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Friday, October 06, 2017

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

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

"Attribution modeling" is the modern process of analyzing and assig...
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AT: 10/06/2017 11:09:48 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, April 07, 2016

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

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

Back in December 2014, I explained VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 04/07/2016 06:35:11 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, April 05, 2016

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

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

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


AT: 04/05/2016 12:14:44 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, March 23, 2016

The Tricky Steps From Social To Sales

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

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

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AT: 03/23/2016 08:53:39 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, March 14, 2016

4 Ways To Prep Your Website For Eventual Ecommerce

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

The local retail jeweler is losing a lot of business to the internet. The younger gen...
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AT: 03/14/2016 01:21:56 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 24, 2015

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

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Using Domain Names to Track Offline Ads: Holiday 2015 Run-up TBT daily-golden-nugget-1349-46
This is the #ThrowbackThursday edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, but it also has a special tie-in to my ongoing Run-up series of 2015 Holiday Season Marketing Preparedness. The throwback doesn't go back too far, in fact it's a year ago today when I originally wrote about using different domain names to track your offline marketing. I've since...
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AT: 09/24/2015 07:45:42 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, August 20, 2015

Conversion Rate Optimization - #TBT

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

What's A Conversion?


A "conversion" refers to some type of customer interaction that results in the capture of the customer's identity, usually their email address. E-commerce sites also measure conversions according to the number of online sales they have.
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AT: 08/20/2015 09:15:05 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Exit Pages: Practical SEO Guide

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

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

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

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AT: 07/29/2015 07:43:48 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Reporting on Alternate Domain Names: Practical SEO Guide

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

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

Using Alternative Domain Names: Practical SEO Guide

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Using Alternative Domain Names: Practical SEO Guide daily-golden-nugget-1302-66
In yesterday's Nugget I quickly showed you how to read the Google Analytics Acquisition Channels Report. I quickly mentioned that you can use the "(Other)" channel to see how well your offline and online ads are running, but that type of information doesn't just magically appear; in...
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AT: 07/21/2015 11:45:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, June 10, 2015

JCK Talks 2015: The Retail Revolution

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

Terry is certainly a dynamic speaker that keeps the audience entertained and engaged while also sharing valuable infor...
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AT: 06/10/2015 09:07:05 AM   0 COMMENTS
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
Monday, May 11, 2015

Learning From the Marketing of a Marvel Mouse

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Learning From the Marketing of a Marvel Mouse daily-golden-nugget-1251-76
I'm one of those people. I admit it... I don't turn my cell phone off in a movie theater.

It's not that I want to be rude; I do put it on silent; but I have to keep the vibrate setting on. The nature of my job is such that I'm always on call to monitor a few very important websites for a few of my clients. So I can't be out of touch from those computers and servers. In fact, the only times I'm unplugged is when I'm at 38,000 over the Atlantic. WiFi isn't available on the transatlantic f...
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AT: 05/11/2015 11:43:41 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, April 20, 2015

Website Log Files Contain Personally Identifiable Informatio

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Website Log Files Contain Personally Identifiable Informatio daily-golden-nugget-1236-66
Since the dawn of computer networks, every server has recorded logs of all communications activities. You might be surprised to find out that email servers keep logs of every email sent, who they came from, and who they were sent to. Many large organizations even save copies of those emails.

When it comes to sharing files, all FTP servers and all file sharing services, like Dropbox, keep track of what files were uploaded and downloaded.

Then, of course...
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AT: 04/20/2015 11:29:40 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Google Analytics Users Flow Report

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Google Analytics Users Flow Report daily-golden-nugget-1107-48
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm going to show you one of the more visually interesting reports inside Google Analytics. It's the User Flow report, and with it, you can see how your website visitors are moving through your website.

At the time of this writing, the first report you see when logging into your Google Analytics account is the Audience Overview. From that report, you simply click on the User Flow link on the left menu as shown here:

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AT: 10/21/2014 11:13:15 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, October 07, 2014

Google Analytics: Reading Campaign Reports

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Google Analytics: Reading Campaign Reports daily-golden-nugget-1097-9In a recent Daily Nugget, I presented a marketing tactic that would allow you to use domain names to track print media ads. I followed up that post with another that gave specific examples of how to set up UTM variables in your URLs that can be tracked in Google Analytics....
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AT: 10/07/2014 06:57:09 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, September 29, 2014

Planning the Online Tracking Needed to Help Sell Your Products

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Planning the Online Tracking Needed to Help Sell Your Products daily-golden-nugget-1091-23
Throughout all of last week, I've been laying the groundwork for a complete holiday 2014 marketing plan that you can use to promote a chosen suite of items.

Here a recap:

1. You need to select some items that you'll use in your holiday promotions. Read this to find out how to select the best items.

