperatures seem to be on the rise.

On the other hand, two weeks ago, the temperatures in New Jersey were lower than in Fairbanks, Alaska!

I'm certainly not a cold weather person, but many people are. In this week's edition of the Friday website review I'm headi...
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AT: 03/06/2015 07:26:57 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 04, 2015

3 Important Mobile Website Design Factors

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3 Important Mobile Website Design Factors daily-golden-nugget-1203-31
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm showing you a few things to watch out for when creating your mobile website. These mobile recommendations come directly from Google from this video.

No Pinch Zooming or Plug-ins


There should never be a need to zoom in on a mobile website. The website content should naturally fit the size of the screen as you see here:

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AT: 03/04/2015 08:45:32 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 27, 2015

Google+ Local Now Shows Shopping Mall Information

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Google+ Local Now Shows Shopping Mall Information daily-golden-nugget-1200-63
If you're jewelry store is located in a strip mall or a shopping mall, Google will probably be changing your address, if they haven't already.

In honor of my 1200th Daily Golden Nugget I'm bringing you some updated information about Google+ Local today. Way back 1200 post ago I began these Nuggets with a a post about Google Maps, since then I've carried the tradition or reviewing Google business related changes every 100th Nugget. So here we are again.

During the course of ...
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AT: 02/27/2015 12:49:53 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 26, 2015

Holland Jewelers Website Review

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Holland Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1199-20
Welcome to the weekly website review. Normally this is published every Friday, but it got pulled up one day to make room for a special Nugget scheduled for tomorrow.

The goal of this weekly website review is to shed light on how many retail jewelers out there are still using old website techniques, old SEO methods, and old designs. I search a random city in the USA every week for a jeweler and usually select from the top of the organic listing.

In my experience, given the choice between an older looking and n...
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AT: 02/26/2015 09:49:21 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 20, 2015

Coffin and Trout Fine Jewellers Website Review

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Coffin and Trout Fine Jewellers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1195-14
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal of today's review is to take a critical look at a random retail jeweler's website in hopes of finding something we can all learn from.

At the start of each review, I launch a new Google Chrome incognito window. This allows me to search for a jewelry store without any influence from my previous search history or personalized results.

Searching Google for "jewelers Chandler AZ" returns these results:
...
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AT: 02/20/2015 08:44:00 AM   0 COMMENTS
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
Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Understanding The Different Types Of Search Intent

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Understanding The Different Types Of Search Intent daily-golden-nugget-1188-87
Evolution, it's nature's way of subtly changing things so the next generation will continue to survive and thrive. But it's not just nature that changes things for the better, it's how we all live, learn, and change things around us for the better.

The engineers over at Google are constantly trying to improve and evolve their search engine algorithm to better understand what information is being published online and how that information will be used. Sometimes the information we...
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AT: 02/11/2015 09:18:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 06, 2015

Ornamentum Jewelry Gallery Website Review

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Ornamentum Jewelry Gallery Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1185-73
Welcome to the Friday retail jewelry website review. In this week's review, I'll be searching for a random website candidate to critique in the hopes that we can all learn something useful to implement on our own websites.

To start this week's review I started searching for jewelers in Hudson, NY. Specifically, I used the Google search query "jewelers in Hudson ny."

Here's a screen shot of what the Google SERP looked like:
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AT: 02/06/2015 12:07:57 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 30, 2015

Watkins Jewelers Website Review

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Watkins Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1180-97
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Today, I'm going to perform an incognito Google search for a random jewelry store candidate in Blackstone, Virginia, then review their website.

The goal of this weekly website review is to learn something new, or at least to see an implementation of something good or bad that you never knew.

When I used the search query "jewelry stores in blackstone va" I was given these results:

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AT: 01/30/2015 08:58:12 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 23, 2015

Gold City Jewelers Website Review

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Gold City Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1175-46
Welcome to the Friday jewelry website review where I randomly select and review the website of a retail jeweler. The goal is to dissect their online accounts to see how they might be ranking highly, and what they might be doing right, or wrong, with their online identity.

I use Google's Chrome browser in incognito mode when searching; otherwise the search results will be skewed based on my personalized search results and the top ranked sto...
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AT: 01/23/2015 10:45:59 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 22, 2015

How Can I Get Number 1 Ranking on Google?

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How Can I Get Number 1 Ranking on Google? daily-golden-nugget-1174-76
It astounds me that people still offer first place Google ranking service. Every day I still receive at least one spam email which offers me to get first place ranking on Google if I hire them to improve the SEO of any of the domain names I manage.

I started writing these Daily Golden Nuggets more than four years ago and even before then, Google posted warnings saying how first place ranking could not be achieved by simply hiring someone. Their warning is VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 01/22/2015 01:09:10 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 21, 2015

How Jewelers Should Mitigate Security Risks from Google Business View

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How Jewelers Should Mitigate Security Risks from Google Business View daily-golden-nugget-1173-65
A few years ago, Google undertook an extremely ambitious project to extend its Street Mapping technology inside buildings. Specifically, they created a way that Google Maps Street View could reach inside individual retail stores to create virtual walk throughs of those businesses. These virtual tours are called Google Business View, and the businesses taking advantage of this technology are reporting more engaged customers and higher sales.

The Business View virtua...
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AT: 01/21/2015 12:29:52 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 16, 2015

C. Aaron Penaloza Jewelers Website Review

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C. Aaron Penaloza Jewelers Website Review  daily-golden-nugget-1170-70
Welcome to the Friday website review. The goal of these weekly website reviews to learn something that can better your own website by analyzing someone else's live website. Every week I simply do a Google search in a random town or city throughout the U.S.

This week I'm looking for a review candidate in Terrell Hills, Texas. Using Google Chrome's incognito mode I searched for "jewelry stores in Terrell Hills, Texas" and was given this SERP:

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AT: 01/16/2015 07:57:29 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 12, 2015

2014 Holiday Keyword Report for Jewelers, Jewelry, and Jewelry Stores

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2014 Holiday Keyword Report for Jewelers, Jewelry, and Jewelry Stores daily-golden-nugget-1166-83
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm exploring keyword data collected between November 1 and December 31, 2014 from many retail jeweler websites.

I collected a large amount of keyword data from people using Google's desktop search, mobile search, and image search. The mobile search data is very interesting. Last week, I presented th...
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AT: 01/12/2015 10:02:43 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 09, 2015

Marry Me Jewelry Website Review

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Marry Me Jewelry Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1165-16
Welcome to the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The purpose of this review is to examine a live retail jewelry website in search for the good and bad traits. There's always something interesting to learn from in every week's review.

For this week, I started with a search using the Google Chrome browser in incognito mode. I stay incognito while searching for a review candidate so my own browser history will not influence the search results I see. Through your search history, Google has a way of knowing which websi...
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AT: 01/09/2015 01:05:40 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 07, 2015

November and December 2014 Web Keyword Data for Retail Jewelers

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November and December 2014 Web Keyword Data for Retail Jewelers daily-golden-nugget-1163-36
Throughout 2014, Google made several advancements in their search engine and gave us some new reports in Google Webmaster Tools to see the results of those advancements.

Specifically, from within Webmaster Tools you can easily see when your website appeared in web search results, images search results, and mobile search results. During the first quarter of 2014, I started noticing retail jewelry websites appearing in image results more than ever before, and the Webmaster Tools ...
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AT: 01/07/2015 12:27:16 PM   0 COMMENTS
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
Friday, December 12, 2014

Jewelry Website Reviews in Malibu, California

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Jewelry Website Reviews in Malibu, California daily-golden-nugget-1145-39
This is the Friday jewelry website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. This week I'm snooping around the interwebs of Malibu, California in search for a great jewelry store.

My hope is that I'll find a store whose website will lure me in and get me to visit them in person. I never know where these reviews will go when I start, but the hope is that we'll all learn something from it.

I start my search using the Google Chrome browser in incognito mode to prevent my own search history from providing pe...
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AT: 12/12/2014 12:10:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Internet Marketing Agencies - Changing With Technology

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Internet Marketing Agencies - Changing With Technology daily-golden-nugget-1143-44
The internet has seen many changes over the last 4 years since I started writing these Daily Golden Nuggets. Undoubtedly, a lot of that change was informed by Google, but really there are a lot of other factors involved.

