As a coach and a mentor, I'm often asked a variety of unexpected questions. Over the last week, I was working with another client to help them plan for their retirement. Their retirement is many years away, but right now, they needed some help planning their future profits and if they should sell the business or if their children will take it over.
Their children are in their early 20s and haven't committed to working in the store. Both children finished their non-jewelry college educa... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
For this week's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to a Daily Golden Nugget that's in desperate need of updating, specifically what I wrote about the Jewelry Information Center, otherwise known as the JIC. JIC was created by Jewelers of America as a consumer education service. The jic.org website commonly posted current jewelry trends and was a great inspiration resource ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
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... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
For this week's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to the topic of domain name scams. Unfortunately, this throwback doesn't go back too far since I last wrote about this in June 2015, when I reported the exploits of iDNS and their Domain Name Expiration Notices.
A new scam came through my inbox this week that business owners should be aware of. I deem t... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
The navigation of your website can help or hurt how easily people and search engines discover all your content. For this week's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to the good topic of deep website linking from January 2011. With websites growing larger and larger every day, the concept explained in that old Nugget is more valid today than it was back then.
Last year, I wrote this analysis of Pandora's Q1 2015 financial results along with some ideas of how to deal with the inevitable sunsetting of the reseller agreement you have with them. For today's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm revisiting that topic with an analysis of Pandora's Q4 2015 fin... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this #ThrowbackThursday nugget edition, I'm jumping back to a simple one from October 2010 about finding blogging topics.
Blogging has become the primary way of generating content for your website that search engines then use to better understand what your website is all about so they can correctly match you with the people searching for... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping way back to September 2010 to the topic of landing page planning, although I didn't specifically call it landing page planning back then.
Planning your landing page long before you need to use it is an important part of a successful online marketing strategy, but before I get in too deep of how to help with the success, let me just briefly explain what a landing page is.
Welcome to the #ThrowbackThursday edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Today, I'm jumping back to one of my early posts about location based services and checking-in on Facebook.
It was all the rage during the summer of 2010 to have a check-in app on your smartphone check-in everywhere. Gowalla, Foursquare, Whrrl, and Loopt were competing heavily when Facebook tried getting into the game. Facebook's initial eff... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
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.
Not much has changed since I wrote that previous Nugget, but I should recap the basics.
What is a Bounce Rate?
I should explain what a bounce rate is for those of you not quite up to speed. This is the percentage of people who visit your website, look at one page, click nothing else, then either close their web browser or c... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
For this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm only jumping back about a year to a topic that has come up several times over the last 12 months: Website Over-Optimization.
In January 2015 I wrote a piece about getting ranked as number 1 in Google. In it, I bashed all those companies that send random solicitations claiming they can jump your website ranking to first place in Google. Coincidentally, this morning... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Coincidently, this is the final Daily Golden Nugget for 2015 and it falls on a #ThrowbackThursday, giving me the perfect opportunity to check back in on my 2015 predictions from last year this time. Was I right, or very wrong? Let's find out...
Content Marketing Will Become More Important
My specific prediction was that the word "blogging" would be replaced with the phrase "content marketing" by the end of 2016... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
(We had something else planned for today, but then realized that it is #ThrowbackThursday, so why not just repost last year's poem instead? Enjoy...)
'Twas the night before Christmas, and time to close doors after a long four weeks, the time still soars. Did you break record sales with engagement rings sold? Hope she says yes tomorrow; the future's untold!
While it's usually children dreaming the morning's delight; the guys that you helped are filled with horrible fright. You're the town's best jeweler; the men come to you; your jewelry's the best at getting an "I do."
The times, they have changed, and there's much online chatter, you've got to keep up, or else you won't matter. You made mistakes then, when your website used Flash, but you took steps; improvement when sales came to a crash.... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
For today's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping to the topic of buying your friends, or more specifically, not buying them.
Buying Website Links
There are plenty of online services offering to increase the traffic to your website, increase the number of links pointing to you website, increasing the number of Twitter followers you have, and increasing the number of people who like your Facebook page. More often than not, these services ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
For this week's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to my August 2011 topic of Landing Pages that I explained here and here.
Website redesign and ad specific landing pages are more important than ever. I use video and heatmap tracking on several of my customer websites to... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to a year ago to the last time I updated my report on the most popular smartphone resolutions used by visitors to retail jewelry websites.
The last time I reviewed smartphone screen resolutions was only a week after the iPhone 6 had been released. For several years, the iPhone has been the most... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In today's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to January 2014 to my directions on how to post to Google+. This is also a continuation of my special 2015 Holiday Run-Up series giving you the tactics you need to help boost your sales this upcoming season.
For today's edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I want to jump back to a Nugget from November 2013. In it, I gave ideas on how to use gift certificates as a reputation management tool. That idea, which is still very viable today, is to donate a gift certificate to your local charity in exchange for asking them to write an online review.VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
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... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this edition of ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to May 2011, and my discussion of HTML Site Maps.
