Web Life

I Wish I Could Be Ernest Jones For A Day!

Posted on 23 April 2010

Despite truly heroic efforts, madaboutjewellery.com remains stubbornly on Page 2 for that most important of key words “jewellery”.

A pretty impressive position for a small independent, I know, but sales – and therefore life – was so much better when we were on Page 1!

Which we were for years until the almighty Google suddenly changed it’s algorythm overnight last June and suddenly “backlinks” and “social networking” became the buzz words of the day.  One would like to think that the technobods at Google knew what they were doing, but looking at the sites that initially replaced the regulars on page one, this theory was severely put to test. But hey, what made life difficult for etailers, created mega selling opportunities for service industries!  Wittingly, or unwittingly, Google handed them Nirvana on a plate and unleashed a battalion of web marketing reps who, having discovered that we have a telephone number on every single page of the website, felt obliged to tap in our digits before the top was even off their Starbucks.

As the person who fielded the sales calls, it became part of my new job spec to argue the toss with a slick sales spieler determined to convince me that there was truly, madly deeply no hope for survival unless we took out a year-long contract that could “get us up there with the likes of Ernest Jones”!  There is patently no comparison.  Ernest Jones and Hill Samuel have retail shops.  They have been on the High Streets since most jewellery-buying-folks were born. They are household names.  They can afford to pay any price necessary to remain at No.1 & No.2 for the word “jewellery” and their technical department alone probably numbers more people than we have in our entire organisation.  They are part of the mighty Signet Group for heavens sake!  More to the point, as a daily dose of dialogue confirmed, they employ my would-be saviours to make sure they stay at the top!

So what, I asked could they do for us?

Re-design the site? Not really.  We – and our many regulars – actually like the way it looks at the moment.  Crank up the optimisation? A quick call to website design and maintenance indicates not, since we’re already optimised to the hilt!  Key words are important – well I know that, that’s why we monitor our stats!  A major social networking campaign then?  We already Tweet, Facebook and the like!  Then how about some video input on our site.  Sounds great in theory!  But wouldn’t we prefer people to spend their time on our site shopping rather than watching a video, however interesting the news stories?  But that’s not the point, is it.  Supposedly, having video on a site will help us improve our position on – yes, you’ve guessed it – Google.  Then I get it big time.  The main point of doing all they’re suggesting, may or may not help us sell more jewellery – and frankly if we sign up for all these one year contracts in advance, it’s arguable whether there would be any money left to buy any jewellery anyway!  No.  The main reason for doing all this and more is to improve our position on Google.  Then I get to thinking how lovely it would be to be Ernest Jones for a day, so that I could know the truth of the matter.  Just how much difference it would make being able to afford all the services on offer to stay at that prime position, top of the shops for “jewellery”.  And let’s face it, Google really needs our support, the Company only made £1.27 billion this year!

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