Through the Great Recession, a lot of easier and less expensive technology emerged that now allows us to access information from anywhere at any time. You could argue that the technology companies forced fancy new mobile devices on us; or you could say that the technology devel...
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AT: 12/10/2014 08:20:17 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 05, 2014

Mauzie's of Colorado Website Review

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Mauzies of Collorado Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1140-6
Let's imagine that there's a special gift giving day coming up soon and I need to buy a gift. Assuming that I live in Englewood, Colorado I might do a Google search for "buy jewelry gifts in Englewood Colorado."

Today is the weekly website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal of this review is to randomly search Google for a retail jewelry store and learn something from scrutinizing how they manage their website and online identity. There's always something to learn from these reviews, whether it's learning from someth...
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AT: 12/05/2014 08:16:04 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 28, 2014

Mathew Jewelers Website Review

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Mathew Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1135-25
In honor of Thanksgiving, I decided to look for some town names related to the American holiday. Turkey and cranberries are among the many traditional dishes served at an American Thanksgiving meal. Although I found that there's a Turkey, Texas, it seems like Cranberry, Pennsylvania might have a better chance of locating a review candidate for today's Daily Golden Nugget, Friday Review.

Off to Cranberry I go, with a search for "jewelry stores in cranberry, pa." But the results you see here were not as satisfying as I expected:

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AT: 11/28/2014 10:34:26 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, November 07, 2014

After Midnight Jewelers Website Review

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After Midnight Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1120-78


This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. For this week's review, I'm heading over to South Burlington, VT in search for my retail jeweler review candidate.

I entered the search phrase "jewelers in south burlington vt" into Google and was given this result:

After Midnight Jewelers Website Review 1120-jewelers-in-south-burlington-vt-41VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 11/07/2014 07:41:12 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, November 05, 2014

Social Signal Ranking Factors

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Social Signal Ranking Factors daily-golden-nugget-1118-29
If you ever get into a conversation with a search engine optimization professional (aka SEO), they usually bring up the topic of how Google ranks your website and that there are "more than 200 different signals" that Google uses for their ranking algorithm. It's Google's standard message that they are using more than 200 signals, but they've been saying the same thing for more than 10 years now.

Surly they must be using more than 200 signals now, but they'll never admit it.

From time to time, I'm able to measure the effects of certain t...
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AT: 11/05/2014 12:22:33 PM   0 COMMENTS
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 24, 2014

Romm Diamonds SERP Review

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Romm Diamonds SERP Review daily-golden-nugget-1110-70
This is the Friday Jewelry Website review where I randomly find a retail jeweler's website from a random city to dissect and review. When I start this journey every week, I never know if I'm going to find a great looking website, a poorly functioning website, or something that's embarrassing to even look at.

Every review has a chance to touch upon topics of SEO, SEM, aesthetics, and usability. These reviews are usually not too in-depth, but just a cursory review that usually only reveals the most obvious issues.

The conclusions of evaluations...
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AT: 10/24/2014 08:27:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
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
Wednesday, October 08, 2014

Village Jewelers Website Review

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Village Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1098-48

I'm changing up my usually schedule this week. I have two special Daily Nuggets for Thursday and Friday this week which pushes my weekly review to today.

For today's website review, I'm heading back down to Nashville, Tennessee in search of a jeweler. Here's the Google SERP when I searched for "jeweler Nashville, Tennessee":

Village Jewelers Website Review 1098-jewelers-nashville-tennessee-serp-99 VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 10/08/2014 11:23:19 AM   0 COMMENTS
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
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
Friday, September 12, 2014

John Ross Jewelers Website Review

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John Ross Jewelers Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1080-86
Today is the Friday Review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal of this review is to analyze a website for its good qualities, and bad, and to learn from it. Every week I choose a location in the United States from which to pluck a review candidate from.

This week I'm heading over to Albany, Georgia. What I remember most about my own visits to Georgia is the unstoppable kudzu. But today I'm less concerned with vines that grow 1 foot per day because I'm in need of a quality jewelry store.

So I'm ...
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AT: 09/12/2014 08:42:57 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, September 05, 2014

Jewelry Design Center Website Review

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Jewelry Design Center Website Review daily-golden-nugget-1075-18
This is the Friday Retail Jeweler website review. The goal for today is to examine a random jewelry website, pull it apart to see how it functions and evaluate the good and the bad that we can learn from.

Every week my staff gives me a random city in the United States and I use Google Chrome in incognito mode to search for local jewelers there. This week the target city was Spokane, Washington.

My search phrase was "jewelers in Spokane WA"

These are the search results Google returned:
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AT: 09/05/2014 07:53:13 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 02, 2014

Google Beheaded Authorship

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Google Beheaded Authorship 4116-daily-golden-nugget-1072
Google's done it again. Off with the author's head!

Over the past four years I have written about many online marketing topics and website procedures that are no longer valid. Social networks, review websites, and SEO techniques are forever in flux.

Facebook has changed or removed many of the features I've written about, but not nearly as many times as Google has changed since my Daily Nuggets began.

Most of the time, Google quietly changes their search algorithm features without telling anyone. But there...
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AT: 09/02/2014 11:49:20 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 29, 2014

Review of 3 Hayward Jewelers

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Review of 3 Hayward Jewelers 4913-daily-golden-nugget-1070
My journey today began with a search for "jewelry stores Hayward CA." You see, I'm pretending to be a real customer searching for a local jeweler in Hayward. My goal is to examine how the local jewelers in that town stack up in Google search, take a look at their websites, and see what can be learned by the experience.

This is my weekly retail jeweler website review, but this week I'm changing up the format a little bit.

Here's a snapshot of the business listing I saw in the Google SERP for that search:
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AT: 08/29/2014 12:42:15 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Technical SEO, On-Site SEO, and Off-Site SEO

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Technical SEO, On-Site SEO, and Off-Site SEO 4166-daily-golden-nugget-1067
In its simplest terms, search engine optimization is the process of doing something for your website that will help it to rank higher in search engines. Google maintains its dominance over the entire search engine industry because it keeps its users happy.

Users... Those are the everyday people of this world, like you and me, who keep returning to Google because it offers the best search results no matter which device you use. Google pays attention to what we all look for, how we use ...
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AT: 08/26/2014 09:12:26 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 22, 2014

Cooks Jewelers Website Review

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Cooks Jewelers Website Review 4395-daily-golden-nugget-1065
Welcome to the Friday jewelry website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal for today is to examine a random retail jeweler's website and learn from something they did right or wrong.

I don't plan these reviews out, and I usually write these reviews as I work through the discovery of each site, documenting my first thoughts as well as how different stuff fits together.

This week, I searched for "jewelry stores Kirksville, Missouri" and was given this Google SERP:

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AT: 08/22/2014 11:09:41 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 21, 2014

Why Did Organic Traffic Drop After Launching A New Site?

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Why Did Organic Traffic Drop After Launching A New Site? 3941-daily-golden-nugget-1064
The Scenario:

The day has finally come when you've decided to upgrade your website to the latest and greatest content management system and website design. It's a big decision to make that leap considering how much time it will take and the cost to do it. It might be months before the new site is live.

You're going to have a lot of things to worry about during the process of setting up the new site. Difficult design issues, photography concerns, ...
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AT: 08/21/2014 01:42:51 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, August 15, 2014

Reviews of Jewelers in Arlington, Virginia

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Reviews of Jewelers in Arlington, Virginia 4899-daily-golden-nugget-1060
This is the Friday website review where I randomly look for a jewelry website to dissect so we can all learn something new. This week I'm taking a slightly different approach to locating a review candidate. I'm going to search in a county instead of a specific town.

To start the process, I always open an incognito window with Google Chrome. This step allows me to do searches in Google without any personalized results affecting what I see. Google has several ways to identify your compute...
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AT: 08/15/2014 02:06:17 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Reading Your SEO Reports: Google Webmaster Tools

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Reading Your SEO Reports: Google Webmaster Tools 9581-daily-golden-nugget-1058
Every online marketing company has their own version of reports. It's one of the requirements of any marketing or SEO service. You, as the website owner, want to know what they are doing and what you are paying for.

Some agencies provide their own really nice looking reports with charts and graphs, while others provide lists of pages and keywords with percentage increases and decreases. On many occasions I've found that agencies created reports using reporting software that t...
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AT: 08/13/2014 09:21:22 AM   0 COMMENTS
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
Friday, July 25, 2014

SERP Review of Jewelers Near Elma NY

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SERP Review of Jewelers Near Elma NY 8987-daily-golden-nugget-1045
This is the Friday Review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Every week I analyze the online properties of a jewelry store found during a random search in a random city.

