Since April 2013, I've reviewed 190 different websites and made a countless number of suggestions for updating each one. Today, and for the next few weeks, I'm going to revisit a few of those old websites to see what's new and if they've made progress.
If they have made progress, it's not because I told them what to do. The disclaimer at the bottom of all my reviews says that I don't write these to solicit business, and the only way they will find out about the review is if they search for their name online. Fewer than 5 in 190 have ever ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
My website reviews every week usually start with the random selection of a town, but this week, I didn't find any jewelers when I selected Jurupa Valley, California. If there are jewelers in Jurupa Valley, then they probably don't have a website or a large enough digital footprint for Google to find them.
With the lack of any real local results, Google returned store listings from surrounding towns and a bunch of directory sites, like Yelp. Here's what Google gave me:
Welcome to a somewhat unusual Friday review. Every Friday, I usually look for a website that's a bit of a fixer-upper and I suggest how to make it better. This week, as usual, I opened my Google Chrome browser in incognito mode and ran a search for "jewelry stores in Cairo GA."
There are certain search phrases that trigger specific search results formats, and normally when you search for a "jewelers in _____" or "jewelry stores in ____" Google activates the local results version of the SERP, but today it didn't.
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Usually I choose a random city around the U.S. to find a retail jeweler, and this week, in honor of the Las Vegas jewelry shows, I'll search around Las Vegas, Nevada.
The following is a screen grab when I searched for "jewelers in las vegas." The top listed store is The Jewelers of Las Vegas. They have updated their website since I last re... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is another edition of the Friday Website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Each week, I use Google Chrome in incognito mode to search out a random retail jeweler from around the U.S., and then I review their website.
I never know what I'm going to find when I start these reviews. My hope is that I can illustrate one of my previous Daily Nuggets with a live example.
My search began this week with the phrase "jewelers in Evergreen, CO" and saw this as my search results:
Ever have one of those days where you get mentally slapped with something so obvious that you can't believe you never realized it before?
The other day I was studying one of those infamous SEO reports to diagnose a problem on a website. The report stated that a particular website has 600 products in the online catalog when I knew for a fact that there were only 250. So here I am, staring at this report trying to comprehend why the SEO report was s... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This short post is part of my "Grains of SEO Gold" series covering basic SEO topics and how to apply them.
Today's SEO Topic: Meta Robots Tag
During a recent website review, I illustrated how duplicate content could be created on your website when using the services from an agency that specializes in creating websites for retail jewelry stores.
Specialty marketing agencies exist in every vertical market (ones to do with g... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Since the last time I mentioned website duplicate content issues Google has made a few significant changes to the way they figure this out. Today I'll explain how their changes are making your life a little easier as a website owner.
The issue I explained in March 2013 was the duplicate content that is created when you have a website that allows visitors to see the same content ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Duplicate content issues can kill your website. What's "duplicate content?" Well, it's when you say things twice on your website, and say things twice on your website.
Duplicate content also occurs when you copy information from someone else's website to post on your own site. Perhaps your intentions were good for your readers, but you didn't realize that copying that diamond education information was bad for you.
Most duplicate content issues occur right on your own website rather than from the blatant copying from someone else's site. Perhaps you didn't mean to repeat yourself, but it d... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In their quest to find all there is to find, Google will follow every link on your website inside out, upside down, and backwards until they've read all your web pages, online documents, and video files. But they don't just stop there.
The Google indexing process will also look at all the URLs that make your website work and it will experiment with different permutations just to see if they can expose hidden details about your website. From G... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Talk to any SEO professional and you're likely to hear the phrase "duplicate content" over and over again as one of the things you should avoid on a website. One of the larger tasks of search engine optimization (SEO) is to protect yourself from duplicate content penalties assigned by search engines, with Google in particular.
Here are common situations that can create duplicate content penalties:
We have conflicted feelings when it comes to independent retail jewelry stores trying to compete in online e-commerce. On one hand we know it's a good idea, but on the other hand there are sensible business decisions as to why a jewelry store should avoid it.
Truthfully we would like to see all jewelry stores create some type of online catalog, even if it's only a small sample of their inventory that showcases the quality of their jewelry.
The options for e-commerce or online showcases might seem limitless, but there are really only a few types. Let's review the different types and explain how you could use each of them, as well as the SEO strategies you should employ.
