Southern Jewelry News
  • Featured
    • All
    • Featured
    • Featured Retailers
    • Retailer Roundtable
    • Sponsored Content
    • Supplier Spotlight
    CG Creations – in a league of their own
    Hubbell Proctor Designs: The Experience Is Key
    C.D. Peacock to open luxury watch and jewelry store next spring
    Hubbell Proctor Designs: The Experience Is Key
    Shefi continues expansion of bridal lines, fashion
    Why do diamond mines close?
    Why do diamond mines close?
  • Latest News
    • All
    • COVID-19
    • Furry Friends
    • Industry Awards
    • Industry Events
    • NRF
    • On The Move
    • Other News
    • Tradeshow News
    • Video
    • What's New
    Gemvision introduces MatrixGold® 3
    Gem-A spotlights gemstone research with latest edition of The Journal of Gemmology
    Artistry, Ltd. celebrating 40th anniversary
    IGI launches new interactive eLearning
  • Podcast
  • Columnists
    Motivating your sales staff
    IAS Training’s Keys to Effective Communication – Part III
    Kate’s star-studded style. What will the next trend be?
    Motivating your sales staff
    IAS Training’s Keys to Effective Communication – Part II
    Retailing in a post-PC world
    Motivating your sales staff
    IAS Training’s Keys to Communication
    The Retailer’s Perspective: With great power comes great fails
    The Retailer’s Perspective: I don’t want to be an expert anymore
    Sales Tips by Aleah: Everything is Sales
    The Retailer’s Perspective: With great power comes great fails
    The Retailer’s Perspective: Doom & Gloom or Boom & Bloom
  • Classifieds
  • Subscriptions
    • Newsletter Signup
    • Print Subscription
No Result
View All Result
Southern Jewelry News
  • Featured
    • All
    • Featured
    • Featured Retailers
    • Retailer Roundtable
    • Sponsored Content
    • Supplier Spotlight
    CG Creations – in a league of their own
    Hubbell Proctor Designs: The Experience Is Key
    C.D. Peacock to open luxury watch and jewelry store next spring
    Hubbell Proctor Designs: The Experience Is Key
    Shefi continues expansion of bridal lines, fashion
    Why do diamond mines close?
    Why do diamond mines close?
  • Latest News
    • All
    • COVID-19
    • Furry Friends
    • Industry Awards
    • Industry Events
    • NRF
    • On The Move
    • Other News
    • Tradeshow News
    • Video
    • What's New
    Gemvision introduces MatrixGold® 3
    Gem-A spotlights gemstone research with latest edition of The Journal of Gemmology
    Artistry, Ltd. celebrating 40th anniversary
    IGI launches new interactive eLearning
  • Podcast
  • Columnists
    Motivating your sales staff
    IAS Training’s Keys to Effective Communication – Part III
    Kate’s star-studded style. What will the next trend be?
    Motivating your sales staff
    IAS Training’s Keys to Effective Communication – Part II
    Retailing in a post-PC world
    Motivating your sales staff
    IAS Training’s Keys to Communication
    The Retailer’s Perspective: With great power comes great fails
    The Retailer’s Perspective: I don’t want to be an expert anymore
    Sales Tips by Aleah: Everything is Sales
    The Retailer’s Perspective: With great power comes great fails
    The Retailer’s Perspective: Doom & Gloom or Boom & Bloom
  • Classifieds
  • Subscriptions
    • Newsletter Signup
    • Print Subscription
No Result
View All Result
Southern Jewelry News
No Result
View All Result
Home Columnists

Internet Marketing Strategies Internet marketing using WIKIs

Brad Simon by Brad Simon
April 2, 2010
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Two of the most important techniques to market your jewelry store online are:

1.  Develop quality links from authority websites to your store’s website.

2.  Build authority webpages about your store that will get listed in Search Engine Results.

Wikis are websites that allow you to accomplish both of these objectives.  However, using wikis as a marketing tool is often overlooked by business owners as well as Internet marketing professionals.

