It's the hope of every business that they will build a website that helps make them a lot of money, but few websites ever achieve that goal. Turning a website into a money making machine won't happen overnight, and it won't magically happen without a lot of help from employees and the business owner.
Most small businesses don't know how to update their websites once they are launched; indeed, many will continually pay for website updates even though they can edit the website on ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
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
In this week's website review, I'll show you an example of how Google reads words on your website and how you can see those words for yourself. I'll also show you why you should host your blog within your own website instead of using an outside service, I'll even show you screen shots of how Google views a website when the blog is hosted outside.
It all starts with a Google search for "jewelers flagstaff az." According to these results, there are not many jewelers n Flagstaff:
In this week's website review, I'm going back to re-review the first website I ever wrote about way back in April 2013. At the time, I chose Franzetti Jewelers with the website http://www.franzettijewelers.com/. You can read the old review from April 19, 2013 here.
My review process was pretty unsophisticated 3.5 years ago. It took a while for me to realize that I should be ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
The internet of things (IoT) now connects so much of daily life it's hard to remember what things were like 23 years ago when it was just in its infancy. New internet connected devices are announced every day that will undoubtedly shape our futures of personal life and how we reach customers and conduct business. Although there are plenty of new tech toys announced every week, it's the smartphone which has changed how we manage our daily lives.
With all these changes happening in the world around us, it's hard to im... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Searching for a website candidate for this week's Friday Flop Fix was a little challenging. I began my search, as usual, looking for a random website candidate in a random city in the United States. My randomly chosen city this week was Orange, CA. My specific Google search phrase was "jewelers Orange, CA" for which I was given the search results you see below.
I've included my commentary in the screen capture:
This is my weekly website review where I search for a retail jeweler at random through Google and pick apart what they are doing online. I try to uncover the flops that are being made so I can suggest the fixes needed to improve what they are doing.
This week, I started my Google search with the phrase "jewelers Brookline, MA" and quickly found myself heading down a rabbit hole after viewing these results:
Over the last 6 months I've been writing a lot about the importance of associating all of your marketing channels together. Your website is the cornerstone of your marketing because that's where you can fully control the user experience, but social networks, offline ads, and online ads should now tie together to create a road of intriguing discovery for your customers.
While I've been following the ins and outs of exactly how to build that path of discovery, and explained it to you, I've not been following that path myself. Since July 27, 2010 I'v... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this week's #FridayFlopFix website review, I'm heading over to Hawai'i in search for a jeweler who could use some website help. Every Friday, I search for a website that's not quite doing the best they could. I want to point out the flops on their website, and suggest some fixes.
I started my review candidate search with the query "jewelers waimea hi." Waimea is a town on the Big Island of Hawai'i. Instead of choosing from the websites that appeared on the first page of Google's results, I looked throu... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Stop apologizing for not updating your blog! That's it! Just stop it!
Throughout my entire career writing these Golden Nuggets, I have explained over and over again how important it is to have an active blog on your website. The basic goal of your blog is to provide good information to customers who want to know more about a topic.
The blog on your website is a good place to publish information that doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the pages on your site. Most webmasters spend a lot of time tw... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the #FridayFlopFix website review where I take a critical look at a jeweler's website to find important mistakes and suggests ways to fix them. To kick off this week, I'm searching the "jewelry stores Longmont, CO" in Google. Here's a snapshot of the returned Google local listings:
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
Social media is required for business--all businesses. It ties all your other advertising together: every ad you place in your local community, whether it's on TV, radio, on billboards, in all of your direct mail, for newspaper ads, or everything else you do on other social networks. Social media ties all your marketing together in such a way to support your customer life cycle.
Customer Life Cycle
There are specific steps that every customer must travel throug... 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.
Welcome to a very special #FridayFlopFix website evaluation. I call these weekly posts the "Flop Fix" because I specifically look for website problems, i.e. flops, for which I can offer improvement ideas, i.e. fixes, that everyone can learn from.
Well, this week is a doozy. I have been TRYING to publish this review every week since I ORIGINALLY wrote it back on December 16, 2015! Today is March 3, 2016; that's 11 weeks ago. There's a story behind this that should make you all cringe. Forewarning, I'm about to reveal some... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Last month, I spent a lot of time analyzing the keyword data I collected during the 2015 holiday season. The information that surfaced was just the tip of the iceberg that I had, but it would take months to go through and write about it all, so I limited my analysis to the list this list:
Don't want to read? This week you can also watch the video recording of this review here!
This is the #FridayFlopFix website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. This week I've randomly chosen Santa Clarita, CA as the city to search for my review candidate. When I searched Google for the phrase "jewelers Santa Clarita, CA," I saw these three Google business listings:
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
Tracking the most active social media content might seem silly, but there's real value to this activity. When you first start blogging or otherwise buildi... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Throughout the past month, I analyzed different sets of keywords that I collected during the 2015 holiday season. Most of that research focused on overall analysis of the keyword data without breaking it down into the desktop, mobile, or tablet categories of devices. I chose that approach to save time, and quite frankly, so as not to bore everyone with too much similar information.
That said, in this edition, I am splitting apart the results to show you how the u... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Today I'm stepping back into 2015 to review the top 10 Daily Golden Nugget posts according to my Google Analytics account. Take a quick look to see if you remember them, and if you were able to put any of this information to use:
This is the Friday Flop Fix edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Each Friday, I search for a website that isn't living up to its full potential, and I give suggestions on making it better; my fixes for their flops. I started my search today with the query "jewelers Rolla, MS" and received this as a result:
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
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
The year 2015 is about to come to a close, but before it does, I'm venturing out on a limb to give you my forecast insights for 2016. This year, I'm referring to these as "insights" and not necessarily as "predictions" because these things are what I already see happening in a small way, and steadily growing. They are in no particular order...
Social Media Change with the Young Generation
The current teenage generation is struggling to hide from their parents online. Many of them want nothing to do with Facebook because the grown-... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
I enjoy all the feedback and questions I receive from my readers. Last week, I received a question about RSS feeds which I'll address today. This is a higher level topic that I last mentioned in my Nugget from December 16, 2010, but have never explained in full detail. The detail I'll cover today might be of some interest to those of you who blog on a regular basis, and... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Every week, normally on Friday, I write a website review with suggestions on how to make a random site better. I have something special planned for this Friday so I have to move my Flop-Fix review to today.
My purpose here is to find a website that has something wrong, point it out, and give suggestions on how to fix it. My suggestions are entirely my own and based on my past experience, research, or observations. I found my review candidate this week with the query "jewelry stores Happy Valley, OR" and th... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Need some advice to help you solve a business or website issue that keeps you up at night? Send it in through the jWAG Contact Form or to me directly through any social network; just search for my name "matthewperosi" on any social network and send a message.