For this week's review, I searched for "jewelers near elma ny" to find this search result:

SERP Review of Jewelers Near Elma NY 5356-1045-serpVIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 07/25/2014 09:26:06 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 11, 2014

Alex, Cliff, and Trimarco Jewelers Website Review

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Alex, Cliff, and Trimarco Jewelers Website Review 5469-daily-golden-nugget-1035
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Every Friday I choose a random city and search for a potential jeweler to use as my review candidate.

This week I'm looking in Maplewood, NJ for a local jeweler. I used the search query "jewelers in maplewood nj" and found the results below. There's a lot of detail in the SERP screen shot, so click it to view larger:

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AT: 07/11/2014 02:22:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, July 08, 2014

Basic SEO: Mobile Websites

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Basic SEO: Mobile Websites 8756-daily-golden-nugget-1032
This short post is part of my "Grains of SEO Gold" series covering basic SEO topics and how to apply them.

Today's SEO Topic: Mobile Websites

There's no way around it any more. Your customers want a mobile website and Google is practically demanding that you give it to them.

Back in May 2014, I reported that 40% of users to jewelry websites are using mobile devices, 28% of which ...
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AT: 07/08/2014 03:57:28 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, June 27, 2014

Tharoo & Co Website Review

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Tharoo & Co Website Review 8015-daily-golden-nugget-1025
For this week's website review, I'm heading down to sunny Florida in search of a jewelry store in Orlando.

Here's a screen shot of the local results when I searched for "jewelry stores in orlando":

Tharoo & Co Website Review 5617-1025-serp

I'm choosing the top jeweler, Tharoo & Co. Their website is:
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AT: 06/27/2014 03:21:57 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 30, 2014

Google Places for Business Store Hours Sometimes Get Stuck

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 Google Places for Business Store Hours Sometimes Get Stuck 4218-daily-golden-nugget-1005

Today I'm returning back to my Friday website review format after skipping the last two weeks while presenting the series on Google Places for Business.

Each week I choose a random city then search for one of the most common jewelry store related keywords. I like to choose my review candidates purely based on orga...
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AT: 05/30/2014 10:37:12 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 08, 2013

How To Get A New Website Found in Search

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How To Get A New Website Found in Search 4470-daily-golden-nugget-771After spending months setting up your website, the day finally comes when you are happy to launch it. You're hoping that new business will start rolling in simply because your website is fantastic! Right?

Wrong!

Just because you put a website up it doesn't meant that you are suddenly going to start making money.
Remember back to those first days and weeks when you first opened you retail jewelry store. How many people actually visited your store? How much advertising did you have those first few we...
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AT: 07/08/2013 11:23:21 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 29, 2013

Boosting the CTR of your web page from SERPs

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Boosting the CTR of your web page from SERPs 6330-daily-golden-nugget-721Last week I touched upon the topic of keyword ranking and how to measure impressions using Google Webmaster Tools and actual visitors for each keyword within Google Analytics. Today I'm going to explain how these numbers work together to create something called a Click Through Rate.

The measurement of a Click Through ...
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AT: 04/29/2013 01:41:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 02, 2013

6 Things To Increase Your Websites SERP Ranking

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6 Things To Increase Your Websites SERP Ranking 7614-daily-golden-nugget-702When you create a new website or rework your current website redesign, you have the opportunity to really improve your search engine ranking, or seriously screw it up. Depending on what types of fancy JavaScript, CSS, or spider blocking you use on your website. Let's explore...

The search engines each have their own software program that "crawls" the internet simply by following one link to another from one website to another. Search engines like following links because it's what they're best at. Hyp...
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AT: 04/02/2013 07:16:09 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 10, 2012

Not Fresh? You Must Be Dead.

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Okay, maybe not totally dead, but instead merely "mostly dead." There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead, as any fan of The Princess Bride should recognize.

Google likes fresh content. They talk about "surfacing fresh content" in their every official blog post and every time an official Google representative is interviewed. We follow their guidelines very closely and try to measure how quickly your website will rank when you post new content.

We've been so busy paying attention to ideas of posting fresh content that we neglected analyzing what happens when you don't update anything. If your website is 3 years old or older you should pay close attention to this Daily Golden Nugget.

Several of the jewelry stores we worked with closely went out of business during the 2009 recession. In some cases th...
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AT: 05/10/2012 08:58:22 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 08, 2012

Google SSL Hurts Jewelry Keyword Research

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For all the free services Google offers, their Analytics service is probably the most important for all retail jewelry stores to use. From the first day you install it on your website you will see exactly what your visitors are interested in, how they navigate your site, and where they came from.

Inside Google Analytics you will discover what your "Audience" is doing, how effective your "Advertising" is, what "Traffic Sources" bring visitors, what "Content" on your site is most popular, and what the value of each of your "Conversions" are.

Traffic Sources can be very interesting to look at, and its here that we can see what search engines people come from, how many people come from Facebook, how valuable your Yellow Pages listing is, and if the link building strategies you are trying actually works.

It's also in the ...
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AT: 05/08/2012 06:34:15 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 02, 2012

Celebrity Blogging For Jewelers

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We love blogging. In fact this is our 441st Daily Golden Nugget. It's not a special number like 100 was, or 200, or 400, or even 404. But the interesting thing is that once you have more than 300 real blog posts on your website you start to attract a lot of new visitors every month.

We're referring to a "real" blog post as something written about a topic that's near and dear to you, like celebrities adorned with jewelry at red carpet events, or jewelry fashion trends, or jewelry in entertainment news.

Paparazzi are not the only people interested in what celebrities are doing, or wearing. Your jewelry customers are also interested, which means you can blog about celebrities and attract attention... a lot of attention through Google SERPs.

As a long term test, we once wrote a celebrity blog post about reality-star-t...
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AT: 04/02/2012 10:55:09 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 14, 2012

13 Months Later: Panda Updates and Jewelry Store SEO

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It's been about 13 months since Google unleashed the Panda filter and ripped apart the internet heyday of article marketing and link building.

Google's "Panda Update" originally went live on February 24, 2011 and has been refreshed a few times since. Panda is not actually part of the search algorithm, but rather an extra filter that's applied to the Google index.

Periodically Google runs its search database through this filter to weed out bad websites so they won't appear in the SERP. Among that list of bad websites are once popular sites like EzineArticles.com, HubPages.com, thefind.com, and mahalo.com.

These websites aren't actually bad, and you won't get a computer virus by visiting them either. Google filters out these online properties because SEO professionals figured out how to abuse them for financial gain....
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AT: 03/14/2012 11:53:48 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Here's How Google's Recent SERP Changes Affect the Local Retail Jeweler

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Today we've got some updates from the world of Google products and how we foresee them relating together to your benefit.

First, let's check in on Google Places, and if you're playing the jWAG drinking game, it's time to take a shot.

Some time in early 2011, Google took away much of the search engine optimization power you had in Places. They disabled several of the built-in fields and limited the information appearing on your jewelry store's Places Page. They claimed it wasn't a permanent change, and that might be what they thought at the time.

It now looks like Google Places is slowly being diminished in its importance. In July 2011, we suggested that your Google Places account and the Google+ Business page would eventually merge. Google+ was given a huge boost in importance when G+ posts started appearing in th...
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AT: 03/07/2012 09:31:15 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 05, 2012

Blogging: You can make their proposal memorable.

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The last time we analyzed the percentage of organic visitors to jewelry websites from the various search engines was July 12, 2011. Back then here's how the top 3 engines stacked up.

Google: 89.7%
Yahoo: 4.2%
Bing: 3.8%.

When we recently measured on February 22, 2012 we found this breakdown of organic traffic sources:

Google: 82.5% (expected leader)
Yahoo: 7.9% (wow, this one is still beating Bing)
Bing: 7.6% (new player and likely enhanced by Facebook users)
AOL: 1.1% (geesh, people still use this?)
Ask: 0.6% (amazingly still alive)
Search.com: 0.3% (never really caught on; obvious names don't always work!)

