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:
Last week, I reviewed some good ways to correctly implement QR codes in your marketing and in your store. One of the methods I suggested was to create a QR code that would lead people to an online review form. To do that, you'll need the website address for that form, but Google doesn't make it easy to find any more.
Social media marketing is quite frustrating. The rules seem to change every time you think you understand the right methods of how and when to share to social media. Most internet marketers will lead you to believe that business success will come if you can get 10,000 or more fans following you on every network, when in reality it takes a bit more than just growing your social fan base.
Somehow those social media fans have to be converted into sales as shown in this diagram:
It's time for the #FridayFlopFix where I review a random website from a local retail jeweler. The goal is to find some obvious mistakes, or flops, and suggest ways to improve upon, or fix, things.
This week, I'm looking for a candidate jeweler in Meridian, Idaho. This is the Google search results page I saw when looking for "jewelers Meridian, ID":
I've covered topics of Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram so far in this Run-Up to the 2015 Holiday season. This is my 14th installment in this special Daily Golden Nugget series to help you boost your 2015 holiday sales.
If you're just joining in for the first time, then you should review the outline of this series I explained here. I'... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the #ThrowbackThursday edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, but it also has a special tie-in to my ongoing Run-up series of 2015 Holiday Season Marketing Preparedness. The throwback doesn't go back too far, in fact it's a year ago today when I originally wrote about using different domain names to track your offline marketing. I've since... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. The goal of these weekly reviews is to evaluate a random retail jeweler's website against website design methods, SEO strategies, usability, and technology trends. I use Google Chrome in incognito mode to find every review candidate with a basic local search phrase. I also try to capture my first impressions in these reviews and write them during my initial pass through the website.
Did you know that it's possible to track the effectiveness of your offline marketing, as in, print ads, TV commercials, and even billboards? Yep, it's true, and it's simple too... Just use a different domain name on each ad.
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm revisiting the URL restructuring topic from March 15, 2011.
I consider URL restructuring to be one of the more advanced SEO techniques that you can employ after a deep review of how your website is performing in organic search. It's the process of turning your long, messy looking website addresses into shorter, easy to understand addresses.
For today's #ThrowbackThursday, I'm revisiting the topic of breadcrumb trails in your website.
In regard to your website, a breadcrumb trail is a specially formatted set of links that helps users navigate your website without needing to click the browser's back link.
Google first suggested the use of the breadcrumb trail in 2012 as a way to help simpl... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
One of the common errors in the English language is the confusion between the words Champagne and Champaign.
Champagne is a region in France where the sparkling wine, champagne, comes from. Those French "regions" are similar to states in the US. Although there are vineyards all over the world that produce sparkling wine, it's not "champagne" unless the grapes were grown, and the wine was produced in that region of France. The capital city of Champagne is Epernay, which I visited a few years ago. I've include... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the third part of my Daily Golden Nugget series outlining a potential marketing plan for the upcoming holiday season. The first part explained how to select the items to promote during the holidays. The second part detailed how to set up your newspa... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the second part of my Daily Golden Nugget series outlining a potential marketing plan for the upcoming holiday season. The first part I began yesterday explained how you should select a specific set of jewelry items and then write blogs, take photography, and make videos for those items.
The day has finally come when you've decided to upgrade your website to the latest and greatest content management system and website design. It's a big decision to make that leap considering how much time it will take and the cost to do it. It might be months before the new site is live.
You're going to have a lot of things to worry about during the process of setting up the new site. Difficult design issues, photography concerns, ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Every social network has their own unique way of structuring their URLs.
Foursquare uses a combination of the location name and a long alphanumeric venue code like this: https://foursquare.com/v/jwag-bordeaux-office/4f01828077c885c33735e610
Facebook uses a combination of the location name, the word "pages", and a long venue number like this: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jeweler-Website-Advisory-Group/250594583277 But they allow you to customize your URL to something shorter like ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Sometimes the information I glean from my deep data analysis reveals something unexpected. Today I'm presenting you with some solid ideas of why it's better to use some words over others for naming pages on your site. For each page type I've showing you the different variations of the name and why one is the best to use.