One month ago today, I introduced the 2015 Holiday Run-Up with the premise that this year you could create several specialized marketing campaigns, or micro-campaigns, focused on singles products or groupings of products. Implementing the micro campaigns would require lots of product photography, correctly targeting your customers, writing lots of product content, sharing that product content to social media, coordinating... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
It's Friday. Every Friday, I start out by saying "This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget." I'm sure you guys are tired of reading that. Anyone want to suggest a hashtag that alliterates with Friday? Send your suggestions to me on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or just email them to me.
So it is Friday, and it's review day. The goal is learn something from a random website of a random retail jeweler chosen from a random city somewhere in the U.S. This week that random somewhere is Raynham,... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the weekly website review where I choose a random retail jeweler and compare their website and online identity to what is commonly known about search engine optimization, online marketing, and customer usefulness.
I started this week's review with the Google search "jewelers athens oh" and saw these results:
This is Part 7 of a multi-day Daily Golden Nugget series packed with tactics to help you in your 2015 holiday marketing. The series started with the overview of 2015 holiday marketing strategies and has continued since.
In this edition, I'll explain ways you can plan your product content to correspond to the holiday ads you have ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The purpose of this website review is to look over a random retail jeweler's website to evaluate if they are correctly applying what we know about the internet, online marketing, and business. We'll see if improvements can be made, or if we can learn something from them.
Each week I start by searching Google in a random town for a typical phrase that a consumer would search for. This week the search phrase is "jewelers logan ut," and he... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Each week, I dig down into a random retail jewelry store website to discover the good and bad of what they've done with their online identity. The goal is to learn something that you can also apply to your own online identity.
This week I've decided to search San Luis Obispo, CA for my candidate jeweler. I'm starting my search with the phrase "wedding rings San Luis Obispo, CA." This is the Google SERP that was returned:
Those of us who try to make an honest living using the internet are often overshadowed by those who use the internet as a tool for destruction.
Cyber security is a real threat, and it comes in various shapes, sizes, and disguises. Even though we might spend lots of money maintaining our anti-virus and firewall software, there are still Trojan types of attacks that can catch you completely off guard.
I was able to identify and document a Trojan cyber attack last wee... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. I'm always on the lookout for a jewelry website we can learn from, both good and bad. In honor of my visit to St. Louis, MO this weekend I'm going to look for one of the retail jewelers in St. Louis to review.
Using Google Chrome in incognito mode, I searched for "jewelry stores st louis mo." This is the SERP that was returned to me:
When you consider the time it takes to be involved with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+ and so many social networks, it's no wonder so many people live their lives carrying their smartphone in their hand all day. So many people have traded everyday verbal conversations for terse text conversations and deluges of selfies.
Those who have chosen a smartphone-tethered life, now find it second nature to use social network as a way to keep their friends and family in... 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!
This is the weekly random retail jewelry store website review. The purpose of these weekly Friday reviews is to find out how to improve your own website by dissecting the techniques of another website.
This week I'm searching for "jewelers in sun valley, Idaho." Here's the SERP for that search query:
I'm not sure if it's just me or general public awareness, but I feel that the subject of blogging has been a hot topic for the last two months. I think it started as a snowball effect because of this post where Robinson Meyer expla... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This Daily Golden Nugget is my 1,276th in a row. When I started this blogging journey nearly 5 years ago, I never expected where it would take me. Truthfully, every blogger begins their writing journey for personal reasons and we never know where we will end up.
Blogging is huge. The word blog has become the general term to represent all types of content creation that involves written words. When I started writing these Nuggets, I envisioned them only as email newsletters that would be archived online. I... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
I was at a social media marketing meeting in New York City last month when someone asked if they should be posting the same photos and status update to every social network.
That was a good question, and there's no real straightforward answer. In reality, it depends if you have the same audience following you on all the social networks. If the same audience follows you on all networks, then they will get very bored very ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget, I explained how to analyze the cost of your marketing funnel. Today, I'll follow up with some specific funnel ideas to help you formulate your own plan.
Understanding Previous Marketing
Here's a tricky question to think about... Do you measure ad success by the number of people it brought... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Blogging has passed through various evolutions in the years since its original inception in 1994. The first blogs were created to help people keep their friends up to date with what they were doing. Services like Open Diary, Slashdot, and LiveJournal we... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Welcome to the weekly edition of the Friday jewelry website review. Every week, I randomly choose a candidate website and put it to the test for design, SEO, usability, content, and a wealth of other website and business related issues.
I never know how they will turn out; sometimes good and sometimes bad. I always try to write these reviews in the order in which I browse around the site, providing my first reactions as I discover things.
A jeweler wrote to me the other day asking for help with their Mother's Day contest promotion. The promotion is being advertised through the local papers but the contest takes place through their website. To enter the contest you need to fill out the online form and agree to sign up for their newsletter.
Because the contest is centered around creating a custom design, this jeweler wants to send out a series of additional custom design em... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the Friday Website Review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Every week I search for a jewelry store in a random town and review their website. I never know how these are going to turn out, but they are always interesting as I examine website designs, functionality, SEO, and potential customer engagement.
Using Google Chrome in incognito mode to prevent personalized results, I searched for "jewelry appraisals Lafayette, IN." Here's the search results I saw:
I received an interesting question the other day from Suzie, a jewelry designer. Well, her name wasn't actually Suzie, but let's just say that it was so it makes this story easier to tell.
For several years, Suzie had an Etsy account where she sold a line of baby toe ring jewelry. This was her fist line of jewelry before she started making gemstone jewelry necklaces. Realizing how different these two lines of jewelry are, instead of using Etsy to sell the necklaces, she opened an e-com... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Facebook can be very annoying when it doesn't let you select the right preview image for the blog you are trying to share. All of your blog posts should have associated images. They grab attention and help to convey your message, but sometimes Facebook simply ignores the images you use.
Facebook has become a very visual social network and they try to offer all users the best possible shared images from every web... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal of today's review is to take a critical look at a random retail jeweler's website in hopes of finding something we can all learn from.
At the start of each review, I launch a new Google Chrome incognito window. This allows me to search for a jewelry store without any influence from my previous search history or personalized results.
Searching Google for "jewelers Chandler AZ" returns these results: ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Throwback Thursday is the name of a weekly internet trend where participants repost photos from the past. This is especially popular on Instagram where users tag their photos with the #TBT hashtag.
Truthfully, you can "throwback" anything that happened in the past. It could be a social media post, a photo, a blog post, or yes, even a Daily Golden Nugget!
Honestly, this is my first participation in a TBT, but what the heck; let's do it with a slightly different spin... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Every week, I receive at least one question from my readers through Facebook, Twitter, comments on jwag.biz, and even direct emails. Sometimes I reply privately, but sometimes I use those questions as source material for future Nuggets, like this one.
Here's a question that arrived via email about a week or so ago:
Regarding Blogging... Can post-dating a blog that you "should've" written months ago help you now if you date it the date from before (i.e. it's Feb and... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
What's your favorite type of content? Given that content includes written articles, videos, podcasts, photography, and every other type of creative digital experience. There's a labor cost associated with creating a digital experience for your customers, a cost that's not easily understood by small business owners.
