Critiquing website and spelling

Hi,

Before my website opened up to the public I had sent some jewelers
and suppliers through the back entrance for constructive criticism.
This is something that I am very happy that I did. I want to thank
all of those that took the time to look through the site and their
feedback. I would especially like to thank Beth Rosengard for looking
through parts of the site with a fine tooth comb and pointing out
certain things and spelling errors. This type of critiquing keeps
one on their toes and awake. Some interesting things that were brought
to my attention was the correct spelling of drusy. It is spelled
with an s. I noticed that many suppliers spelled this word differently
and when asked by many customers how to spell it, I now have the
answer. This led me to ask a rough supplier the correct spelling of
cobaltoan calcite. Before I had a chance to correct the spelling it
was another word that was brought to my attention by Linda Moughemer
another orchid member. (thank you) I would also like to mention Nancy
Bernardine Widmer for tidbits of she has supplied to me
over the past few years on websites and photography.

Diane
http://www.sweetgemstones.com

Hi Diane,

Your site is looking really good. Just a couple of thoughts … I
noticed there are no meta tags for description or keywords on any of
the pages I checked, including your home page. This will be a
significant drawback for search engines. Keyword and description tags
along with visible text are extremely important in getting your site
ranked well in the search engines. Not all SE’s use meta tags
anymore, but a number of them still do and they way they change their
algorithms they could all be back to meta tags tomorrow.

Now, there is a whole science behind meta tags and text placement
on the page and I spend as much time as I can afford trying to keep
current, but … you need to have both the keyword and description
meta tags on every page of your site and every page should be
different. Although each page may contain many of the same words,
they should be in different order and should reference only what is
actually on the page (note exception for acronyms and misspellings
below) in other words don’t use a meta tag keyword of “cabochon” on
the page about faceted stones and vice versa.

Although drusy is the correct spelling, if you want to be found by
someone searching for drusy material, you should use all the various
spellings in the keyword meta tag because many people don’t know how
to spell drusy correctly - I came across someone hunting for druzzie
just yesterday and they found my site. I also make a point on my
drusy page that the word is spelled in many forms and have all of
those spellings on my pages about drusy.

Because the web is an interactive form and people don’t passively
just read the pages, I think spellings and alternate spellings of
words will evolve much faster than they have before. Thank heavens
I’m not an English teacher and don’t have to confront the issue of
“correctness”. Another point is to use acronyms for terms you want to
be found by, for instance - cab and cabs for cabochon.

Nancy

Nancy Bernardine-Widmer
Bernardine Fine Art Jewelry

nancy@bernardine.com

    "correctness".  Another point is to use acronyms for terms you
want to be found by, for instance - cab and cabs for cabochon. 

Oops, I worked for various government agencies way too long. Of
course, I meant abbreviations and synonyms, not acronyms.

Nancy

Dear Diane,

You are not alone in having difficulty with spelling drusy – and
your trouble reminded me of an article by Si & Ann Frazier I edited
years ago for Lapidary Journal. The article was about drusy gems, and
included sidebar exploring the word’s etymology. Although Si & Ann did
some fascinating musing on why it was so often spelled “druzy,” as the
editor for the piece I felt compelled to point out that it probably
had nothing to do with the Polish word for “worker” – in my
experience, mineral suppliers frequently just don’t know the correct
spelling, so they spell it phonetically. It is, after all,
pronounced druzy!

For those who wish to spell mineral names correctly, there is, or
was, a glossary of mineral names published by some geological society.
It was my bible at LJ. I’ll try and get the name and publisher, if
anyone is interested.

Suzanne