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:
When hovering my mouse over the listing for Higgins Jewelry Center, the Google SERP expanded to show me this business information:
(click to view larger)
Google will show the average star rating in your business listing once you have 5 reviews on Google+, but the expanded SERP view of Higgins Jewelry Center included a snippet from their only 2 reviews. I've circled the phrase "custom jewelry design" in one of the reviews so you can see why Google is showing them.
As I said in yesterday's Nugget about off-site SEO, you can ask customers to write reviews about you, and now you can see how a review might appear in search results when they include related keywords for your business.
I've also pointed to the "See inside" photo on their expanded listing. Way back in November 2010 they had a Google Business View created showing the inside of their store which you can see here:
click here to see their business view
I was pretty impressed to see this inside view since very few businesses pay to have them created, especially as far back as November 2010. The business view feature launched in April 2010, making them an early adopter. I was hoping I would find an advanced looking website, but...
Take a look:
http://www.higginsjewelry.com/
Here's a screen shot:
(click to enlarge)
I was pretty disappointed by the look of this website. It looks like it was created in an old program like FrontPage or maybe even Microsoft Publisher. The code reminds me of the HTML that Microsoft Publisher created years ago. I looked up the history of this website and found that it was published in January 2007. That would explain the old looking HTML code.
It is time for this Higgins to get a website redesign.
Moving on to the next listing in the Google SERPs...
This is what the expanded business information looks like for Highline Custom Jewelers:
(click to enlarge)
What you see above is the typical expanded business listing when you don't claim your Google+ business page. Let's look at their website:
Take a look:
http://www.highlinecustomjewelry.com/
(click to enlarge)
That's a Flash website. Although their entire site is not in Flash, most of it is, and it has a really long load time.
In case you haven't heard, Flash websites are bad. Let's avoid them from now on. Time for Highline to get a redesign.
Let me move now to the last of the stores I want to look at today...
Avalon Jewelers is 3rd in the local listing of businesses. This is what the expanded business information looks like:
(click to enlarge)
As of this writing, Avalon Jewelers doesn't have a website, nor have they ever claimed their Google Business listing, yet they have two business views added to their business listing account.
Here's their inside view:
click here to see their inside business view
Once again, I admire the forward thinking for having this business view created since it also dates back to September 2010. I have a feeling that a local photographer was offering similar services to many local businesses as the latest and greatest idea from Google.
Perhaps this is a good time to point out that sometimes the latest and greatest technology ideas are not worth it unless you already have other basic technology in place, like a website, and an active social media account.
That's it for this week. Please check back again next Friday for another candid website review.
FTC Notice: I randomly choose this website and won't be telling the retailer jeweler that I'm doing a review. Unless someone else tells them, they will only find out about this review if they examine their Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. I'm not doing this to solicit business from them, but rather as an educational exercise for everyone. This review is completely impartial and all my comments are listed in the order that I discovered them.