Remember, these numbers are only measured against websites for retail jewelry stores. Google is losing ground while Yahoo and Bing are gaining, but then, Google's numbers wou...
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AT: 03/05/2012 11:10:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Reviewing How Local SERP Works for Jewelers

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Over the past 12 months we've noticed a big change in how Google returns SERPs for local results. Actually, whenever you search for a product or service, most of what Google returns now are local results. Those jewelers without websites don't even realize the negative impact they are having on their business.

Google has gotten very good at understanding which websites are product/service related in your local area and how to match them to your search queries that are product/service related. Even when you attempt to hide your identity and location, Google still understands your IP address and how to match you to a store.

Usually we no longer see SERPS with listings from Merchant Circle, City Search, Insider Pages, or dozens of other directory sites. As long as you've created a website, Google doesn't need these sites bec...
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AT: 02/28/2012 11:09:15 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 13, 2012

Find Time For Google Plus

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There's a big change taking place in Google's search right now. Let's take a quick look at this change which might still be ongoing as you read this Nugget on January 13, 2012.

Social posts, user profiles, and business pages from Google+ started to appear in the Google SERPs earlier this week. For you this means it's time to jump on the bandwagon and set up your Google+ Page and start using it.

Including G+ information in the SERP has created many cries of foul play from SEO critics, web experts, and even concerns about Google breaking anti-trust laws. Where Google once upon a time suggested generic websites in the SERP, it has replaced those with information pulled from Google+.

Google is usually known for providing the most relevant results in their search, but perhaps pointing people toward Google+ is not the mo...
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AT: 01/13/2012 02:18:01 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, December 09, 2011

Holiday Smartphone Usage is Way Up Already

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It was predicted that this holiday season was going to see a huge jump in the number of smartphone users for holiday shopping.

Predictions from Google Think Insights and from data presented at the Mobile Marketing Summit in NYC on September 8, 2011 both stated that mobile would be a big player this year.

We decided to check in on the stats now that we are 2 weeks into the season.

75% increase is what we're seeing right now!

The actual numbers we're tracking are showing approximately 25,300 mobile users from a current total 38,300 mobile users. To put it differently, that's about 5.7 mobile users to your jewelry website right now.

Is your website mobile-ready or are you suffering your users through the pinch-zoom madness? Whether you have a mobile site or not, we'd like to give you a quick tip for you...
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AT: 12/09/2011 11:44:35 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Website Pop Up Disasters for Zale Corporation

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Here's a website usability and conversion optimization tip for you: Kill those pop-ups!

Have you seen those annoying pop-ups on websites? Some pop-up as soon as you arrive on the page and some will pop-up when you try to leave the page; both are very annoying.

As of today, here's an annoying example of a pop-up: http://www.reeds.com/

The REEDS Jewelers website shows an immediate message for "First Time Visitors" that says:
"First Time Here? REEDS would like to welcome you with an extra savings of $25 off any online purchase of $150 or more. Enter coupon code FTV25150* at checkout. *Excludes Roberta Z Ideal, REEDS Diamond, Chamilia, David Yurman, Everlon, Swiss Watches, and Swarovski. "

Sure, that's a great offer for a jewelry store, but the pop-up is so immediate and ann...
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AT: 09/06/2011 12:27:56 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Let's Thank Lucy For This One.

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I'd like to tell you a little story today, and with it perhaps a little education lesson. To begin, I ask you to sit on the floor around this old black and white television...

Saturday August 6, 2011 was Lucille Ball's 100th birthday. Google commemorated the day by changing their logo to look like a 1960s black and white TV with movable channel knobs and a volume switch. On the TV screen the name Google appeared just like the opening credits from the "I Love Lucy" show. The Google doodle was actually a playable TV displaying 6 different "I Love Lucy" clips on each of the channels selected from the movable knob.

Over the last 12 months Google has created some amazing logo doodles. (In case you don't know, each of those unique Google logos are called "doodles.") Some of my favorites are from Earth Day 2011, the Bunse...
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AT: 08/09/2011 12:03:49 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 25, 2011

Major Updates to Google Places

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Early last week, there was an important video announcement from one of the Google+ developers about Google+ Business Profiles. Originally they were going to keep G+ Business Profiles to a limited group, similar to how they have the trial period for current users. However they changed their mind and they are just going to allow everyone in (without a trial period) as soon as they are ready.

They are rushing, but they are not starting from scratch.

As we expected, Google is making huge strides forward to integrate Google Places and Google+. As of June 22, 2011 the appearance of all Google Places listings (i.e. your store's listing on Google Maps) now matches the fancy gray, red and black design that you see in Google+ and on google.com search.

The update to Google Places is definitely a step toward the Google+ inte...
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AT: 07/25/2011 01:23:58 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 15, 2011

Google Plus Business Predictions for Jewelers

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I really didn't expect my review of Google+ to take all five days this week. This will be my last interstitial Daily Golden Nugget (for at least a few days).

Yesterday I started a list of features I foresee being integrated into Google Plus. Google's public company status prevents them from publicly announcing what they are working. The GOOG stock is actually doing very well since the launch of Google+.

Yesterday they reported their quarterly earnings were up and they've officially reached 10 million Google Plus users. I read a report on SearchEngineLand.com explaining how many people have not accepted invitations sent to them. Those of us that have are starting to realize the more compelling nature of Google Plus over Facebook.

When using Facebook, I usually keep a browser tab open. I occasionally look at that ...
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AT: 07/15/2011 01:28:18 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, July 08, 2011

Does Twitter Still Matter Now that Twitter and Google got Divorced?

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Many changes in Google took place over the last seven days.

Google+ was announced
Google changed their user interface
Google and Twitter got a divorce... but we don't know who ended up with the engagement ring and wedding band.

Since October 2009, Google and Twitter had an agreement to supply a direct real time feed from Twitter to Google. This feed was an important part of the Google SERP when breaking news was searched, or for times when someone happens to search for a hot Twitter topic.

Any time a TV show suggested to join them on Twitter for a live conversation, you could be assured that the Twitter feed would appear in the SERP when someone searched for the TV show's name while it was broadcasting.

On July 3, 2011 Google's agreement with Twitter expired. Google has turned off all real-time search r...
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AT: 07/08/2011 02:12:51 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, July 07, 2011

Panda Update and Low Quality Jewelry Website Pages

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We've spent the last several Daily Gold Nuggets talking about the changes Google implemented with its Panda Update, and gave you suggestions on how to avoid having yourself negatively affected.

Over the next few months, we will report on new information about the Panda Update process as we learn it. But before we conclude this current set of Panda-specific Nuggets we have one more topic to talk about today.

After careful consideration, we believe we see a correlation between a Panda recommendation and something that we've previously told you about, so let's review.

According to the Panda process, Google will lower the overall ranking of your website if you have any low quality pages. If you review this page ( http://bit.ly/lPUebd ) you will see their explanation "that low-quality c...
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AT: 07/07/2011 11:55:25 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 06, 2011

The Panda Sniffs Out Trusted Website Designs

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We're continuing on our journey to explain the effects of Google's Panda Update and how it changes the way websites are examined and ranked.

Until Google unleashed their Panda on the web all website ranking was based on a mathematical model that measured clear quantitative items like:

* How many inbound links does a site have?
* How many words are on each page of the site?
* How many times are important keyword phrases used on the page?
* Are your page titles written well?

As a SEO company, we will admit that it is easy to win in a mathematical numbers game if you know how to correctly count the numbers. Websites who have enough money to play the SEO numbers game rank well in Google all the time even though their websites might suck.

One of the most important numbers to play recently is counting t...
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AT: 07/06/2011 12:27:00 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, July 04, 2011

An Idea to Avoid the Panda's Paw

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Happy birthday to the USA! We know most of our readers are enjoying their day off so we'll try to make this one short.

We introduced Google's Panda Update on Friday and we wanted to continue talking a little about it today. It seems the idea behind their new update scheme is not to affect ranking every day but rather to apply their Panda Update after a regular period of web growth.

Every day, new websites are created from nothing. This includes websites by regular business and SEO professionals that are trying to game the system. Google has finally implemented a deciduous method of removing the website to remove unwanted websites from the SERP.

After every pass of the Panda, the Google team reviews the changes to the SERP and applies their new found heuristics back into the next version of the Panda Update.
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AT: 07/04/2011 01:16:18 PM   0 COMMENTS
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
Friday, June 17, 2011

Interesting Findings When Analyzing a Jewelry Website

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While recently cleaning up an old jewelry website and the jewelry product catalog, we noticed something that dates back to our Daily Golden Nugget #183 (read it here http://bit.ly/erFrbU) and we'd like to tell you about it.

