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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Today's Throwback Thursday is going back to January 2011 to the Nugget about website speed.

In that old Nugget, I explained that a website's speed could be adversely affected by the software that runs it, i.e. the content management system, or CMS for short.

This is still very true today, and it's probably the main thing I look at when evaluating a website. A sloppy CMS or website ...
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A few short years ago, changing your website meant you needed to hire a programmer. The expense was always high and many websites were never changed (practically abandoned) after they were initially created.

Today most, if not all, websites are created using various types of content management systems (CMS for short) that give you, the jewelry store owner, the power to edit your own website.

We understand that the technical stuff behind your website is of complete disinterest to you. You have diamonds to mount, rings to size, employees to worry about, and bills to pay. We know that you are probably a complete neophyte when it comes to web programming, and that's okay.

On the other hand, like a rolling stone through the desert that gathers a little dirt, over time you might have picked up a few little HTML programmi...
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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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On Friday, we told you that it was safe to have more than 100 links on a single web page when using them within your primary navigation. You could also hide several links within CSS dropdown menus.

The use of advanced CSS techniques in your website design allow for features that are very nicely user interactive.

CSS, which stands for cascading style sheet, can be used to create new types of interactive features that previously would take a lot of JavaScript programming. Some of the features in CSS can even contradict what some people know about SEO.

Hiding text on a web page is an old black hat SEO technique. Some people would disguise keyword rich text in black color on a black background. You could also use white text on a white background. The effect is that the text is invisible to users but not to Google. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET

The bottom line of today's Golden Nugget is:
Don't require JavaScript or Flash or Java to make your Contact Us form work. You are potentially missing out on a lot of visitors who may have tried to reach you, but couldn't because of technology limitations.

Why did we start this Nugget with the "bottom line?" Because the explanation is a little history lesson that might not interest you. Keep reading if you would like to have a well rounded understanding of why JavaScript/Flash/Java are all bad for your Contact Us form.

Every few days a new computerized device is released; new computers, new cell phones, new GPS, new portable gizmos of some type that can connect to the internet.

Even though the hardware changes, the underlying programming languages of the internet haven't changed much in several years.

Co...
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Let's talk Black Hat.

"Black Hat SEO" refers to any search engine optimization technique that is considered misleading for users, or for the purposes of tricking the search engines into showing your website to more people.

In one of Google's training videos, they explain that they can now process all CSS, HTML, dynamic HTML, XML and JavaScript code. This not only allows them to discover functionality on your website, but also if you are trying to use one of those methods for Black Hat purposes.

Before Google started processing code like this, you could get away with several nasty little tricks to hide extra words on your website and sway the search engines toward your favor.

One such example of hiding text is to have a white background with several extra paragraphs of repeating white text at the bottom of...
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Today's Gold Nugget should surprise the HTML programming enthusiasts and provide at least some curiosity to the non-initiated.

There is a lot of talk in the web programming community about correct methods of programming. Officially, if you program a website from scratch today you should be using a technique referred to as Semantic Programming. This is a fancy way to explain that your web page is split into 2 components: your words and your design.

The "words" part of your web page is organized using simple HTML programming. The "design" part of your web page is the cascading style sheet (CSS for short) which includes all your font sizes, colors, background, etc.

Splitting up the words and the design like this makes your website more flexible for future change, but it doesn't necessarily make your website faster. Y...
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