2. You then need to plan your o...
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AT: 09/29/2014 08:52:49 AM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 25, 2014

Domain Names Used to Track How You Sell Your Products

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Domain Names Used to Track How You Sell Your Products daily-golden-nugget-1089-50
Over the last three days, I've given you some specific marketing tactics that, as a whole, would equate to a large marketing campaign for the holiday season. I began with a discussion on choosing the right products for the campaign, then explained how to VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET


AT: 09/25/2014 08:43:16 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Offline and Email Marketing Campaigns To Sell Your Products

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Offline and Email Marketing Campaigns To Sell Your Products daily-golden-nugget-1087-57
This is the second part of my Daily Golden Nugget series outlining a potential marketing plan for the upcoming holiday season. The first part I began yesterday explained how you should select a specific set of jewelry items and then write blogs, take photography, and make videos for those items.

Today, I'll go into some detail about launching the ...
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AT: 09/23/2014 06:34:59 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Improve Your Website's Success by Anticipating Your Customer's Needs

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Improve Your Websites Success by Anticipating Your Customers Needs 9565-daily-golden-nugget-1062
It seems like every day I see not one, not two, but perhaps more than a dozen different online marketing campaigns that make me scratch my head wondering why they bothered.

I'm not only referring to the jewelry industry either, but all types of online marketing. It just seems like so many businesses don't understand the larger view of how intertwined the internet is to everyday life and the expectations of their customers.

The business...
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AT: 08/19/2014 02:04:36 PM   0 COMMENTS
Wednesday, May 07, 2014

Mobile Device and Web Browser Usage Statistics for Jewelry Websites

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Mobile Device and Web Browser Usage Statistics for Jewelry Websites 5911-daily-golden-nugget-988
The right information can help you make the right decisions in business. I enjoy the process of digesting all the data I track into actionable information for the jewelry industry.

For the last 4 years, I've been running reports on the most popular web browsers and mobile devices every 6 months or so. Although I have browser tracking data that extends back to 2003, the first time I was able to successfully report mobile device usage was in Fe...
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AT: 05/07/2014 09:21:28 AM   0 COMMENTS
Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Understanding the True Cost of Website Time and Analysis

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Understanding the True Cost of Website Time and Analysis 450-daily-golden-nugget-892In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget I explained a few ways to track how people use your website. I'd like to expand upon that conversation a little and explain a little more about the costs involved with that user testing.

No matter which method of testing you use, there's always going to be some type of analysis involved. With the session recording services...
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AT: 12/24/2013 04:13:36 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, December 23, 2013

Advanced Ways to Track and Improve Your Website Sales

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Advanced Ways to Track and Improve Your Website Sales 5155-daily-golden-nugget-891I use a lot of different methods to gather data about websites and then several tools to analyze that data. Naturally the most popular tool I use is Google Analytics, but there are a few others that really provide amazing business intelligence.

Google Analytics tracking is free to install on your website, but figuring out how to read and use the data it collects isn't as simple as it once was. A few years ago I would have said that any business owner could figure out how to...
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AT: 12/23/2013 05:13:57 AM   0 COMMENTS
Monday, February 20, 2012

Maybe they just hate the jewelry you carry.

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We would like to share an interesting lesson recently learned by one of the larger companies we work with.

Members of our jWAG team were called upon to review the Google Analytics account for a company with 5 store locations through their state. Specifically, we needed to identify the most valuable traffic sources. This was a 6 month review of their newly launched website.

The website doesn't have e-commerce, so measuring the value of traffic is very difficult, and relies heavily on the sales personal asking customers how they heard about the store. As it turned out, the first 6 months went by and none of the sales people were trained to ask customers.

What we see in Google Analytics is that more than half of the website traffic came from organic Google, so it's a good assumption that their SEO efforts are working...
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AT: 02/20/2012 09:15:26 PM   0 COMMENTS
Thursday, September 29, 2011

Part Two: 9 Tips Jewelers Need to Work With SEO Pros

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This is the final part of our long series on Black Hat SEO and recommendations on avoiding it.

Yesterday we gave you the first 4 of 9 tips every jewelry should be aware of when hiring an SEO Professional to work for you. These are very blunt directions that will make working with your SEO professional much more rewarding.

Please read Part One here: http://bit.ly/nnfjKL

5. As for those ROI reports, don't be unrealistic with your expectations. The web is not a static ecosystem. Obviously you want more traffic, more customers, and higher profits, but traffic and customers cannot be created or destroyed; they instead are stolen from other websites.

As soon as the efforts of your SEO Pro start working, you need to realize that your competitor will step up their SEO game, too. T...
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AT: 09/29/2011 01:18:08 PM   0 COMMENTS
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