I found that "sell-your-gold" as a page name works better than a page called "we-buy-gold." Once a person is on your site they have about an equal chance of reading the page but what's really a benefit is th... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Over the last three days I spent a lot of time explaining how to use the Google Analytics UTM variable tracking to monitor the success rate of the links you share to the various social networks. The method I explained does require a bit of time to implement and then the links you share will become very long and ugly.
What I didn't explain yet is that sometimes those long and ugly shared links (URLs) can break as you use them, or when other people re-share them. Emails are notorious for breaking long website li... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
We're taking a break from research and number crunching and getting back to some basics of SEO today.
Search engine optimization for your jewelry store's website is not hard; it's just time consuming. When you follow a few simple guidelines you will immediately boost your site ahead of other locally, and maybe even nationally.
The first recommendation we always have for people is to make sure you have the primary 3 on-page SEO factors all lined up. Oh, "on-page" refers to things you can control about your website, like what is says and how it looks. As opposed to "off-page" factors like link building and how people talk about you elsewhere on the internet.
The 3 primary SEO factors according to jWAG are:
1. The title of your page. 2. The words you use in the largest heading on your page. 3. The actual ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
There are only 3 things you have direct control over that help entice users into clicking on your organic listing on the search results page.
1. The title of your page 2. The meta description of your page 3. The URL of your page
Most of the time, Google will not change your page title. Many times now, they will change your meta description to something that will better assist the user. On the other hand, they will never change the URL they show in green.
If your URL is long, it will appear with ellipses in order to truncate it into something useful for users.
Google explained in one of their training videos that they see more clicks on SERP pages that have shorter URLs than on long, convoluted ones. They also mentioned that users tend to click on pages that have keywords in the directory structure rather ... 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.
How closely do you look at the address of the websites you visit?
Some websites are built with sloppy content management systems that have long strings of variables like this EXAMPLE 1: www.Jewelrystore.com/page.html?id=25&code=1234&var=5
Some websites are built with more appealing website addresses like this EXAMPLE 2: www.Jewelrystore.com/12345/67890/page.html
And some websites are built with fully readable website addresses like this EXAMPLE 3: www.Jewelrystore.com/online-catalog/diamond-jewelry.html
It actually doesn't matter how your website addresses are structured. You could have a really long website address like this EXAMPLE 4: www.Jewelrystore.com/jewelry-catalog/diamo... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
We use the Bit.ly URL shortener all the time in our emails, posts, Facebook, printed material... everywhere.
A URL shortener is service that allows you to take a really long URL that would be impossible to remember or type, and turn it into a 12 character URL that is much easier to share with others.
There are 2 important reasons to use URL shorteners: 1. For ease of distribution through emails, Facebook and especially Twitter. 2. For tracking the number of clicks on the link.
We happen to use the Bit.ly service, but there are dozens of companies providing the service now. To find the once best suited for you simply google "url shortener" for a list.
Once you have yourself set up with an account, you can start using the Bit.ly in every one of your ads, both off-line and onlin... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Yesterday's Daily Gold Nugget concluded with the statement that the better targeted your emails are, the more frequently you can send them out. Today we will expand on this idea.
According to Ted Nicholas (a very well known sales and copy writer) every ad or email you create should have enough ROI to at least pay for the cost to create it. If not, then throw it out and start over.
Ted also explains that you should test your message on small groups before sending it to your entire list of customers. Here are some strategies so you can put this into direct practice using the Facebook Update feature we explained yesterday.
We have a few assumptions here. 1. We assume you have more than a few hundred Facebook Fans that like your Business Page. 2. We assume that a good percentage of your fans are actually ... 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
VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm revisiting the 
In a recent Daily Nugget, I presented a marketing tactic that would allow you 
Sometimes the information I glean from my deep data analysis reveals something unexpected. Today I'm presenting you with some solid ideas of why it's better to use some words over others for naming pages on your site. For each page type I've showing you the different variations of the name and why one is the best to use.
Over the last three days I spent a lot of time explaining how to use the Google Analytics UTM variable tracking to monitor the success rate of the links you share to the various social networks. The method I explained does require a bit of time to implement and then the links you share will become very long and ugly. 
