SEO

original photo by orangebrompton

I had a great time helping a friend with an online jewelry store makeover last month. It was another chance to see how crucial it’s to have a marketing blueprint.

If you have a good understanding of your target market, a clear strategy and you do act on it every day, then you success is virtually guarantied. Try it and you'll see you business grow even in slow economy like we have now.

When implementing your online marketing strategy, though, remember that if you have to redesign your jewelry website you should pay attention to few things in advance.

Here is one of them: if the URLs are going to be different, you should decide what would be the best way to handle it.

For instance, if you decided to use another shopping cart you most likely will have different page names (also known as URLs). That can result in broken links to your site. Your visitors (referred to old URLs by other sites and search engines) instead of product descriptions and categories will get an error message. That’s not good at all.

Although, solution to this problem is simple, I frequently hear: "I see that Google Webmaster Tools complain about hundreds of broken links at my jewelry website. What should I do?" Try this:

• If you had to change page URLs or move pages around, the safest option is to use "301 redirect". It simply means that a page was "moved permanently" and once Google, for example, will find that, it will “forget” the old URL and will use the new one instead. It's the most efficient and search engine friendly method for webpage redirection which should preserve your search engine rankings.
• Make your "Not found page" useful. Instead of just saying to you visitors that there is no such page at you site, offer something. You can suggest trying search or simply apologize for the missing page and show list of your jewelry categories and your home page. In other words give your visitors a good reason not to click on the back button and leave your site.

And remember that you should think about URLs, I repeat, in advance.

It takes a lot of hard work to get quality inbound links and have you site ranked. If pages get lost so does the rank as well as your online marketing efforts.

This reply, which I received yesterday on my list of 5 Most Common SEO Mistakes from a jewelry designer, did not surprise me:

Really good ideas. I need to work on my website more, but……so many things to do.

That's right. There is so much that we'd like to do, but we have no time. We can do some tasks, though, much faster that we used to.

by noheat.com

Here is a tool that will save a bit of your time and will give you valuable information on how your jewelry website is doing.

This wonderful free service at NoHeat.com will automatically analyze your site, get Google, Alexa and other ranks, check your site's inbound links and a lot of other things and it will represent all that information on a single page.

It's critical to be aware of what is holding you back and where you want to invest your time in your online marketing efforts.

It is nice also when it takes no time.

original photo by Chazwags

Every website owner’s dream is to get to the first page of Google's search results.

That’s neither easy nor fast, but the good news is that there are simple guidelines that will help you increase your chances.

Here are the common mistakes that most jewelry website owners make, but you won’t.

1. Not Using Page Titles Properly

Please, do not make it just 'My Home Page' or 'My Jewelry Store' or simply putting your company name there. Remember that the page title must have relevant keywords to the content of the page and at the same time should be human readable, because it will be shown in the search engine results. It really is worth your time. You need to make it a headline, a pitch, a shortest possible ad for that page. Every page should have its own title and it should clearly state what that page is about.

2. Trying To Cheat

There are many ways to cheat. For instance, you might add a hundred of terms into the “keywords meta tag”. I am sorry to disappoint you, but it will not do the magic. Yes, there was a 'loophole' long ago, but it is gone for good. When adding keywords, aim to be relevant to what you present on the page. Do not repeat the same terms several times - it won't help. Try not to use the same terms in the title and in the keywords, instead of that - use synonyms.

Another way to cheat on search engines is to use hidden (not visible) content which regular visitors do not see, but Google does. Well, again, it may have worked for some time, but it doesn’t any more.

Once and for all - don't cheat. If Google catch that - your site may be banned and you will lose all the time you have spent. There are many legitimate ways to win Google's favor.

3. Having Invalid HTML Code

Use free W3C Markup Validation Service to make sure that all your pages have valid code. If you have errors in your HTML, your site will have lower rank on search engines, will be slow to render and may appear incorrectly in some browsers. Double check even when your webmaster is sure that everything is fine and grade your website.

4. Link Trading

Every inbound link is a vote that your site is important. The rule seems to be simple: more links pointing to your site – the better your search engine rank will be. There are some complications though:

• Links should have your keywords. For example, I would use “How to Sell Jewelry Online” instead of http://howtoselljewelryonline.com
• You want to have links from relevant websites. There is no sense in having a link from autoparts.com. It is not about jewelry, nor does it have a good rank itself. Instead you would want a link from something like NationalJewelerNetwork.com which is a popular site with a strong search engine rank.
• Two-way linking does not work like it used to. Google seems to consider that as a link exchange and not as a real vote. That is why I do not require a link back when you submit your website to handcrafted jewelry directory. Most valuable links to your site are one-way links.

5. No Balance Between Text And Graphics

Yes, quality photos are critical to your success in selling jewelry online. At the same time search engines can’t see how wonderful your jewelry designs are. So, first you need to make sure that you have enough text, so that Google will be able to index your site properly. Secondarily, be aware that once Google sends you a visitor, you have about 10 seconds on average to get his/her interest and in that case it’s true that a good picture is worth a thousand words. Finding the right mix of both is the key to your jewelry website’s success.

Search engine optimization is an important step in every online marketing plan. You can get paid traffic using an online advertisement program, but if your site appears at the top of the first page of Google's search results that can bring you more customers that you can handle. Now imagine, how would you enjoy having that?

There is a very useful service called Website Grader.

"Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective."

You may have a FREE detailed report in a few seconds, which usually costs few hundred if you hire an expert. Skilled professional, though, may do a better job then the Website Grader but it is a very good start to check your jewelry website.