As usual, we have way too much information to tell you in a single Daily Golden Nugget so we're splitting this one up over several days. You may wa... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Happy birthday to the USA! We know most of our readers are enjoying their day off so we'll try to make this one short.
We introduced Google's Panda Update on Friday and we wanted to continue talking a little about it today. It seems the idea behind their new update scheme is not to affect ranking every day but rather to apply their Panda Update after a regular period of web growth.
Every day, new websites are created from nothing. This includes websites by regular business and SEO professionals that are trying to game the system. Google has finally implemented a deciduous method of removing the website to remove unwanted websites from the SERP.
After every pass of the Panda, the Google team reviews the changes to the SERP and applies their new found heuristics back into the next version of the Panda Update. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
When Blue Nile opened their virtual doors, they created what has become a general standard with how online jewelry catalogs are presented.
They've since evolved their design to be testimonial-centric, but their original design was copied so much from 2001 - 2003 that only we old-timers actually recognize the degree of Blue Nile's influence on the whole industry. And now we realize there are serious SEO problems with it.
A popular convention started by Blue Nile is a section like this on every product detail page: "This Item Comes With" * Free Shipping * 30 Day Returns * Free Gift Box * Free Appraisal
Another popular convention from Blue Nile is a section that looks like this: "Need Assistance" * For assistance or customization, please call one of our knowledgeable sales people Toll Free. * Not... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
We recently had the opportunity to diagnose a pretty high level SEO problem on a website, and we'd like to explain it because it's a common problem that many people don't know about.
A larger jewelry product catalog site has a princess cut diamond ring categorized as a "Princess Cut Ring." Everything in that category naturally shows up on the Princess Cut Ring catalog page.
This makes total sense, however that same princess cut diamond ring is also inlaid with pave diamonds.
After looking at their Google Analytics they noticed many people were finding their princess cut/pave diamond rings after searching for "vintage rings" on Google. As a marketing strategy they added a vintage category to their catalog and copied many products from other categories into this new vintage category.
Duplicate content is a problem that could totally ruin your website. Apparently many web programmers still don't understand the cause and effect of duplicate content and even brand new website fall pray to the disasters of duplicate content.
We recently reviewed a website that did a full redesign and installed a new content management system. Last year, this website had fantastic ranking for almost all of their target keywords. Unfortunately, with the new design and CMS, they also suffered a massive duplicate content problem.
Each of their products had at least 6 identical pages created using different URLs. It seems like Google penalizes this type of sloppy programming by completely removing the website from the search results.
After our review and findings, this jewelry store is trying to correct their duplicate iss... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Recently, we explained to you the duplicate content problem caused by having a search form on your own website. The search engine will enter information on that form and cause a serious duplicate content issue.
This Daily Golden Nugget will explain a more common duplicate content issue that plagues many websites.
Unless your web programmer or web host specifically implement prevention techniques, all of you will have the following issues. We're not going to bore you with how to fix it; we will leave that up to your own website people.
When you type in your domain name, you need to make sure no matter what the format, it always brings you to the same page.
Duplicate content is an issue for all websites and not just a situation where one website copies the information from another website.
In fact, more duplicate content issues come from your own website because of programming glitches that were not foreseen.
Duplicate content happens when information you have on one web page is the same as the information on another page. Of course, if you have a small site with only 10 pages to begin with, you might not be thinking there is a real problem for you.
Maybe there isn't.
However, any website that has any size product catalog might fall prey to duplicate content issues through a number of common issues.
One very common issue is a search box you might have on your site. Search boxes allow your users to search your site for words or jewelry. Want to find all t... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
We're going to try something new starting today: shorter Nuggets focused on SEO. In the past, we gave you lots of marketing ideas and essentially full articles in every Nugget email. Over the next few days, or weeks, we'd like your feedback on our new approach. If it fails, we'll go back to the previous format.
Duplicate content is the phrase we use to describe when one web page has the same information on it as another. The design and navigation don't matter much, but the information in the body of the page should never match the information on another page.
"...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
Since the last time I mentioned 
Duplicate content issues can kill your website. What's "duplicate content?" Well, it's when you say things twice on your website, and say things twice on your website. 
Sometimes Google is sneaky.
Talk to any SEO professional and you're likely to hear the phrase "duplicate content" over and over again as one of the things you should avoid on a website. One of the larger tasks of search engine optimization (SEO) is to protect yourself from duplicate content penalties assigned by search engines, with Google in particular.