In #183 we said that you should include Alt and Title attributes for all the images on your website. Our feeling is that if you make your website user-friendly it will rank better. In this case, the Alt/Title image attributes are used by screen readers for the visually impaired.

We also mentioned in last Friday's Nugget #230 (read it here http://bit.ly/m1N2D0) that the Alt/Titles also help get your images indexed in Google's Image search.

Just to add some more proof of the importance of the Alt attribute, there is a report from...
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AT: 06/17/2011 11:28:21 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 16, 2011

Not All Sharing is Created Equally

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We've recently written a few Daily Golden Nuggets about social sharing, "Like" buttons and generally how to increase the traffic to your website through social sharing. But now we realize that some of the directions we gave you might be misunderstood, so let's clear them up.

Sharing a link to your website on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Reddit, LinkedIn or any other social network will increase the number of visitors on your site. Not because the search engines found the shared link and use it for ranking, but simply because other random people saw and clicked on the link.

That's easy. Share a link = increase traffic from people clicking that shared link.

On the other hand, if you only want to spend time sharing links that help your search engine ranking then you have to be very specific with your sharing.

Any ...
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AT: 06/16/2011 11:51:55 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, June 06, 2011

Front Line SEO: Google Plus One

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"Sometimes it's easier to find exactly what you're looking for when someone you know already found it. Get recommendations for the things that interest you, right when you want them, in your search results."

That's the exact quote from Google's +1 page located at google.com/+1/button/.

The "Plus One" feature was in beta testing for a while, and we've been peeking under the hood of that beta for several months to get an idea on how it will work.

On June 1, 2011 as many of you were probably packing for the JCK show, Google officially moved the +1 service from beta to general use and once again changed the way we have to deal with search engine optimization.

From now on, you should see a [+1] button on the Google SERP next to the title of each result. Specifically, y...
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AT: 06/06/2011 12:40:36 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, June 02, 2011

Jewelry Website Optimization: FAQ Pages

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Today's Daily Golden Nugget comes from the secret vault of traffic building and link magnet techniques that we typically reserve for our own website optimization and it's a technique we employ when getting paid the big bucks.

Today we are giving this secret technique to our jWAG members.

Every jewelry website needs to have content added on a regular basis. You need to keep the search engines interested in you and you also need prove to your customers that your website is a living, breathing, real representation of your jewelry store.

The best way to prove you are alive and kicking is to do the unexpected...

Read your customer's mind.

There are ongoing and ever evolving trends in world, and sometimes even the economy and politics will influence what people search for and how they find your website. But ...
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AT: 06/02/2011 01:24:42 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Flash 10, Google and Beyond

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In August 2010 we presented a Daily Nugget about Flash and it's usability with Internet Explorer's 64-bit web browsers that is installed as the default browser in Windows 7. Today we're providing a follow up to that Nugget with new Flash developments that affect everyone.

As a recap, Adobe Flash does not work properly in any 64-bit web browser. All popular browsers are available in 64-bit versions, but Internet Explorer is the only one that comes installed and activated by default in Windows 7. Many non-technical internet users don't understand that IE 64-bit cannot run Flash. The result is a lot of user disappointment and seemingly non-functioning websites.

The obvious solution is to switch to IE 32-bit and not use any 64-bit browsers... thus losing the blazing internet speed that we all would love to experience.
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AT: 05/31/2011 12:24:11 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 30, 2011

Increase Ranking on Your Video Pages

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Ten Nuggets ago, we ended our short series on YouTube with the topic of transcripts. The goal of that YouTube Nugget series was to help your videos rank in Universal Search results.

But there's another benefit to transcribing your videos...

If you're going to take the time to make a video and upload it, most likely you're not going to let it sit all alone on YouTube hoping your customers will actually find it. No, in reality you should also be embedding your video into your website.

Many retail jewelers have large video libraries on their site. They are great educational resources and when you can show off visits to Antwerp or a South African diamond mine you are proving your local experience and superiority over all the other jewelry stores.

The typical format of a video library page on your website would s...
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AT: 05/30/2011 11:38:37 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 26, 2011

Front Line UI: Sizing Tricks with Google Preview

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One of the more difficult tasks of SEO for e-commerce websites is getting your product catalog pages to rank anywhere in the SERP; getting them to rank on page 1 is even harder.

It's nearly impossible to rank a single product's detail page in the SERP unless you have a lot of detail that looks like paragraph content. For this Nugget we're going to ignore the product detail page and instead focus on the main landing pages for each product catalog category.

We're referring to the category landing page as the main page someone sees when they enter your online catalog and clicks on "wedding rings" or some other primary category. You might have subcategories for "princess cut diamond wedding rings" or "round diamond wedding rings," and each of those are considered sub-landing pages.

A typical landing page has several row...
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AT: 05/26/2011 11:32:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Front Line UI: Help with Google Preview Images

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We've mentioned the Google SERP Preview feature a few times in this last week, and we want to talk about this a little more since it has another hidden effect on your website.

When Google introduced the preview feature in November 2010, they also provided some basic guidelines that would improve the preview's effectiveness for your website. Let's examine the important guidelines.

1. Keep your pages clearly laid out and structured, with a minimum of distractions or extraneous content.

This is great advice, especially from the world's largest search engine. So many jewelry stores say they want a "clean looking" website yet when the final site is created, they've cluttered up every page with content or images in every last pixel.

Every page of your site should be dedicated to a single topic, and everything on th...
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AT: 05/25/2011 01:12:57 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Front Line SEO: Devilish Dropdown Menus

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Yesterday, we explained the value of footer links on your website. Today we'd like to talk briefly about header navigation links and menus.

In a Google training video last year, it was explained that Google didn't penalize you for putting a small amount of hidden text on your site when that that text is part of navigation or interactive information. We wrote a Daily Nugget about that video earlier this year.

In that training video, Google didn't say how much, if at all, of that hidden information would be use for ranking, and at the time we didn't have any valid data either, but we do now.

Using Google's SERP preview feature in recent testing, we've consistently noticed that jewelry websites don't rank at all for words hidden in dropdown menus. Our tests were far from scientific, but the results were consistent acr...
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AT: 05/24/2011 10:54:10 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 23, 2011

Front Line SEO: Secret Copy in Bottom Links

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The Google SERP includes a little magnifying glass so you can see a preview of a web page before clicking on it. This feature is very helpful for consumers because they can quickly see your web page before clicking. This saves them the extra time looking for something, because they already know what to expect on your website.

This preview feature provides a pretty good insight into why Google ranks your page, and it's becoming a secret tool when reverse engineering your SEO or that of your competitor.

Many times Google will highlight words or blocks of text in that preview image that correspond to the search query.

Here's an example from a site we were just analyzing using the search phrase "wedding rings."

Our target site was ranked 5th on the SERP for that phrase. The preview images highlighted "Choose fr...
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AT: 05/23/2011 12:57:20 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 20, 2011

Don't Panic From SERP Updates

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Google updates their SERP daily.

Some people still think that Google rolls out changes in large batches that cause major ranking shifts. We used to call those large batch changes the "Google Dance" because while the roll out was taking place you could see different search results in different locations and the SERP would change with every page refresh.

The days of the Google Dance are supposed to be long behind us. Instead, they roll out changes to the index every day in hopes to have fewer disruptions.

For larger websites this means you have a better chance for your new content to be read, indexed, and appear in the SERP within 1 day. Changes to your Google Places account or Merchant Center will appear in the SERP within a few hours.

After changing pages on your website, you should check the Google SERP eve...
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AT: 05/20/2011 11:08:14 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, May 19, 2011

Front Line SEO: Local Search Results

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Some more explanations from the front line of new SERP results we've seen recently.

Do a search on Google for "engagement rings" and you'll see results including many national brands, products from Google's Merchant Center, and even listings of related searches for engagement rings.

What you don't see in those results are local stores because Google "local" search wasn't triggered. Although you might notice ads from local stores if they target your town.

Google's Local SERP is triggered as soon as you include a town or city name in the search query; let's say "engagement rings Houston." This search request will return some websites and some Google Places results.