There's also a competing value of the content that swings between the long term value to attract quality customers and the short term value of getting a lot of attention. S... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
What is the real value of the content you produce? Should you be creating your own content or hiring someone to do it for you? What about content curation?
This is part 2 of my in-depth answers to those questions. I've identified 6 levels of content and list them here in order of their most valuable to least valuable:
1. Business Owner Creates Content 2. Business Owner Curates Content 3. Business Owner Socially Engages 4. Hire Content Creator or... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
I'll be the first to admit the website content creation difficultly level is pretty high. Content includes infographics, photos, podcasts, PDFs, videos, testimonials, and, of course, the written word. It takes hours to prepare each of those types of content but the return on that time investment come in the form of several years of attracting customers throu... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Today, I'm going to perform an incognito Google search for a random jewelry store candidate in Blackstone, Virginia, then review their website.
The goal of this weekly website review is to learn something new, or at least to see an implementation of something good or bad that you never knew.
When I used the search query "jewelry stores in blackstone va" I was given these results:
For the past several years, Google has been telling website owners to write quality content for their website in order to rank higher in search results and to satisfy customers. This directive of theirs has spawned an entire industry of freelance writers that produce content just to satisfy Google's directions.
The optimist in me wants to say that Google has spurred the creation of a new generation of writers, but the pessimist in me looks at the type of content that's generally created and sighs in discon... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
There have been a few special number nuggets so far, like the 100, 200, 404, the 505, the 970, 1000, and now the 1099. What's so special about 1099? Well in the United States, that isn't just a number; it's also the tax form you give to your freelancers and subcontractors at the end of every year instead of a W2.
Although the US employment rules say you should hire employees and put them on payroll, there are times when you might want to only hir... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm outlining a potential marketing plan for the upcoming holiday season. My example will focus on specific items which we will build content around and share socially.
What I've written out in this guide will be good for anyone looking for a different approach to marketing for this upcoming holiday season. There's a lot of detail for the setup, implementation, and then the post-analysis of the entire campaign. You'll do the setup... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Content creation is a continual task for every website owner. It can also be a very challenging task to come up with new content all the time without suffering from mental burnout or writer's block. That burnout will have a bad effect on your long term SEO, so it needs to be prevented.
One way to prevent content creation burnout is to spread the task around between several employees on your sales staff. Remember that website content isn't just blog posts. Content... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Google's done it again. Off with the author's head!
Over the past four years I have written about many online marketing topics and website procedures that are no longer valid. Social networks, review websites, and SEO techniques are forever in flux.
Facebook has changed or removed many of the features I've written about, but not nearly as many times as Google has changed since my Daily Nuggets began.
Most of the time, Google quietly changes their search algorithm features without telling anyone. But there... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This week I've been explaining the differences between Technical SEO,On-Site SEO, and Off-Site SEO.
While the technical aspects of search engine optimization include a lot of analysis and analytical thinking, the on-site optimization requires a creative flair for writing, photography, and customer satisfaction that... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Your business changes every day. Sometimes it's a small change like getting new inventory into your store and sometimes it's a big change like moving to a larger location.
The jewelry industry is highly competitive, and many times it's difficult to rank above your competitors if you don't have enough information on your website. You can't rely on a few educational pages, like the 4C's, and then small product catalog with images and simple descriptions. That's simply not enough in... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
On Saturday this week, I'm celebrating another Daily Golden Nugget milestone--it's the 4th anniversary of when I published my first Nugget. Four years, and still going strong.
Blogging can lead to a lot of opportunities for business and in your personal life. I find it extremely rewarding. If you haven't started blogging yet, then read through this s... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
It never ceases to amaze me that jewelers are either paying for, or directly engaging in link building schemes that are bad for them. With all the talk of Google Penguin since April 2012, I'm surprised that some businesses still don't understand the difference between good and bad link building.
It's not easy to beat writer's block once you have it. You can sit for seemingly an eternity trying to find the right words. Oftentimes, you might even feel completely defeated.
Thankfully, I learned how to beat my own writer's block a few years ago. This is my 1,028th blog post and I would never have gotten past 100 if I didn't figure out how to solve that problem.
Here are my 2 secrets to preventing my own writer's block:
My job requires the wearing of many hats. Some days I spend all my time analyzing tracking data, some days I'm writing these Daily Nuggets, other days I've reviewing programming code, and then there are those mundane days when I'm spending time with the bookkeeper and insurance agent.
Although all these different duties seem disconnected, they all drive my business forward and it's surprising to me how each one helps inspire ideas for making the others better.
A lot has changed in the world of search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) since I first started my daily blogging more than 1000 posts ago.
The most significant SEO changes over the last 4 years are related to Google Panda and Google Penguin, but there are dozens of other notable changes, and hundreds of subtle changes throughout the entire internet.
Although I'd love to write a "then and now" post about all the intern... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Every blogger believes that they have something great to say in their blog and people will beat a path to their website to read it. This is part of the allure of blog writing, but it's also one of the fallacies that bloggers lament over once they realize it.
If you're going to start a blog to get famous, you're probably starting in the wrong place. Here are some of the realities I've learned about a blog reading audience:
Blog writing can be fun, educational, rewarding, and a boon for your business over the long term. If you're blogging just for the fun of it, then you might not spend the extra time to edit each blog post before publishing it. A quick read through for spelling mistakes and simple grammatical corrections might be all that's necessary.
Those of you blogging for business should take a slightly more professional approach to your blogging and spend a little more time on the editing proces... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
The process of writing a blog post is more involved than just coming up with an idea and typing it out. Writing has its own set of interesting experiences which were holding me back from my writing creativity until I started to identify them.
What I've itemized below are 12 things that I discovered about the writing process and how to deal with them. Your own writing experiences might differ, but you won't know until you start blogging on your own.
Good ideas happen at the least opportune moments. When driving, while walking, brushing your teeth, watching TV, and of course the worst time is when you are just drifting off to sleep. You'll never remember that idea in the morning.
After writing more than 1000 blog posts, I came up with a few thoughts of my own for how to make sure I don't forget a good blogging idea when it comes to me.
Here they are:
Blogging ideas will come whenever they want to come to you. You need to fig... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Blogging is a method of online marketing, but it also has many other personal and business benefits. When I started blogging 4 years ago, it was partially because jWAG was a paid subscription education service and partially because I honestly just had the desire to do it. About a year later, it was decided to deactivate the subscription portal and turn jWAG into a philanthropic endeavor.
Since I started blogging on July 26, 2010, I've written 1006 Daily Golden Nuggets. This is my 1007th. I'm sure an accomplishment like this is child's play for a daily journalist who is paid to write several news articles in a single day, but I'm not a trained journalist and I don't have an English or Communications degree. I started as a lowly tech geek who suffered from a mild case of dyslexia with degrees in Computer Engineering and Applied Mathematics.