There are two types of site map files you might find on a website. If you've ever worked on your search engine optimization, you might be familiar with the sitemap.xml file that search engines read to better understand your website. That XML file contained a record of every page on your site ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
When it comes time to consider a new jewelry designer for your store, you have an extra tool at your fingertips to help decide if you should buy into the line or not. However you evaluate a new line, you can also use Google Trends to help you decide. <... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I need to jump back to my discussion about Google Website Optimizer in September 2011. In 2012, Google closed down their Website Optimizer standalone product and merged its features into Google Analytics. They now call it Experiments instead of Website Optimizer.
The old Optimizer was designed to handle A/B testing, which is when ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
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... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
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. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this edition of Throwback Thursday, I have to report some news which saddens me. It relates to how your business websites reviews appear; or rather; no longer appear in Google search results.
In October 2014, I wrote this Nugget explaining how to use Google My Business to find and reply to online reviews that are not part of the Google system. In other words, customer reviews that are ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
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 ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Let's talk about depreciated HTML tags. This is my Throwback Thursday topic from the last time I told you about a few depreciated HTML tags to avoid.
The HTML language is currently in its 5th incarnation, as in HTML5. Prior to Cascading Style Sheets, aka CSS, we had to use formatting features built into the HTML code, like <font> and <big> and <center>. Now we use CSS to format how a web page looks. <... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this edition of Throwback Thursday, I'm jumping back to September 2011 and the topic of Article Spinning.
To understand what Article Spinning is you must first understand the importance of having a blog on your website. My avid followers will already know that I'm all about the blogging. High value blogging content... High value blog content that you post on your main website!
For this week's Throwback Thursday, I'm jumping to April 11, 2011 and my topic of speeding up your website images. This is an important topic that never gets old.
The internet has sped up tremendously since the days of dial up 14400 baud modems. Back then, it would take 45 seconds to download a 62K image; today, it takes only 1 second to download through cable and 4G connection spee... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
A few days ago, Search Engine Land published an interesting article explaining how Google is penalizing websites that abuse the way they use schema.orgmarkup. That post was an interesting read for me and a good lead in for this edition of Throwback Thursday.
The other day while having a rather long lunch date with my friend and industry colleague, Peggy Jo Donahue, we touched on the topic of disclosure for paid endorsements and how they should be handled online. It is an important topic that I realized I have not written about in too much detail other than to briefly mention it in VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
The "speed of your website" is the amount of time it takes for your site to download to the device you are using. A lot of factors play into the your page speed that have nothing to do with your site, things like:
In today's Throwback Thursday, I'm bringing back a group of old Nuggets that are near and dear to my hart: Location Based Services.
One of our more ambitious events here at jWAG was back in August 2010 when we held live video broadcasts several days in a row, we called it "jWAG Live 2". Every day we covered different topics, one of which was ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back, almost to the beginning. My 8th Nugget was a really good idea for writing good online jewelry sales copy that I want to revisit today.
In today's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to April 2011 when I wrote about image sizes. You can read the old Gold Nugget here. This is still a very relevant topic today that's worth revisiting.
In this age of high speed internet, there are many times when you can get a faster connection through the 4G on your smartphone than through the wired connection y... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In 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.
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... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to the topic of "thin content" that I first explained back in September 2011.
Thin Content Explained
In simple terms, thin content refers to a web page that has very few words on it. Google likes to refer to this content as pages "with little or... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
I usually commemorate special numeric milestones when writing these Daily Golden Nugget. Most notably are the Google Maps updates every 100th Nugget, but there have been fun ones like 404 and 410 too.
This is Daily Golden Nugget Number 1234, and it's also #ThrowbackThursday... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
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 #ThrowbackThursday edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. This week, I'm jumping back to Nugget Number 93 from December 1, 2010. The topic is Trading Links with Local Businesses.
Linking to Avoid
Google has placed heavy penalties on websites that use link building to affect their ranking. The VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
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...
QR Codes have been a hot topic for several years. In this #ThrowbackThursday Daily Golden Nugget, I'd like to jump all the way back to my second Nugget ever, which was on QR Codes. That was July 27, 2010!
That Nugget was the number one most popular post I had ever made, until I started writing about screen resolution and setup directions for Google M Business. It has since d... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to May 2, 2011 the Daily Golden Nugget on hidden text on a web page that is not considered Black Hat SEO.
I haven't mentioned Black Hat SEO in a while, so let me briefly explain what that is. Google ranking algorithm was less complicated prior to 2012, and many people figured out simple ways to exploit that simplicit... 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
The navigation of your website can help or hurt how easily people and search engines discover all your content. For this week's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping back to the good topic of 
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm revisiting the 