What we'd like you to look at are those Places results. They now have a lot more information on the SERP, but unfortunately the information is beco...
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AT: 05/19/2011 01:16:29 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Front Line SEO: Meta Description Snips

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The meta description of your web page is supposed to tell your potential visitor what your page is about.

Google and Bing show the meta description on the SERP and it's your job to write a 150 character description that compels people to visit your website.

Did you know that the search engines don't always show your meta description? Even if you spend 20 minutes crafting the perfect description, there is no guarantee that the search engines will even use it. Instead, they might use something more appropriate to match the person's search query.

Google is becoming extremely aggressive with rewriting the descriptions shown in the SERP. Recently, we've analyzed a few sites for the phrase "engagement rings." That's a very tough phrase to rank against if your name is not Zales, BlueNile, James Allen or Jared. The best...
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AT: 05/18/2011 11:00:56 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Front Line SEO: Dating Your Pages

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Google measures fresh content by the time stamp of the physical file found on a server. If you upload your website on November 15, 2010 then many of your pages will have that November 15 time stamp.

Time stamping on files is also how Google determines original ownership of intellectual property. If your time stamp is oldest then your images and articles will be considered the original source of that particular information.

There is a growing problem with this time stamp concept when using content management systems. In a Google training video in 2010, someone asked what Google was doing about management systems that create a static page, but populate it with new information daily.

When Google checks the time stamp on a web page, it ignores the page if the time stamp is still the same as its last visit. In other wo...
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AT: 05/17/2011 01:32:22 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 13, 2011

YouTube Transcripts

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This is it. Today's Daily Golden Nugget is the reason we spent the last 7 Nuggets explaining YouTube.

The video title, description, and tags are all important for SEO, but if you really want to trounce your competition you need to follow the directions in this Nugget to create Captions and Subtitles for your video.

Transcribing video correctly is a difficult task. It's incredibly time consuming and best left to people who know how to write in shorthand or steno. For people without those skills, even being a fast typist, it could take you 2 hours to transcribe only 30 minutes of video.

However, we don't want you to do that. Instead, we want you to use a shortcut that YouTube provides, and then modify it.

A few days after uploading your video, YouTube will attempt to transcribe the words within you video. If...
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AT: 05/13/2011 12:31:58 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, May 09, 2011

Socializing Your YouTube Videos: Part 1

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Last week, we explained how to optimize your YouTube videos for the search engine. Today we're reviewing the settings that allow your videos to be used socially.

*Video Thumbnail:
After YouTube finishes processing your video, they will randomly select 3 frames from the video and provide them as options for the video thumbnail. This is the thumbnail you see in the SERP, within all the YouTube pages, and as the still frame before the user presses the play button.

Of the 3 options YouTube gives you, select the one that is most compelling.

*Privacy:
There are three privacy options for your video. Most of the time, you want to set your videos as Public since that's the setting you need if you want users to find you in the SERP.

The Unlisted setting allows you to upload a video and share the video with any...
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AT: 05/09/2011 12:33:18 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, May 06, 2011

SEO Tips for YouTube Videos

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SEO Tips for YouTube Videos imageWith your YouTube channel set up and your first video recorded on your simple camcorder, let's talk a little about SEO for individual YouTube videos.

Uploading to YouTube can be done easily through the video editing software that comes with your basic camcorder, or you can log into your YouTube account and click the "Upload" link at the top of every page.

All new YouTube accounts are limited to 15 minute long videos. If you stay within the YouTube terms of service and don't violate any copyright laws, you might have that time limit restriction eventually lifted.

On the Upload screen, simply ...
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AT: 05/06/2011 11:42:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Simply Smart Page Titles

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Every page of your website has a page title. It's one of the most important ranking qualities for every page of your website.

The page title shows up as the most prominent words in blue on every SERP, and it's usually these words that will entice your potential customers to either click your link, or take a moment to read the description right below it.

Composing the perfect page title is not something you will learn overnight. Many people will write long page titles that mention all the topics appearing on that page. Some people will only write a few words.

Here are the guidelines that we follow when writing page titles:
1. No more than 67 characters
2. Try to write a page title that is as short yet informative as possible.
3. Try to mention a single topic in the page title.
4. If you must mention more...
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AT: 05/03/2011 01:48:57 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 29, 2011

100, 200 or More?

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Today is in important day for us, and we're not talking about the Royal Wedding either.

This is Daily Golden Nugget #200

In honor of this milestone, we're going to talk about that old limitation of the number of links on a single web page. The limitation used to be 100 links on any given page.

Once upon a time, Google stated that having more than 100 links on a single web page was a bad idea. Their limitation was created simply because they could not handle more than that.

As time passed, many of us SEO professionals analyzed other good reasons to keep to that limitation, namely to control the flow of PageRank on your website. PageRank is one of the factors that help you rank higher in Google. If you can collect a lot of PageRank for your website you could rank higher.

Imagine that every web page on...
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AT: 04/29/2011 11:55:13 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Clueless About SEO?

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We spend a lot of time and resources providing educational content for our members and the customers of Sapphire Collaborative (www.sapphirecollaborative.com), but the time we put into our research is minuscule compared to the total amount of time and money all SEO professionals worldwide have spent researching and writing similar educational material.

The SEO training industry is a multimillion dollar industry. Greater than that is the amount of money SEO professionals make to do the work instead of their clients.

Would it surprise you that Google is already in the process of creating ways to rank all websites correctly regardless how good or bad the search engine optimization is?

The sum of Google's knowledge and research into human patterns and behavior is enormous, and just gets bigger every day. When you allow t...
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AT: 04/20/2011 12:29:14 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 19, 2011

How Good is Your Spelling?

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Google has incorporated a massive dictionary into their functionality. After years of watching users, they were able to take that dictionary and create an automatic spelling correction feature called "Did You Mean."

The "Did you mean" feature showed up in November 2008, and it has a profound impact on SEO. Let's investigate why...

Whenever Google recognizes what it decides may be a misspelling, it will not return search results for that misspelling, instead it will correct the spelling and display a message saying "Showing results for {corrected spelling}. Search instead for {incorrect spelling}." This is a failsafe in case you really were searching for something with that incorrect (read: unpopular) spelling.

Prior to this automatic spelling correction, it was important to include misspellings on your website just...
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AT: 04/19/2011 01:55:26 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 08, 2011

Search Query Relevance

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We've covered this topic before in our trainings, but with the recent changes to Google we need to revisit this again.

Your organic ranking is determined by the information you have on your website and how your website has been shared with the world. Search Engine Optimization now includes a mix of different social networking signals in addition to how many times people link to your website.

In 2010, Bing developed a strong association with Facebook to help measure the popularity of shared websites. The shared websites were given some new weighted value in Bing's search results.

Google was much slower to adopt social networks into their organic ranking, but in late 2010 it was announced that Twitter would help determine ranking. In early 2011, Google further introduced methods to measure Facebook sharing on Busines...
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AT: 04/08/2011 02:00:34 PM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, April 01, 2011

Paid Results in the Google SERP

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Google has been making a lot of advancements in its paid search features recently. Honestly, they roll out new improvements every week, which becomes frustrating for us since we always need to replace the screen shots we have in our AdWords training courses.

In the past few months we've seen the following changes to AdWords:
* Keyword Research Tool
* Negative Keyword Matching for Campaigns
* Keyword Opportunity Suggestions
* Limitations of the number of URLs used in Ad Groups
* +1 Recommendations by your friends was launched earlier this week

The latest new feature will completely change the way the SERP page 1 functions because Google will now offer paid inclusion in the organic listings to qualified advertisers. The trick is that Google won't identify a "paid inclusion" like it clearly identifies the "Ads"...
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AT: 04/01/2011 11:58:02 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, March 18, 2011

The Universal Internet

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The Internet is not not just limited to websites any more. In fact, the everyday normal website is slowly being replaced by social sites and various online services.

A few years ago, if you wanted to put all your jewelry store information online you would have to figure out how to do it all, or hire a company that could do it all.

Do you have videos on your website? Previously, you needed to manage video content on your own and have a hosting account capable of handling that huge video bandwidth. Now that process is much easier with YouTube.

Do you have testimonials on your website? Previously, you needed to ask people to write testimonials and mail them to you. Now you can ask people to write online reviews on Google Places or Yep. You can even capture tweets about your site and post them on your website.