In the past, I've expressed my point of view that Google+ seemed to be a more intellectually stimulating social network than its direct competitor, Facebook.
Many users in the early days of Google+ were more technical and built relationships with other technically savvy people. Those relationships were built through +1s and thoughtful commenting on social posts. There were few internet memes and jokes shared on Google+ in the early days.
But that's changed now that the social network has matured ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
You have to own your identity. One of the jewelry designers sitting around my live Q&A table the other day at MJSA was a little embarrassed by her company name and her website. She chose a business name which perfectly reflects what type of jewelry she designs, but during the current launch process she was starting to feel a little unsure of the name.
To maintain her anonymity, I won't mention the name of the company or the domain name; let's just say that I really made me laugh that she wan... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
It was a pretty exciting day yesterday at the MJSA Expo in New York City. It was my honor to be one of MJSA's Business Experts where I had the pleasure of answering direct questions from jewelry designers, retailer, and manufacturers.
It was a wonderful experience to freely share all the stuff I write about here on jWAG.biz in a face to face setting. One important question t... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
How are your writing skills? Every week someone asks me how I can come up with so much to write about, but it's really easy for me because there's simply so much to keep up with. Figuring out how the basic functionality of the internet, and new technology, is going to fit into the jewelry industry is a constant challenge.
On the other hand, much of the basic information in the jewelry industry doesn't change. Sure, styles come and go, but through the years the industry provides possibilities for broad topics like rings, diamonds, gemstones, birthstones, and gold qualities.
You may consider these broad topics to be of lesser value because you yourself know these topics like the back of your soldering iron. But for your customers, this isn't their every day topic of conversation, so you have to expect that for them, it's a... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Recently I've been rehashing several topics related to Google Hummingbird and how you should be managing your website. Today I want to give you some additional guidelines about your blog writing te... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Built into every blogging software is the ability to include the date of when you are posting the blog entry. Usually this appears somewhere at the top of the post near or next to the byline. Many blogging systems actually include the date as part of the URL structure too. For example, this Daily Golden Nugget includes /2013/06/05/ to indicate June 5, 2013.
If I wanted to I could hide the dates in my Daily Nuggets, but honestly, the topics I write about are ever-changing and my readers need to know when they were written... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Every blogging platform comes with some type of built in commenting feature for readers to give their feedback, but built-in blogging comment systems also act as an island of user engagement. A few commenting systems have emerged that allow for easy social sharing of comments. Since 2011, I've noticed more and more websites that have deactivated their build in comment systems in favor of 3rd party systems.
As you plan the future of your blog, you should think carefully on how website comments could help your jewelry... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
As you grow your blogging efforts, it's important to remember that your blog is not an island. Everything you write should be shared with one of your social networks and to the people signed up on your email list.
That all sounds simple in practice, but there's a little more to sharing your blogs socially than simply posting the URL saying "read my blog." You actually have to make your social post interesting and pique a reader's interest. I publish these Daily Golden Nuggets, well, daily,... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Comment spam is the worst. It's simply a sleazy practice to post a comment to a blog, social media site, or online review site with the intention to drive traffic back to your site. I've disagreed with this practice since the days of LiveJournal even though SEO pros have built a living on providing this type of service for clients.
I wrote a Nugget back on February 8, 2012 titled "Jewelers Should Avoid Blog Comment Spam" where I explain that you should VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
There are so many factors that need to be assessed when evaluating the success or failure of your website. So many website owners are stuck worrying about ranking in the search engines instead of paying attention to making the current customer traffic happy.
After all, happy customer traffic should reflect somehow to the overall money that you make in business.
There are 4 potential ways to measure how happy your website visitors are: 1. Number of repeat visitors 2. Number of pages they look at 3. How much total time the... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Every SEO professional will tell you that the process of search engine optimization is learned through experimentation, trial and error, and fortuitous discovery. Indeed, it's that same process that allows me to find many of the Daily Golden Nuggets I write about.
On the other hand, I have found that time and time again Google actually tells us exactly what they want us to do through their countless blogs, help videos, and support forums. But they don't tell us exactly; instead they are more like a psycholog... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Google has a YouTube video training channel called GoogleWebmasterHelp where I go to hear the weekly tips that they suggest, and to see their latest Q&A videos.
One of the common questions among all SEO professionals is how often you should update your website in order to stay popular in search results. Within the SEO community the term "website freshness" is used to indicate when you last updated your website. The Webmaster Help channel published... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
A blog can serve a variety of purposes. Actually a blog has so many purposes that WordPress became popular because how easy they made it for a blog to be used in flexible ways.
Here are some ideas of how you can use the blog on your website. 1. It can be used to post information about upcoming events. 2. The blog can have updates on the latest jewelry styles you have in the store. 3. It can tell stories about happy customers. 4. You can post educational information about jewelry to your blog.
Throughout the upcoming 45 days, your staff is going to put in long hours in hopes that customers will be beating down your door 7 days every week. Financial forecasts say that this year will be better than last.
As you are hurried and harried through your daily routine you should try to take notice of the people come to you looking for the perfect holiday gift. Customers come looking for gifts for him, gifts for her, gifts for a child, or even a grandparent. Some customers might even stop in for a smal... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
I'd like to propose this question: What's the best way to use your blog?
Before that can be answered, you need to understand some of the different pages on your website and how you might be using your website currently.
Each webpage serves different functions; here are 4 examples:
* A home page is the point of first impression for most people who visit you. Customers usually don't get past ugly home pages unless you provide a niche need.
* Product catalogs show the world what you sell. This is essential for a retail store.
In preparation for the upcoming Holiday 2012 season you need to start adding information to your website now so Google will lead internet visitors to during the holiday website search season.
Today's Daily Golden Nugget gives you a few website content strategies that you can use for new content or for blog posts. No matter how you include these ideas on your website, they will bring a flurry of visitors during the holiday season... as long as you go do this right now.
About 4 weeks ago I received and email from a jewelry store that wanted to know why they weren't ranking for the phrase "gold buying." The store's website didn't appear in the search results when the owner of the store did a Google search for that phrase along with their town name, and he wanted to be in the results.
Today's Daily Golden Nugget explains what I set up for that store, and the results we already see after only 3 weeks. Use this case study as a blueprint for your own efforts.
This particular jeweler had 60 pages on their website and a pr... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
You have traveled the world, bought diamonds in Antwerp, have taken thousands of photographs during visits to diamond mines in Africa, won awards for your custom jewelry designs, and have a wealth of knowledge spanning back through all your years as a jeweler. Your career has been fulfilling and enjoyable.
It's too bad no one know about you.
Why not? Because you don't make time to blog about your experiences as a jeweler, about the trips you've taken to benefit customers, about the unique designs you've created that are now treasured family heirlooms, or about the happy couples that you've helped.
Blogging is probably the most important method of achieving "people optimization" for your website instead of search engine optimization, but it takes time. According to Wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute it takes one m... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
There are so many different ways to create quality blog posts, and to keep your readers engaged. Today I want to explain how you can create a digest blog post using your previous blog posts.