A wiki is a website that allows the easy creation and editing of interlinked web pages.  Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used to create collaborative websites.  The most popular (and largest) wiki is the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Many people believe the word wiki stands for “What I Know Is”.  Actually, it is half of the Hawaiian phrase “wiki wiki” meaning “fast” or “quick”.

WikiWikiWeb was the first wiki.  Ward Cunningham started developing WikiWikiWeb in 1994, and launched it on the Internet on March 25, 1995. It was named by Cunningham, who remembered a Honolulu International Airport counter employee telling him to take the “Wiki Wiki” shuttle bus that runs between the airport’s terminals. According to Cunningham, “I chose wiki-wiki as a substitute for ‘quick’ and thereby avoided naming this stuff ‘Quick-Web’.”

Some of the best wikis to get your business listed in and obtain links from are Wikipedia, Google Knol, My Wiki Biz, and About Us.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a user-edited online encyclopedia.  You’ve probably noticed Wikipedia.com showing up in Google for a huge number of search phrases. At over 3 million pages, Wikipedia is the largest website on the Internet.  It is a highly authoritative website and is given preferential status by Google and other search engines. What most people don’t realize about Wikipedia is that anyone can edit or add pages to it, including adding links to your own websites.

However, Wikipedia is monitored by a very dedicated group of editors, many of whom have adopted sections of Wikipedia as their own personal pet projects. If a portion of Wikipedia that they’re monitoring gets edited they’ll be informed of the change and will be quick to remove it if they don’t agree that the change contributes something worthwhile.

Wikipedia is all about consensus opinion and not expert knowledge.  So don’t get upset if your expert dissertation on gemstone treatment or other jewelry related topic is edited, changed, or deleted altogether.  Write and submit an informative article about a topic you know that is related to the jewelry industry, and add in some links to authority pages on your website supporting your information.  If it gets deleted, it is no big deal, just try again.  But if it remains on Wikipedia you can be certain there will be a webpage with your name on it coming up high in the search rankings with links pointing potential customers to your website.

Wikipedia Business Pages

One thing you’ll notice if you search for most big corporate brands in Google is that Wikipedia pages for those businesses show up in the top 10 results extremely often. Most people don’t know that you can also easily create a Wikipedia page for your own business.

However, these business entries do get deleted on occasion, so try to make your’s fairly informative and complete. Don’t make the page sales oriented.  Make it educational, tell about your business, its history, and stories about the owners.  If it offers real information and/or you’re a fairly well known business then it’s less likely that one of the other editors will delete the page you’ve created. Deletions still can happen, but if you can get it to stick it’s almost guaranteed to rank on page one in Google for your business’s name.

No Follow

Unfortunately, Wikipedia is a “No Follow” website limiting the effectiveness of outgoing links.  This means that your website will not receive any credit from the search engines from the links on Wikipedia.  Therefore these links will not help your website rank higher in search results nor increase its Page Rank.  However, the prestige factor of having your business listed in Wikipedia, and having these pages rank high in the search engines, makes it worth while.

Google Knol

Google Knol provides a platform on which “experts” can create a Knol (a unit of knowledge), on any topic.  Jewelers can create a Knol on any related topic or about their business and link to their store’s website.  Just like with Wikipedia, the content needs to be informative in nature and not an infomercial or sales pitch.  Links from these pages should also point to information pages on your website rather than a sales page.

The main difference between Knol and Wikipedia, is the collaborative way in which the data is presented. On Wikipedia, articles are community moderated and users can create or edit an article regardless of whether they started the article themselves. In contrast, Knol’s collaborative default setting is moderated collaboration. This means that, although anyone can suggest edits or new content to an existing article, collaborative changes can only be made upon approval of the original author(s) of the article. This approach has been widely championed for its elimination of the sabotage that is common to Wikipedia articles, while still promoting a somewhat collaborative environment for the exchange of new ideas and knowledge.