Face...
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AT: 03/18/2011 12:50:30 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, March 10, 2011

Fresh Content Matters

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This is a simple idea: the more often you update your website, the better it will look in the search engines.

Google claims they attempt to re-read the entire internet every few days. The Google spider searches for new information all the time, and when it finds something new, it rushes to read every last page. This rush to read new content is visible in your Google Webmaster Tools when you publish several new pages on your site on the same day, or when you first launch a new product catalog.

Fresh content on Facebook and Twitter is also monitored constantly. In fact, Twitter is especially scrutinized and any tweets related to breaking news are shown in a special window on a SERP. This is part of Google's Buzz feature.

Most of the time the search engines will return the oldest websites that have demonstrated popularit...
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AT: 03/10/2011 10:12:24 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Blogging Inside Your Site

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"Organic Traffic" is what we call those visitors that found your website through searching any engine. The person looked for a keyword phrase and your website appeared in the search results. These visitors are your organic visitors, and they do not cost any money when they click; well, they don't cost you any money at the time of the click, but it did cost money in the form of time and labor to get you listed on page 1 of the search results.

Considering the number of jewelry stores listed in the JBT, we know that very few of them understand the needed search engine optimization it takes to get to page 1 of the search results. Once you achieve high placement, you will continue to receive free organic visitors as long as one of your competitors doesn't use their own SEO to knock you out of the top spot.

We've seen more and mor...
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AT: 03/08/2011 10:04:06 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Typical Duplicate Content Pages

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Recently, we explained to you the duplicate content problem caused by having a search form on your own website. The search engine will enter information on that form and cause a serious duplicate content issue.

This Daily Golden Nugget will explain a more common duplicate content issue that plagues many websites.

Unless your web programmer or web host specifically implement prevention techniques, all of you will have the following issues. We're not going to bore you with how to fix it; we will leave that up to your own website people.

When you type in your domain name, you need to make sure no matter what the format, it always brings you to the same page.

Here's an example you can see for yourself:

Go to this URL:
http://krombholzjewelers.com/

But ...
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AT: 03/01/2011 01:40:41 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 28, 2011

Quality link building is a pretty tricky business.

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You can't pay for links without someone blowing a whistle and getting your website banned. There is always the potential to be reported by a stranger if you are asking to pay them for a quality link from their website to yours. Google provides an online form now for such reporting. Offenders will have their websites banned from the search engines.

You might also think that posting comments on other blogs, like Instore Magazine or JCKOnline.com, might be a good link building strategy. Unfortunately both of these sites, like all quality blog sites, will include the rel="nofollow" attribute in any links to your website. The rel="nofollow" feature nullifies any potential search traffic.

The best way to create links to your site is through blogging. However, we don't simply mean you should hire a blogging company to put a l...
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AT: 02/28/2011 12:23:36 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Keyword Research Ideas

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Trying to figure out the best keywords for your online marketing campaign can be pretty tricky, especially if you have a brand new jewelry website.

We know that all jewelry stores want to advertise "bridal" or "engagement rings" but those phrases are so tough to conquer. You're better off permutating those phrases into "local" versions by simply including your town name.

For example: "engagement rings in springfield" or "springfield engagement rings"

As you write content on your website, as long as you add your town name right next to your money phrase, you will be able to tackle the local market.

While we're on the topic of "bridal" we 'd like to give you some valuable advice. Don't try to target the keyword phrase "bridal jewelry." This is a worthless phrase for jewelry stores because it triggers SERP mat...
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AT: 02/23/2011 01:24:13 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Jewelry Webpage Title Tags

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Every professional SEO will have their own opinion of the single most important factor that controls the appearance of your website in search results.

The one SEO factor that most professionals will agree upon is the importance of the page title tag. In the HTML code, these are the words you type between the and the tags.

Let's explore some ideas. And we'll stress IDEAS because this information is not actually confirmed by any of the search engines and is only formulated by agreements among opinionated SEO professionals... like ourselves.

The title of your page appears on the SERPs, and it's what your potential customers look at. Right below the title is a description of the page.

Your page title should not be deceptive at all. Don't make grand claims about your products or services since g...
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AT: 02/22/2011 11:28:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, February 18, 2011

Meat of the Page

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Have you ever heard of the "table cell trick?"

It used to be that Google would only read the first 100KB of a web page. This was back when they didn't have hidden datacenters all over the world tucked away in type 1AAA shipping containers packed with 1,160 servers in each.

Yes, those statistics seem to be true. Although no one outside of Google knows how many servers Google actually has, it was last estimated in 2009 to be almost 1 million servers! It's our guess that they build their server "rooms" inside shipping containers so they can move them whenever needed (think disaster, war and acts of god).

The Google server room engineers have to think in terms of "cost per search." For them, they need to calculate the number of servers and electricity and payroll and all other possible factors it takes for each one of...
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AT: 02/18/2011 11:54:34 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, February 17, 2011

Watch Out For Bad Website Neighbors

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Google has a lot of built in protection for its users. Every search result page is filtered to provide a variety of answers whenever possible. Their system also tries to filter out websites that you might consider worthless.

Our own analysis has shown us that Google is constantly re-crawling jewelry websites. Some days, they download dozens or hundreds of pages per site, and other days they only look at 3 or 4 pages. Most of the time, they simply peek at a page to see if anything is different, and then they move on.

Google also monitors for hacked websites. Since they are crawling your website a few times a day, it's very likely that they would know your website is hacked before you do. We're not sure how quickly they take action, but we do know that if they discover a hacked website, they will attempt to block the sit...
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AT: 02/17/2011 12:48:18 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Google SERP Geo-Targeting

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Local search results are BIG!

Okay, honestly they aren't anything big; they're not even new. Google started development on local search results way back in 2003. They called it Google Local back then, and they tried to educate owners that they should list their businesses in the system.

When did you sign up with Google Local, Google Maps, Google Business Center or Google Places? Those are all the names they've called the service since 2003. Have you even done it yet?

In this particular case, the jewelry industry is not alone. Even though most jewelers are slow to adopt new technology, Google discovered that only a small percentage of local businesses had registered. So in August 2010, Google loaded a database of about 50 million local businesses.

Literally overnight, every town had at least 1 new jewelry ...
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AT: 02/16/2011 12:09:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 14, 2011

Duplicate Content in Your Search Results

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Duplicate content is an issue for all websites and not just a situation where one website copies the information from another website.

In fact, more duplicate content issues come from your own website because of programming glitches that were not foreseen.

Duplicate content happens when information you have on one web page is the same as the information on another page. Of course, if you have a small site with only 10 pages to begin with, you might not be thinking there is a real problem for you.

Maybe there isn't.

However, any website that has any size product catalog might fall prey to duplicate content issues through a number of common issues.

One very common issue is a search box you might have on your site. Search boxes allow your users to search your site for words or jewelry. Want to find all t...
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AT: 02/14/2011 12:52:23 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, February 02, 2011

How to get your large website crawled.

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In previous Daily Gold Nuggets we've explained the need to add a lot of content to your website. Building websites with a lot of content is necessary for becoming an authority website.

However, according to Google it's not the size of the website alone that makes you an authority; it's actually the number of links you have coming to multiple pages of your website.

In practically the same breath that Google says "lots of inbound links build authority" they also say that "you have to write great content that people will want to link to."

Although it is possible to build a 1 page website and get thousands of links, it's probably not going to happen in the real world. In the real world we all have to build interesting websites that serve our customer needs and hope that people will eventually find and link to your page...
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AT: 02/02/2011 09:16:20 AM   0 COMMENTS
Friday, January 28, 2011

What is Your Bounce Rate?

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Google would like to make 1 thing absolutely clear: They do not use your Google Analytics account to help with ranking your jewelry website. However, they do use your Bounce Rate.

The Bounce Rate is a measure of the number of people that visited your website and immediately clicked the back button to leave. If 10 people visit your website and 2 of them click the back button, your Bounce Rate would be 20%.

According to several videos and reports from Google they do use the Bounce Rate of your website as a ranking signal, but they do not get it from your Analytics account. Instead, they are somehow using JavaScript to monitor when someone clicks a link from the SERP, visits your site, then immediately returns back to the SERP.

They track these bounce rates as a measure of quality. Their goal is to provide the most r...
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AT: 01/28/2011 11:28:44 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 26, 2011

What is the Purpose of Your Web Page?