Digest emails are quite popular, in fact, for the first 200 or so Daily Golden Nuggets we were sending digest Nuggets every Friday to readers that wanted them instead of the daily emails. Websites with active blogs and articles (like news sites) often send evening emails with blurbs of all the day's posts.
There's a difference between sending a digest email and creating a digest blog post. The email can use the same wording, perhaps even the first few sentences of each original blog, but if you intend on posting this digest online you need to write a brand new summary of the blog.
Today, once again I'd like to hold your virtual hand as I lead you through another exercise on how to use someone else's blog as the creative spark for your own.
To start, you have to find yourself a few fashion blog websites. You could simply search Google for "jewelry fashion blogs" and look through the results.
What you'll find is that an overwhelming number of them are very photo-centric with very little commentary on the photos. Many of them will also be from your competitors, or from sites that sell the jewelry that's being blogged about. You don't want that type of site, because that's what you are trying to accomplish for yourself.
I found this blog from the South Florida Sun Sentinel that will work well for this example: http://blogs.sun-sentinel.com/features_fashion/2012/06/jewelry-trends-for-the-fall-... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
A few years ago I remember a Tacori ring was used on the TV show Desperate Housewives. The appearance of this ring caused a measurable spike in search traffic for Tacori rings.
Another time I also caught a recording of the daily talk show The View in a waiting room and saw their presentation of the Debbie Brooks line of handbags. Again, another measurable spike in search traffic was seen.
Time and time again there are casual mentions of jewelry, or even product placement throughout many television shows. I'm not talking about paid commercials, but rather integration in the actual shows that people watch.
Award ceremonies are the typical places to look for the latest clothing and jewelry fashion trends. Many jewelers already blog about who's wearing what at those red carpet events because those are planned in adv... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
I'm on a mission to help a retail jewelry store owners find new and interesting things to blog about.
Every jewelry store should have a blog as a way to build organic traffic to their website. Making the blog interesting is important, and the Jewelry Information Center (aka JIC) can do a lot of the legwork for you.
JIC maintains 3 different website properties that all jewelers should tap into. Here they are:
Many jewelers already share the blog posts from the JIC website to Facebook and Twitter. Other jewelers retweet their Twitter musings. You could copy those strategies, or you can step up your marketing effectiveness by blogging about the JIC. Here's how...
Some people have the "Gift of Gab," and some just don't. Knowing what to say and when to say it can make or break your popularity, and surprisingly it's the same way with Google.
Official directions from Google always say to post new content to your website. It's the new, fresh content that attracts attention. But for most jewelers there's only so many ways you can talk about diamonds, the 4 C's, diamond rings, and birthstones before the topics are beaten to death.
So instead of beating that same old horse in your blog posts, you need to look for alternative things to talk about on a regular basis.
Here are 2 ideas to prevent writers block while writing blog posts for jewelry stores.
Red Carpet Events - Keep a lookout for any celebrity or local event that generates a lot of hoopla. Although these events... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
I'm sorry if the link building topic seems like such a well covered topic of late. The Google Penguin filter has everyone up in arms about link building and if SEO was killed by the Penguin.
SEO is not dead, and neither is link building. In fact blog writing is one of the best ways to keep building quality links back to your website, or from your internal blog to other pages within your site.
I say that jewelers should use blog writing for 3 reasons: 1. Build website content to illustrate expertise and to soft sell. 2. Build content to attract organic visitors. 3. Build links to internal pages of your website.
The first 2 items on that list happen automatically when you write a blog. The 3rd item requires extra work on your part, but you can't post a blog and NOT link to something on your website. Otherwi... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Blog writing is different than book writing because you need to assume your blog's readers are distracted.
Many readers will skim through an online editorial when it's written in standard 4 sentence paragraph format. Readers who skim are more likely to jump to the next paragraph long before they finish reading the current one.
Skimming is a natural part of online life. We don't have enough time to sit and read every word, so we jump from paragraph to paragraph trying to glean the most important bits.
To combat skimming, and to make sure your readers do read the most, you need to break your blogging format from 4 sentences per paragraph to 2 or 3 sentences.
Another difference between book writing and blog writing I learned through many frustrations when I first began blogging.
I'd like to share with you a few of my daily blogging techniques that keep me going, and that I hope keep you guys coming back to read. It took me quite a while to get comfortable with blog writing and hopefully I can shortcut your learning curve with what I've learned through 513 Daily Golden Nuggets.
I do my best to write at least 500 words in every Nugget. I didn't come up with this number arbitrarily; it happens to be the magic number that many print publications ask for when you write an editorial. Sometimes my Nuggets are 800 words, and sometimes they are 400, but 500 is always my target.
At first you might find it impossible to write 500 words, 400 words, or even 300 words. Be verbose in your writing without repeating yourself or keyword phrases for your products and just do your best to reach 300 words.
Do you have a personality? That a serious question. Are you a shrub or do you happily greet each and every customer that walks into your jewelry store?
Chances are that shrubs don't make for good entrepreneurs and they wouldn't be in business long. It's doubtful that you would employ a shrub to work in your store either since they certainly do not make for good jewelers.
Let's face it, it's not the price of the jewelry that matters; it's the customer service with a smile that convinces someone that they cannot live without the fine jewelry you're selling. Your personality closes the sale and you need to allow yourself to write your blog entries using that same personality.
Some people create different aliases and new personas for themselves online. Does "J.J. Smith" actually work for you or is that just an onlin... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Other than creating new video, blogging is the best and most versatile method to create new content for your website.
Through blogging, you can demonstrate your expertise on topic, give a product review, provide a commentary on something you read online or in a magazine, talk about jewelry or fashion trends, create event write-ups that leave the reader envious that they missed the soiree, and so much more.
Since I've been blogging professionally now for 510 days perhaps it's time to share my own tips and tricks that keep me going, so you, the everyday average jeweler, can copy my methods, and success.
Admittedly, my success at blogging has a very limited reach since everything I write for jWAG is focused on the retail jeweler and I don't attract much attention outside our industry. But your success can be much furthe... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
An interesting debate about blog posting sparked up in the jWAG office the other day.
We were reviewing how the URL, H1, and page Title Tags all relate to one another, and how effective they are for SEO. Our standing recommendations are that all three items should match.
Example of Best Practices: URL: /best-cathedral-engagement-rings.html Page Title: Best Cathedral Engagement Rings Header 1 Tag: Best Cathedral Engagement Rings
This is a well known strategy amongst SEO experts and it's one we also want you to use when posting to your own blog.
On the other hand, typical newspaper, news blog, and even our own industry websites like JCK and National Jeweler Network don't usually worry about the SEO aspects of their blog posts. Instead, they sensationalize their headlines to attract readers.
Over the past week we've given you several ideas for blogging. We hope that each Golden Nugget gave you actionable ideas how to make you blog better. Today's a great day to start blogging if you haven't yet started.
