RAPAPORT... There was an interesting "web" critique out of the U.K. this week after diamondgeezer.com's owner appeared on an episode of Dragon's Den (BBC Two.) The television show allows one to pitch a business idea that is "investment ready," and website owner and jeweler Clive Billing went on air seeking venture capital of about $500,000 -- and it was offered. Billing declined though when the venture capitalists demanded 40 percent equity.
Following the show, a blogger at e-consultancy.com basically tore apart diamondgeezer.com for a number of design issues -- foremost was poor SEO, or search engine optimization. E-consultancy.com provides best practices services for online marketing, including SEO. The blogger wrote in his conclusion: "I could go on and find more faults with the site, but it's clear that there are plenty of improvements that need to be made, especially to the site's usability and SEO."
"It's not all bad; there is a good level of detail on the site, suggesting that Billing has a good knowledge of the jewelry market," the blogger wrote.
Billing logged on to the website and posted his own comments, calling the critique "fair," but appealed to the blogger that "just because we have consistently failed to identify good SEO consultants DOES NOT make us bad people or dodgy dealers.
"What exactly has an SEO problem got to do with quality of product or service? Our walls are dripping with DTI awards for excellence, staff training awards, website design awards, jewelry design awards and our customer testimonials sparkle. Sadly no SEO award - the only service we buy in. I'm confused, surely as we have paid for all this work over the years, your industry has so far failed us: Not the reverse."
Billing added that he is a diamond expert, not a search engine expert, and the industry spends a lot of wasted time and money "in our quest that our SEO matches our quality of product and service."
Billing said diamondgeezer had slipped from Google search. "We now know that this was down to inappropriate actions by our last and now ex-SEO contractor and is being rectified by our current SEO experts."
To read the full discussion:
http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/366072/would-you-buy-a-diamond-ring-from-this-website.html
To view the episode of Dragon's Den
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dragonsden/episodes/s6e2diamond.shtml