Website review and analysis are part of my everyday job. I've been actively analyzing and making suggestions on improving traffic acquisition, user flow, SEO, and usability for several years. I've shared this analysis process and the tips for improvement in my writings for the last few years to provide an insight into how you could do it yourself.
Today, I'll share 6 of the most frequently broken or missing website features that I have seen over and over again, and provide some suggestions for maki... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Since April 2013, I've reviewed 190 different websites and made a countless number of suggestions for updating each one. Today, and for the next few weeks, I'm going to revisit a few of those old websites to see what's new and if they've made progress.
If they have made progress, it's not because I told them what to do. The disclaimer at the bottom of all my reviews says that I don't write these to solicit business, and the only way they will find out about the review is if they search for their name online. Fewer than 5 in 190 have ever ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
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... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In yesterday's Nugget, I gave you 4 ways to prepare for ecommerce. Long before you get to the ecommerce state, you need to have a perfectly working website that reflects how your business operates and the customer service you provide. To help you achieve that today, I'm giving you 5 ways to improve your website.
Every business experiences some type of growing pains; these usually have something to do with lack of time, hiring the right employees, and supply and demand of products, but there's also a website growing pain that's very real.
In this edition of #ThrowBackThursday, I'm jumping back to an old topic, and still a very valid topic explained in Daily Golden Nugget number 175 back on March 25, 2011... Adding new value to the internet.
Content, content, content! That's what Google wants. Countless numbers of official Google webmaster blog posts, videos, and presentations by Google employees at internet expos talk about the continual need to create new content.
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.
Have you ever heard the expression "Content is King?" If you've been trying to achieve top ranking with your website then you've probably come across that expression a few times. Google Search Engine likes to find original content on websites and use that in the search results.
Depending on who you talk to, you will hear some people tell you that you need to update your website often, while even Google says that you can have a really good website... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
How often do you change the displays in your front windows? Depending on your jewelers block insurance you might well be emptying those window displays every night; which give you a chance for creativity every morning when you set them up again.
We have to assume you change the whole display at least once a month. How do you determine what to put out there? Do you think about the current season? The current holiday? Town Events? Do you match your current advertising? Each of these ideas touches on some form of merchandising.
Updates to your website should be considered the same as updates to your front windows. You only have a few seconds to attract someone's attention as they walk by your front window, and it's the same for your website. Something out on the internet brought the customer to your home page, and you ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
A few years ago, we could easily rely on a large collection of existing blog entries or educational articles to rank you higher than newer websites with less information; but that just doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
To maintain more stable ranking, you really do need to keep adding new information and even update the same few pages on your website often, like your home page, events, and special offers. An easy page to update monthly is your "birthstone of the month" page, just be creative and tell people about popular birthstone jewelry and how to match it with clothing fashions.
Google uses a very fast method to check the last update time of one of your web pages. It does this instead of spending the time to re-read your whole page. If they find a new page timestamp they send the Google spider to fetch the page.VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is part of our Grain of SEO Gold Series for Jewelers--short SEO tidbits.
Google likes fresh content.
Having large volumes of information on your website is good to help establish your online reputation, and it's good to attract the occasional organic inbound links. But Google rewards websites more now for how often their site is updated or added to rather than the volume of information available.
We're seeing many younger jewelry websites overpower the SERP rankings of older, more established sites that never update their home page or any other page of their site.
Some time ago, one of Google's more publicly recognized employees, Matt Cutts, explained that Googlebot will visit your page several times to gauge how often it changes before giving up and extending the time between visits.
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 ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
"...articles are easy to follow and seem to have information one can use right away." -Ann, Gallery 4, Hamden CT
"...serious kudos to you. We love your straight talk, pertinent information and plain language. I don't know how many industries have something of jWAG's caliber available, but I learn from the emails every day. Really, really nice work, and very appreciated." -Cheryl Herrick, Global Pathways Jewelry
Have you ever heard the expression "Content is King?" If you've been trying to achieve top ranking with your website then you've probably come across that expression a few times. Google Search Engine likes to find original content on websites and use that in the search results.