Google says "you need to build great content on your website" to be found in Search, and blogging on your website is the easiest method. Even though we say this day in and day out many jewelers do not listen to us, or worse, don't believe us. We don't take offense because, just like we don't quite know how a laser is used to weld a head to a ring, most jewelers don't know how the internet works.
We don't quite like blind faith, and so, it's now story time...
The ability to search Google for anything you want at the exact moment you want it has changed the world we live in today.
With our continuing coverage of blogs and blogging techniques, today we'd like to give you some ideas of how to link your blog entries from one to another, to your website, or to products in your online catalog.
A few days ago we explained that "anchor text" is the term use to describe the actual words you are linking. The example we used in a previous Daily Golden Nugget was the sentence:
"We'd like to show you our best [engagement rings]."
As we said previously, the words "engagement rings" are shown as the anchor text and that would link to another page.
If you put that sentence in a blog post, you could link it to a dedicated to engagement rings landing page with details about various engagement rings, or you could link it to a product catalog page showing 10 or so different engagement ring styles. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Since we seem to be on a roll with blogging topics, we'll continue today with another important blog discussion.
We frequently get asked what blogging software and blogging hosting service should be used to set up a jewelry store's website. There are obvious answers to that question, but they come with not so obvious consequences.
The apparent, obvious answer is to use a readily available blogging platform. According to TopTenReviews.com the top 5 blogging software platforms for 2012 (so far) are: 1. WordPress 2. Typepad 3. Squarespace 4. LiveJournal 5. Blogger
The popular blogging platforms amongst the jewelers we work with seem to be WordPress and Blogger. WordPress has a lot of features and can be used not only as a blog, but also to run the entire operations of your website. On the other han... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Today we have 2 simple blogging tips for your jewelry website.
1. Kill the keyword cloud.
A few years back the "keyword cloud" feature was pretty popular and found on most blogging sites. The feature allowed you to indicate a few important keywords or phrases for every blog entry you posted. The usage count for all these keywords was tracked and then presented as a jumbled mess of words using various size fonts. The larger fonts represented commonly used words, and the keywords in the smallest font were used only once or twice.
Keyword clouds were thought to have high SEO value because they would repeat the same words over and over on every page of your blog. The truth was that Google view this repetitive keyword usage as pure webspam and many blogs lost ranking.
Most of the SEO techniques we teach you are related to how you should manage your content, write your content, and topics to attract customers. In our previous Nugget we explained in great length by you should remove the word "bridal" from all your online marketing and replace it with the word "wedding." That's a contextual change that will attract the right customers from Google.
We suggest looking through your site and replacing most occurrences of the word "bridal," but not all of them. Some people will still search for the phrase "bridal jewelry" so you should still be there for those few.
However, don't run to your old blog posts and replace bridal with wedding. That's the wrong strategy. Instead, you need to rewrite all those old "bridal" blog posts from scratch!
We love blogging. In fact this is our 441st Daily Golden Nugget. It's not a special number like 100 was, or 200, or 400, or even 404. But the interesting thing is that once you have more than 300 real blog posts on your website you start to attract a lot of new visitors every month.
We're referring to a "real" blog post as something written about a topic that's near and dear to you, like celebrities adorned with jewelry at red carpet events, or jewelry fashion trends, or jewelry in entertainment news.
Paparazzi are not the only people interested in what celebrities are doing, or wearing. Your jewelry customers are also interested, which means you can blog about celebrities and attract attention... a lot of attention through Google SERPs.
As a long term test, we once wrote a celebrity blog post about reality-star-t... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Over the past few weeks we were trying to get a better understanding of how Google will translate a long tail search query into a valuable SERP for users. Specifically, we were testing queries that started with this:
"What is the ________"
Have you ever tried a search query starting with either of those 3 words? Google understands that this query search is for information; therefore they try to return some type of quality educational article before any potential e-commerce site.
Google doesn't have an all-powerful artificial intelligence that would be able to directly return an answer to a question. They have to rely on mathematically matching a search phrase to phrases found on web pages. Other than the mathematical word matching, they also compare the results to more than 300 other ranking factors to give you th... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Sometimes we go months without thinking about a topic and then twice in a single day something comes up, like today when in depth conversations about keywords and SEO blossomed...
Tuning your website for keywords can be tricky. If you had a choice of tuning your website for only 5 phrases, what would you choose? Do you sell just 5 types of jewelry in your store? If you wanted to tune your website for "engagement rings" and "diamond engagement rings" that would already be 2 phrases. You could easily end up with a list of 20 or 30 desired keywords and phrase permutations.
From our point of view you should not be trying to narrow down SEO to a limited set of keywords, simply because that's not natural. Imagine if you were told to have a conversation about the rain storm outside, but you were not allowed to use the word "we... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
To follow up from yesterday's proposal location blogging suggestion, today we're giving you 2 more associated blogging ideas.
Our first suggestion is to blog about local locations where a wedding ceremony could be held. This list could include park locations, houses of worship, and even the mayor's office.
The second suggestion is a list of local banquet halls. Include the most upscale venue as well as the local firehouse or rescue squad hall.
You should include as many details about each location as possible, and remember to include a photo since those usually get the most attention by visitors. To get started, you should write one blog entry about each of the most popular places, or perhaps just the places you are most familiar with, then watch your website tracking for about a month.
The last time we analyzed the percentage of organic visitors to jewelry websites from the various search engines was July 12, 2011. Back then here's how the top 3 engines stacked up.
Google: 89.7% Yahoo: 4.2% Bing: 3.8%.
When we recently measured on February 22, 2012 we found this breakdown of organic traffic sources:
Google: 82.5% (expected leader) Yahoo: 7.9% (wow, this one is still beating Bing) Bing: 7.6% (new player and likely enhanced by Facebook users) AOL: 1.1% (geesh, people still use this?) Ask: 0.6% (amazingly still alive) Search.com: 0.3% (never really caught on; obvious names don't always work!)
Remember, these numbers are only measured against websites for retail jewelry stores. Google is losing ground while Yahoo and Bing are gaining, but then, Google's numbers wou... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Today we'd like to explain how we discovered the unfortunate waste of money one jeweler spent when they hired a SEO guy to build links by writing blog posts.
There's no need to look at your own account right now, but we'll begin our story with a quick trip into our Google Analytics account and click on the link for TRAFFIC SOURCES in the left margin. From there we expanded the Sources sub-section and selected Referrals.
On this Referrals page inside Google Analytics, we are able to see all the domain names on which people find your website, but more importantly, clicked to visit your website. It's typical to see facebook.com, jewelers.org, yellowpages.com, and maps.google.com among the popular referral domains.
If you've paid someone for "link building" services, you will see hundreds of random domain names in the r... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Yesterday we suggested you take a moment and write down some of the romantic Valentine's Day stories you've heard over the last few days.
This wasn't just a wild suggestion, but rather the first step down a path of real world storytelling and answering of questions. Any time you add more stuff to your website, you are actually adding "content." It could be a product catalog, or it could be a story, but it needs to be written for real people to read rather than for search engines.