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Every page on the web can be classified as one of four types:

* Brand - Information about your name brand product or service that is very similar to other pages on the internet also talking about your name brand product or service.
* Informational - These types of pages are meant for educating the reader.
* Navigational - These types of pages are either landing pages, or pages on your jewelry site that help users decide where they want to go next. The navigation could be through text links, or photographs. On jewelry websites it's a good idea to use quality jewelry photos for navigation through landing pages.
* Transactional - Product catalog pages and shopping cart pages are designed to make a sale. Another type of transaction would be a newsletter sign-up or filling out a contact form.
<...
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AT: 01/26/2011 11:00:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, January 20, 2011

Mobile Search Results

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As the world of mobile website matures, you should start wondering whether or not you will ever see your mobile website in the search results. If you haven't given it any thought then maybe you should, and if you haven't considered a mobile website yet then you should.

There are a lot of tricky techniques to setting up a mobile website. It's not as easy as it may seem.

For example, your web programmer can't simply set up a .mobi domain name and create a website that looks good on a cell phone. You actually need to make sure the web server sends the proper programming code to the cell phone, and that technique is actually pretty tough--most web hosting companies are clueless about it.

We could also say that setting up a mobile website is not as easy as buying a mobile website template and slapping it up at VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 01/20/2011 10:22:46 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Don't Stuff Meta Descriptions Like a Turkey

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Meta Description is a feature inside the hidden programming of every web page. It allows 150 characters to describe your web page.

This description is read into the search engines and displayed on the Search Engine Results Page as the 2 lines of text below the website page title. Since you're probably not looking at a SERP right now, let's describe this.

The SERP shows the title of the web page as blue underlined text. Right below that, there are usually 2, sometimes 3, lines of black text, and right below the black text is a green website address. That black text is the Meta Description, and you (mostly) have control of what shows up there.

The functionality of the meta description has changed over the years, and a lot of out-dated information is still available online. In fact, when it comes to the meta descrip...
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AT: 01/19/2011 01:19:31 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Deep, Deep, Deep Linking Inside Your Site.

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How large is your website?

The answer might actually surprise you and you can't really answer it unless you understand how your website functions.

You see, you don't just count the number of pages on your site, as in your About Us and Services pages. You need to take a really close look at how many dynamic pages are being created automatically.

As an example, let's talk about a typical online jewelry product catalog webpage. When you visit that type of page, you would first see a bunch of smaller photos of all the jewelry. Clicking on any image will then bring you to another page of full details for that single item.

For every product you add to your website, you also add another dynamic page to your site.

The same is true for the blog or newsletter archive on your website. Every blog entry creates ...
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AT: 01/18/2011 10:52:06 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 17, 2011

Does a Promise Equal an Engagement?

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Google has a massive built-in dictionary and thesaurus. Without realizing it, every time you search their site they are analyzing every word you type to find the best answer for you.

Google uses synonym matching, search history, and word association to generate the search engine results page. All those calculations happen within fractions of seconds and most of the time they return reasonable results.

Let's take a look some reasonable examples Google would associate together.

A search for the word "engagement" would certainly return matches with the words "wedding", "bridal", and "promise".

If you search for the phrase "custom made jewelry" you would also have results that include "handmade jewelry."

On the other hand, if you are in Canada your search for "custom made jewelry" would return pages for "h...
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AT: 01/17/2011 12:53:10 PM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Google Wonder Wheel

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What is the one keyword phrase that you would love to rank #1 for above all others?

If you can answer that question in less than a second, then either you've already done your homework or you're wrong.

Truthfully, no one can ever claim they know what keyword phrases are best for their website unless they've done a lot of homework. Sure, you might want to say "engagement rings," but we'll tell you to go back to the beginning and look for something different.

The phrase "engagement rings" is what we refer to as a "trophy phrase," in that it's the trophy you see and hope to win. However, it's very unlikely that "engagement rings" will be your "money phrase," which is the actual phrase that brings you the most traffic and the most sales.

The only way you can figure out the money phrases for your website is to do...
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AT: 01/11/2011 11:17:13 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Online Product Descriptions

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We're going to try something new starting today: shorter Nuggets focused on SEO. In the past, we gave you lots of marketing ideas and essentially full articles in every Nugget email. Over the next few days, or weeks, we'd like your feedback on our new approach. If it fails, we'll go back to the previous format.

For more details on why this is happening, please read Matthew Perosi's blog post from today:
http://www.jwag.biz/blog/2011/01/04/one-seo-book-to-rule-them-all.htm

Duplicate content is the phrase we use to describe when one web page has the same information on it as another. The design and navigation don't matter much, but the information in the body of the page should never match the information on another page.

You nee...
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AT: 01/04/2011 11:09:31 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, January 03, 2011

SEO: Intra-site Nofollow Link Disasters

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Welcome to 2011!

We expect a plethora of SEO experts to post wonderful articles today about how SEO changed over 2010 and what the future will hold for all of us. We're staying away from the predictions and simply following forward with basic SEO discussions.

Although, our discussions are not simply old SEO techniques regurgitated over and over again. We do spend a lot of time making sure what we are saying is still valid. We search through what the SEO experts are saying and we especially look for the guys that have the analytical data to prove what they're saying.

We never believe any SEO expert who makes a claim without evidence to back it up.

Once we find something interesting, we compare it to our own jewelry-specific measurements and determine if the same finding also holds true within the jewelry ind...
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AT: 01/03/2011 09:31:41 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, November 25, 2010

Ready, Set, Drink!

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We might have to create a drinking game out of the number of time we mention Google Places in our Daily Gold Nuggets.

If you are keeping score this is going to be #5. Ready? Set? Drink!

According to Google's Mobile Blog, there are some nifty new features when they display local businesses through the SERP on a cell phone.

Although we've not been able to test the features on every type of phone, our initial results should be the same on all smartphones.

From your smart phone, do a Google search for "jewelry store."

On the mobile SERP you should see map. Right above the map there should be a button that says "Use my location." When you click that button you should get a pop-up notice asking permission to use your current location. Go ahead and allow that.

The SERP should redisplay with a messag...
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AT: 11/25/2010 09:00:27 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Page Summaries and Meta Descriptions

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Do you know there's a built-in feature in the hidden programming of every web page that is designed specifically as a sales tool for you?

You've probably heard the term "Meta Description," but maybe you didn't quite know what it was. In a nutshell, it's a 150 character description that you can use as a sales message.

But where does the sales message show up? You've seen these messages every day of your internet life but probably never thought of them as a sales message.

Okay, to the point: The search engine results page (SERP for short) of each engine shows a list of web page titles and snippets from websites. Sometimes those snippets are created automatically, and sometimes the search engine shows the message from the Meta Description.

If you have 500 or more words on a single page of your site, the engine...
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AT: 11/23/2010 01:38:31 PM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, November 22, 2010

Do You Think Wider is Better?

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What situations can you think of where being wider is better than thinner?

Can you think of any? You probably could think of a few time when wider is *not* better--like when trying to fit a refrigerator through the typical door; or when your car is too wide to fit into a thin parking space. Perhaps your flat head screwdriver is too wide for the precision screw you need to remove.

So, can you think optimistically and not pessimistically and come up with a time when wider is better?

We're being a little playful this Monday to make a simple point: Wide Websites Are Good

What we're actually saying is that a website with many pages is a "deeper" or a "larger" or a "wider" website; depending on your point of view.

In the SEO world, we don't actually call them "wide" website, but rather "authority" websites. ...
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AT: 11/22/2010 01:35:17 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Meta Descriptions Could be Dodos Soon

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The search engine optimization process is at the core of all the research and study we do at jWAG. Everything comes back to the "basic" SEO techniques. The problem is that those "basic" techniques change from day to day with the whims of Google, Yahoo and Bing.

It seems like the meta description as an SEO metric is being phased out. Just 1 year ago, we were able to test changes in SERPs ranking simply by changing the meta description of a page. But in the past 6 months our testing shows this doesn't work anymore.

Usefulness of meta keywords went the way of the Dodo Bird in the late 90s. Just like the Dodo Bird's inability to fly, it seems that meta descriptions now have inability to carry any SEO influence within the search engines.

Meta keywords and Dodo Birds became extinct shortly after people started exploiti...
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AT: 10/06/2010 02:59:30 PM   0 COMMENTS
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