What started as email spam years ago has turned into an ever-evolving monster of internet spam that permeates our emails, Google search results, automated telephone sales calls, and nonsense in our social media feeds. No matter how hard we try, marketing companies find new ways to put their message in front of us whenever we don't want it. This type of marketing is called interruption marketing, and it really has become an annoying interruption in everyday life as well.
In last week's Golden Nugget, I presented some interesting information showing the comparison of web page visible content to the hidden HTML code in the background. From that post, you could conclude that your website goal should be to fine tune your code to prevent too much hidden code, a problem that is known as "code bloat."
I'm digging a little deeper into this topic again today because of the emails, phone calls, a... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this issue of the Golden Nugget, I'm on the lookout for a jewelry website that isn't correctly suited to help customers this holiday season. I'll document my first thoughts as I look at the website. The hope is that I can uncover problems and explain solutions so you can learn from the mistakes of others.
In the spirit of the holiday season, I'd like to look for some jewelry gift ideas, perhaps something I could buy locally. For this week I'm pretending to be in South Bend, Indiana, so I searched for "jewelry ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
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
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:
In this edition of the #FridayFlopFix review, I'm venturing over to Pasadena, CA in search of a jewelry store. These are the results I saw when using Google Chrome while in incognito mode. I searched for "jewelry stores pasadena ca."
This is the #FridayFlopFix website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Every week, I scrutinize the website of a random retail jeweler and make recommendations for how to improve the site. I seek out bad websites for these unsolicited reviews so you, the reader, can learn how to identify and improve upon your own websites.
I'm changing up my approach this week. Normally I choose a review candidate from the first few that appear in the Google search results; this week I'm digging into the second page of the searc... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
I'm going back to my own jWAG website tracking today to look at the top 10 Daily Golden Nuggets of all time, that are still relevant today. I see that some of the Nuggets with the highest reader count are out of date because Facebook and Google have changed things, and a few others are very similar so I'll have to do some consolidating.
Popular Screen Resolutions
1. The most popular screen resolutions change constantly as new mobile devices and laptops are introduced. I publish an updated version of screen resol... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Welcome to the special #FridayFlopFix edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. This week, I'm on the hunt for a jewelry business in Bowling Green, KY that has a bad website. That's right, I'm looking for a flop that needs fixing. A quick search in Google for "jewelers Bowling Green, KY" lead me to a prime candidate for today: Goldsmith Jewelry Repair & Design with their website http://www.goldsmithjrd.com/
Although all evidence says that e-commerce and online product catalogs are the future of retail business on the web, many jewelers have been slow to deploy those types of websites. In preparation for this current holiday season, I was working on the search engine optimization (SEO) settings for several sites that either launched e-commerce sites or large product catalogs. I'll explain a few of those settings in this Daily Golden Nugget.
Last month, while presenting my e-commerce seminar at the RJO conference, I was asked my opinion of the do it yourself website Weebly, and if it was good for search engine optimization (SEO). Weebly is a simple website system that you can learn really fast and build a simple website in an evening. It's a solution for those on a very tight budget, but it's easy to quickly grow out of it when it comes time for a higher level of tracking needed to help grow your business. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
As I quickly approach my 1300th Daily Golden Nugget, I find myself pondering my existence. What else could I possibly write about that I haven't already?
Truthfully, a lot, but I'm also realizing that's I've never created a series of simple examples or how-to's for typical search engine optimization tasks. So, starting today, I'm going to work through several days (however many it might take) to show you how to tie together simple SEO procedures.
This is the Friday jewelry website review where I find a random retail jeweler and review their website for design, usability, and SEO. In each one of these reviews, my goal is to show how the information from my other Daily Golden Nuggets can be directly applied to a website.
This week, I'm using the Google Chrome browser in incognito mode to search for "jewelers st joseph mo." Here's a snapshot of the results:
With all my writing aboutcontent recently, it's easy to forget that the reason for all of that is to improve your search engine optimization (SEO) and thereby increase the number of people visiting your website.
If you believe the (mostly North American) superstitions, Friday the 13th (today) is supposed to be an unlucky day. Perhaps it will be unlucky for some couples that breakup before tomorrow, Valentine's Day, arrives. I prefer the optimistic point of view and would rather believe that love is in the air today.
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, and to honor Valentine's Day I decided to search for a jewelry store in or near a town with "love" in the name. This was not as easy a... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
There are a few standard pages needed on all websites, like the Home, About Us, and Contact Us pages. Other pages become important depending on the business; a Directions/Locations page is important for a business with a physical location but it's probably useless if your business is 100% e-commerce.
Other common pages for retail jewelers include: * List of Designers * Services * Staff
Once we get past the 7 pages I've already mentioned, the need... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. For this week's review, I'm heading over to South Burlington, VT in search for my retail jeweler review candidate.
I entered the search phrase "jewelers in south burlington vt" into Google and was given this result:
This is the Friday Retail Jeweler website review. The goal for today is to examine a random jewelry website, pull it apart to see how it functions and evaluate the good and the bad that we can learn from.
Every week my staff gives me a random city in the United States and I use Google Chrome in incognito mode to search for local jewelers there. This week the target city was Spokane, Washington.
Over the course of the next week or two, I'm going to supply you with a bunch of shorter Daily Golden Nuggets specifically explaining smaller SEO topics. Instead of calling them "nuggets," I should call them "Grains of SEO Gold."
Today's SEO Topic: Page Titles and Header Tags
It used to be that the website's Page Title was easily readable at the top of your web browser window, but now that most web browsers use tabs, it's very difficult to see what the page title says.
It's been three months since Google obfuscated keyword information from analytics tracking. The world hasn't ended, and the internet is still functioning just fine.
Perhaps this is exactly what Google expected (the world not ending). Still, so many internet marketing professionals complained when it happened and many non tech-savvy website owners were completely confused why they couldn't see their keyword ranking any more.
Every page of your website has a page title. It's one of the most important ranking qualities for every page of your website.
The page title shows up as the most prominent words in blue on every SERP, and it's usually these words that will entice your potential customers to either click your link, or take a moment to read the description right below it.
Composing the perfect page title is not something you will learn overnight. Many people will write long page titles that mention all the topics appearing on that page. Some people will only write a few words.
Here are the guidelines that we follow when writing page titles: 1. No more than 67 characters 2. Try to write a page title that is as short yet informative as possible. 3. Try to mention a single topic in the page title. 4. If you must mention more... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
We spend a lot of time and resources providing educational content for our members and the customers of Sapphire Collaborative (www.sapphirecollaborative.com), but the time we put into our research is minuscule compared to the total amount of time and money all SEO professionals worldwide have spent researching and writing similar educational material.
The SEO training industry is a multimillion dollar industry. Greater than that is the amount of money SEO professionals make to do the work instead of their clients.
Would it surprise you that Google is already in the process of creating ways to rank all websites correctly regardless how good or bad the search engine optimization is?
The sum of Google's knowledge and research into human patterns and behavior is enormous, and just gets bigger every day. When you allow t... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Every professional SEO will have their own opinion of the single most important factor that controls the appearance of your website in search results.
The one SEO factor that most professionals will agree upon is the importance of the page title tag. In the HTML code, these are the words you type between the and the tags.
Let's explore some ideas. And we'll stress IDEAS because this information is not actually confirmed by any of the search engines and is only formulated by agreements among opinionated SEO professionals... like ourselves.
The title of your page appears on the SERPs, and it's what your potential customers look at. Right below the title is a description of the page.
Your page title should not be deceptive at all. Don't make grand claims about your products or services since g... 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