Quality content is rewarded, but let's explain how and why this is so.
As of today Google is already attempting to build a search engine powered by artificial intelligence (known as AI). According to Amit Singhal, one of Google's top engineers, they hope to one day have a very large database that understands the relationship between words,... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
We talk a lot about the importance of having a blog on your website. It really is one of the best ways for continual content building and showing Google that you are knowledgeable about jewelry. Google in turn serves up your pages when people search.
The original nature of a "web log" was to post your thoughts in hope of some type of commentary from your friends or readers. Because of this, all blog software comes with the ability to allow users to leave feedback, or comments.
A few years ago, some unscrupulous SEO professionals discovered that you could use blog comments as a good way to build links to your website. These types of comments became known as "comment spam" and you need to make sure your own blog is not plagued by it. If you want an example of such a link, go to any hot topic news article on your pick of n... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Blogs and educational articles help to increase the ranking of your website over the long term. You should build your library of well written articles, with constant usage of jewelry terminology, on a regular basis so Google will credit your site as newer than your competitor.
For long term website health and ranking you need to make a commitment to add information often. You can share educational jewelry tidbits. The best way to gather these is to simply write them down the next time an idea comes to mind. You can expand on it later at the computer.
You could also write a blog entry detailing new jewelry styles each and every time you receive new merchandise; quick use of your smartphone would create fantastic supporting photos for the blog entries.
Here are a few helpful hints to keep in mind as you write th... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In Daily Nugget #227 we explained the importance of lowering your bounce rate. In that Golden Nugget, we explained that you should try your best to lower your bounce rates as much as possible. You can read the full Nugget here: http://bit.ly/iExxJP
Google interprets bounce rates and uses them to judge the quality of your overall website when compared to particular phrases or topics. Google actually refers to topics as "themes" and that's a common word amongst website SEO professionals.
We've always said, and continue to teach, that you should be publishing educational articles or blog entries on your website. Each additional post increases the overall visibility of your site by giving Google more information to index and provide back out to users.
I'd like to tell you a little story today, and with it perhaps a little education lesson. To begin, I ask you to sit on the floor around this old black and white television...
Saturday August 6, 2011 was Lucille Ball's 100th birthday. Google commemorated the day by changing their logo to look like a 1960s black and white TV with movable channel knobs and a volume switch. On the TV screen the name Google appeared just like the opening credits from the "I Love Lucy" show. The Google doodle was actually a playable TV displaying 6 different "I Love Lucy" clips on each of the channels selected from the movable knob.
Over the last 12 months Google has created some amazing logo doodles. (In case you don't know, each of those unique Google logos are called "doodles.") Some of my favorites are from Earth Day 2011, the Bunse... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Search engine optimization is easy, but tedious. We've been saying that for a while now.
You are the best qualified person to manage the SEO process for your website, but let's face it; you're busy running your jewelry store and don't have the time to learn the ins and outs of the process.
Worse yet, the process changes often and learning the new techniques is also tedious.
It is our opinion that the Google Panda Update is really trying to snuff the SEO industry and give you the power to rank your website highly without really trying, and by just being yourself.
Any SEO company you hire should be able to write articles, blog entries, and tweak the copy on your website. However, many SEO companies outsource their copy writing to India, Philippines, and South America--all places where the American Dollar is wo... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
WordPress evolved from simple blog software into a very large open project that many programmers have contributed to. With it you can create article sites, membership sites, news sites, photo galleries, and even your own business website.
It's a great system, and it's very cheap to buy into.
However, there are major drawbacks to using WordPress. Here are a few: 1. Most WordPress websites look and function the same. 2. It's not free; you still need a hosting account. 3. It's not free; you will need to pay someone to set it up if you are non-website savvy. 4. It's not free; all the best features need to be paid for. 5. There's no guarantee that a WordPress website will be found by Google; standard SEO still applies.
Number 1 is one of our biggest gripes here at jWAG. We hear so many jewelry stores say ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Blogging is such an important part of website content. Using your blog, you can add real content that Google loves to index and use in the search.
You blog is a forum for so many different things. One day you can use it to showcase a new line of jewelry in your store, and the next you can use it to talk about your sponsorship of the local Little League.
Everything you post in your blog will feed Google's ability to bring you traffic. But what if you would rather have people share your blog posts on Facebook or Twitter? How can you get them to do that?
Google is a machine, programmed to do what it does and it doesn't care if your content is boring. It only cares if your content matches a search query.
To get interest from real people, you need to make your blog posts interesting. Give people a reason to b... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Officially, Google does not want you to ask other people to link to your website. They want the linking process to be 100% natural, as in, if you write good information on your website someone will eventually link to it.
Websites with a long history eventually gather random links from the strangest of places. It's not uncommon to do a reverse link check and find links from forum websites. One recently found example was on a gaming forum where two users were arguing over jewelry. To support their point of view, one of the gamers posted links to a 4C's of diamonds page we happen to be tracking.
The better quality information on your site becomes a random link magnet for random people, not even related to jewelry. All these links eventually build your credibility.
Time and time again, we see new jewelry store websites with brand new domain names launched, then fail miserably.
Brand new websites have a really difficult time getting indexed in the search engines. If no one is linking to the new site, Google, Bing, and Yahoo simply can't find it. There needs to be at least one link from some other reputable website before the engines will find the new site.
It might take 30 days before your brand new jewelry store website shows up in the search results. Even after the first 30 days, you still might not see your entire website in the search results. It will eventually get there but it might take months.
During this initial time, you might also notice that your blog entries also have a delay at getting into the search results.
"Organic Traffic" is what we call those visitors that found your website through searching any engine. The person looked for a keyword phrase and your website appeared in the search results. These visitors are your organic visitors, and they do not cost any money when they click; well, they don't cost you any money at the time of the click, but it did cost money in the form of time and labor to get you listed on page 1 of the search results.
Considering the number of jewelry stores listed in the JBT, we know that very few of them understand the needed search engine optimization it takes to get to page 1 of the search results. Once you achieve high placement, you will continue to receive free organic visitors as long as one of your competitors doesn't use their own SEO to knock you out of the top spot.
Blogging is a great way to increase traffic to your website. A blog entry allows you to create conversational information and use words more naturally than simply trying to keyword stuff all the other pages of your website.
Let's look at a good way to use blogging to increase organic traffic to your website.
Perhaps you have a landing page for the category "Diamond Wedding Sets" and on this page you have links to 4 sub pages: * Round Diamond Sets * Princess Cut Sets * Marquise Diamond Sets * Vintage Wedding Sets
This would be a "thin" page of information because you probably only have 1 photo and 1 sentence with each of those links. You don't want to keyword stuff that page because it would be unnatural. What does that actually mean? Well, don't use the words "diamond sets" or "wedding sets" or "diamon... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
You can't pay for links without someone blowing a whistle and getting your website banned. There is always the potential to be reported by a stranger if you are asking to pay them for a quality link from their website to yours. Google provides an online form now for such reporting. Offenders will have their websites banned from the search engines.