Each Knol starts out as a No Follow page.  However, Google will change it to Do Follow (giving your website credit for them) on a case-by-case basis.  If you write quality content, listen to editing suggestions from other users, and build external links to your Knol getting a Do Follow Knol is entirely possible.

My Wiki Biz

My Wiki Biz (www.MyWikiBiz.com) allows you to author your legacy on the Internet by establishing pages around yourself and your company. With the tagline “We Believe You’re Notable. Tell Your Story Here,” MyWikiBiz allows you to create a impressive, reader-friendly page that will get picked up by the search engines.  And the website is also entirely Do Follow, providing your website high quality links.

Like Wikipedia and Google Knol you can write and submit informational articles linking to your website.  These articles can be about any related topic or about your business in general.  Always keep in mind the subject of the page on your website that you are linking to when writing your article.  The closer the topics match the more valuable the link will be. For example, a submission on the History of Engagement Rings should be linked to a page on your website about engagement rings, not to the home page or some other page that is not related to engagement rings.

About Us

About Us is a wiki Internet domain directory that allows website owners to add their websites manually and modify details as necessary. AboutUs.org has proven to be very popular with over 15 million websites listed in the wiki.  Their goal is to build the world’s most comprehensive, collaborative guide to all the best places on the world wide web.

About Us’ entire focus is for businesses to insert their listings. Creating a page for your business on this website will also tend to rank very well for your business name.

About Us gives complete detail on how they decide whether your page is worthy of Do Follow and outlines the steps you need to take to change your existing No Follow links to Do Follow. They stress the importance of unique content and entries that have been claimed and expanded by their owners.

Knowledge Is Power

Long before there were computers or the Internet – before there were wikis or collaborative encyclopedias, in 1597 Sir Francis Bacon wrote the phrase “Knowledge is Power” in his book “Religious Meditations, Of Heresies.”  Today, knowledge about your products, services, and your businesses is a Powerful Advertising Media when strategically placed on various wikis across the Internet.

Brad and Debbie Simon have been involved in the retail jewelry industry since 1977 and have been marketing on-line since 1999.  Their company Internet 4 Jewelers provides local and mobile search marketing, e-mail marketing, and website development exclusively for retail jewelry stores.  For more information log on to www.Internet4Jewelers.com.

Brad Simon

Brad Simon

Related Posts

Motivating your sales staff

IAS Training’s Keys to Effective Communication – Part III

June 22, 2022

Kate’s star-studded style. What will the next trend be?

June 20, 2022
Motivating your sales staff

IAS Training’s Keys to Effective Communication – Part II

June 15, 2022

Retailing in a post-PC world

June 6, 2022

Latest News

What's New

Gemvision introduces MatrixGold® 3

June 22, 2022
Columnists

IAS Training’s Keys to Effective Communication – Part III

June 22, 2022
Other News

Gem-A spotlights gemstone research with latest edition of The Journal of Gemmology

June 22, 2022

Other News

Artistry, Ltd. celebrating 40th anniversary

IGI launches new interactive eLearning

Jewelers Mutual Group names Mike Alexander COO

GN Diamond’s Free Marketing Tools Help Retailers All Year Long

Kate’s star-studded style. What will the next trend be?

JCK wraps 30th Anniversary Show in Las Vegas

Southern Jewelry News

© 2022 Southern Jewelry News.

Additional Information

  • About
  • 2022 Trade Shows
  • Media Kit
  • Contact

Get Social with Us

No Result
View All Result
  • Featured Articles
    • Featured
    • Featured Retailers
    • Retailer Roundtable
    • Supplier Spotlight
    • Sponsored Content
  • Latest News
    • What’s New
    • Industry Events
    • Tradeshow News
    • On The Move
    • Other News
    • Furry Friends
  • Columnists
  • Classifieds
  • Subscriptions
    • Newsletter Signup
    • Print Subscription

© 2022 Southern Jewelry News.