You might also think that posting comments on other blogs, like Instore Magazine or JCKOnline.com, might be a good link building strategy. Unfortunately both of these sites, like all quality blog sites, will include the rel="nofollow" attribute in any links to your website. The rel="nofollow" feature nullifies any potential search traffic.
The best way to create links to your site is through blogging. However, we don't simply mean you should hire a blogging company to put a l... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
The anatomy of a website is extremely diverse. Some websites have pages of information, some have product catalogs, some have photo galleries. Even if you are using the same content management system as someone else, no 2 websites will ever be alike.
Websites are just like people: some tall, some short, some fat, some thin, some wear lots of color while others are dressed in plain, white clothes... figuratively speaking. Different parts of a website are used for different reasons too, just like your feet help you walk, your hands allow you to write and type, and your eyes let you read.
You probably never consciously think about it but your feet, hands, and eyes serve you differently. Would you attempt to walk or run using your hands in everyday life?
Consider for a moment that there are some common structures to... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Let's jump back to the very basics for a moment. The word "blog" is a portmanteau of the words "web" and "log." In 1997, the process of writing and publishing online was considered a weblog, but then in 1999 it was shortened to just "blog."
Blogs are extremely popular now. In fact, we might even say they have become one of the largest driving forces of the internet. Everyone with an opinion (or a passion) has the ability to get online and offer a piece of their mind.
We'd love to see all our jewelry stores add a blog to their website. Naturally, we hear opposition to this all the time because "who has the time?" Right?
For business purposes you should consider your blogging time as "necessary advertising." But you should not consider it to be a chore; after all, aren’t you passionate about jewelry?
This is the fourth email in our LinkedIn setup strategies presented this week. So far, we've explained good methods to fill in your Summary, Specialties, Experience and Education sections.
Today, we want you to look at the Twitter settings in your profile. From your Edit Profile screen, click the tiny "Edit" link next to the Twitter setting. From the Twitter Settings screen, you can put in your Twitter account name and select it to be visible to anyone.
As we discussed last week, Twitter should be used at least once per hour. That's a lot of noise to be making on Twitter and you don't want to overwhelm your professional users on LinkedIn. So make sure you select the setting to "Share only tweet that contain #in." This is a good practice even if you only tweet a few times a week. ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
We might have to create a drinking game out of the number of time we mention Google Places in our Daily Gold Nuggets.
If you are keeping score this is going to be #5. Ready? Set? Drink!
According to Google's Mobile Blog, there are some nifty new features when they display local businesses through the SERP on a cell phone.
Although we've not been able to test the features on every type of phone, our initial results should be the same on all smartphones.
From your smart phone, do a Google search for "jewelry store."
On the mobile SERP you should see map. Right above the map there should be a button that says "Use my location." When you click that button you should get a pop-up notice asking permission to use your current location. Go ahead and allow that.
Can you come up with a list of 52 little tips for your customers? There are 52 weeks in a year and it would be great if you had a tip to share with your customs every week.
Here are some ideas:
* Announce the birthstone of the month each month. That's already 12 weeks.
* Give a tip each month on the colors of the season and the type of jewelry, whether a style or a specific charm, that will match the season and fashions. That's another 12 weeks.
Only 28 more ideas needed. Can you come up with those on your own?
Once you have them all written out take an evening or a weekend afternoon and type them all into your blog.
Then set up an account with Hootsuite.com and attach your Store's Twitter and Facebook Business Page.
Next grab the URL of each blog post and create a status update in Hootsuit... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Are you aware of all the little nuances of Internet Marketing that could improve the conversion rates from your blog site to the main area of your site where you make money?
Internet Marketing is a learned skill. Even with many years of experience in traditional media marketing, you couldn't possibly know the how's and why's of Internet Marketing. We're giving you a few easy ones below.
By now, you should have an established blog set up. We hope you have it on your own website rather than a Blogger or WordPress account. Here are some tactics that you should be employing in each of your blog posts.
1. Your main headline needs to be the largest words on the page. 2. You should break up your blog entry into subsections with a sub-heading for each. 3. Headings and sub-headings should be in a Sans Serif font. Good ch... 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
Don't want to read? This week you can also watch the video recording of this review 
In the past, I've expressed my point of view that Google+ seemed to be a more intellectually stimulating social network than its direct competitor, Facebook.
You have to own your identity. One of the jewelry designers sitting around my live Q&A table the other day at MJSA was a little embarrassed by her company name and her website. She chose a business name which perfectly reflects what type of jewelry she designs, but during the current launch process she was starting to feel a little unsure of the name.
It was a pretty exciting day yesterday at the MJSA Expo in New York City. It was my honor to be one of 
Recently I've been rehashing several topics related to 
The debate over the value of an 
Built into every blogging software is the ability to include the date of when you are posting the blog entry. Usually this appears somewhere at the top of the post near or next to the byline. Many blogging systems actually include the date as part of the URL structure too. For example, this Daily Golden Nugget includes /2013/06/05/ to indicate June 5, 2013.
Every blogging platform comes with some type of built in commenting feature for readers to give their feedback, but built-in blogging comment systems also act as an island of user engagement. A few commenting systems have emerged that allow for easy social sharing of comments. Since 2011, I've noticed more and more websites that have deactivated their build in comment systems in favor of 3rd party systems.
As you grow your blogging efforts, it's important to remember that your blog is not an island. Everything you write should be shared with one of your social networks and to the people signed up on your email list.
Comment spam is the worst. It's simply a sleazy practice to post a comment to a blog, social media site, or online review site with the intention to drive traffic back to your site. I've disagreed with this practice since the days of LiveJournal even though SEO pros have built a living on providing this type of service for clients.
There are so many factors that need to be assessed when evaluating the success or failure of your website. So many website owners are stuck worrying about ranking in the search engines instead of paying attention to making the current customer traffic happy.
Every SEO professional will tell you that the process of search engine optimization is learned through experimentation, trial and error, and fortuitous discovery. Indeed, it's that same process that allows me to find many of the Daily Golden Nuggets I write about.
Google has a YouTube video training channel called 
A blog can serve a variety of purposes. Actually a blog has so many purposes that WordPress became popular because how easy they made it for a blog to be used in flexible ways.
Throughout the upcoming 45 days, your staff is going to put in long hours in hopes that customers will be beating down your door 7 days every week. Financial forecasts say that this year will be better than last.
I'd like to propose this question: What's the best way to use your blog?
In preparation for the upcoming Holiday 2012 season you need to start adding information to your website now so Google will lead internet visitors to during the holiday website search season.
About 4 weeks ago I received and email from a jewelry store that wanted to know why they weren't ranking for the phrase "gold buying." The store's website didn't appear in the search results when the owner of the store did a Google search for that phrase along with their town name, and he wanted to be in the results.
