A URL is a Uniform Resource Locator, its job is to locate resources in a web page. A URL is a formatted text string used by web browsers, email clients and other software to identify a network resource on the internet. Network resources are files that can be plain Web pages, other text documents, graphics or programs.

There are two different types of URLs, absolute and relative. Here’s how you should use them:

If you’re creating a document that you want everyone, anywhere in the world to be able to access, then you need to make it an absolute URL. An Absolute URL will point you directly to the file/directory on the internet. It also means that if you have two URLs that are the exact same, they will point to the same file.

If you’re creating links to other files on the same server you need to use a relative URL as you’re already in the location the link is going to be.

URL Strings consist of three substrings:

• Network protocol
• Host name or address
• File or resource location

These substrings are separated by special characters:

Protocol:// host/ location

The protocol substrings are used to define a network protocol to find a resource. These strings are short names followed by three characters ‘://’. Typical protocol names are:
http:// ftp:// mailto://

The host substring identifies a computer or other network device. Hosts come from standard internet databases such as the domain name systems (DNS) and can also be names or an IP address. For example smartcowmarketing.com/home.aspx is the host for our site.

The location Substring is anything to after the domain suffix (‘.com’ etc.) For ‘smartcowmarketing.com/home.aspx’ the section of our URL highlighted in bold is the location of where you are in the website, in this example you would be at the home page.

Here is a list of the different resource prefixes:

• Http – a hypertext directory or document (such as a Web page)
• ftp – a directory of files or an actual file available to download
• Gopher – a gopher document or menu
• Telnet – a Unix-based computer system that you can log into
• News – a newsgroup
• WAIS – a database or document on a Wide Area Information Search database
• file – a file located on your hard drive or some other local drive

Digital marketing agency Surrey

If you need a helping hand with your digital marketing strategy, get in touch with us at Smart Cow Digital Marketing for expert advice on how to conduct an effective digital marketing campaign!

Services we offer include web design and development, SEO, Pay Per Click (PPC), social media management through to CRM and marketing automation.

Once you’ve set up you’re site, you’re going to know exactly how it works and what to do to test the functionality. For example when you enter keywords into a search engine, you’ll choose words you know will point you towards your site. However, this is going to be a lot different for everyone else. For example, if your website was a clothes shop and someone was trying to find a new pair of jeans, ASK THEM what they’re most likely to search when looking for this item, ask them whether or not they tend to look at ads on the side of the Search Engine Response Pages (SERPs) and if the majority of people do, then you’ll know you need to have ads! Use the feedback you’re getting from the customers to help you to make the necessary changes.

There are many ways you can engage with your audience to ask them for feedback, a very simple way would be to post on social media, asking your followers to comment back with what they think the areas are that you can improve. Other ways would include email campaigns asking your customers to reply with their feedback.

Not everything is going to work perfectly straight away, there are going to be features of your website that users may not like. Take Facebook for example, when they make changes to their interface there is always people giving them feedback, not always positive, but they use this feedback as a way of knowing what they can do to help make it more of a user friendly experience. In some cases the feedback you may receive will come across negatively, but you need to respond politely and inform the customer that their feedback has been noted and you will try to the best of your knowledge to try and improve this.

Getting feedback is a key part of Search Engine Optimization, it tells the search engines that you’re website or social media is kept up to date and also that other people are interacting with you, therefore your information must be useful. This will all help in ranking your site above your competitors.

Prompting your customers to leave reviews about your company on your Google+ local page should be your first priority.

Try to make it simple for your customers to leave reviews – if you have a database of email addresses, filter out the customers who have a Google Mail account and point them in the direction of your Google + Local company page. Reviews left from people with an active user account and Google + profile are likely to appear more authoritative. Here at Smart Cow Marketing, we also do free website reviews. If that is something you think you would be interested in, get in touch with us today.

It is also beneficial for people to leave reviews about your company on a selection of trusted online business listings and social hubs. Sites such as Yelp, Qype, Four Square and Trip Advisor, with an active and varied community, are at the forefront of local-social search.

Digital marketing agency Surrey

If you need a helping hand with your digital marketing strategy, get in touch with us at Smart Cow Digital Marketing for expert advice on how to conduct an effective digital marketing campaign!

Services we offer include web design and development, SEO, Pay Per Click (PPC), social media management through to CRM and marketing automation.

A domain name is a unique name for a website. For example Smart Cow’s domain name is smartcowmarketing.com. The domain name serves as an address to access the website. When you visit a website, the domain name appears in the address bar of the web browser, it is often preceded by ‘www.’ but this isn’t part of the domain name. All domain names have a domain suffix also known as top-level domain (TLD) such as .com, .org, .net, .co.uk etc. the domain suffix helps identify what type of website it is, for example .org websites are used for non-profitable organisations, whereas .com is used for commercial websites. Second-level domain names (SLD) are also used, this is the portion of the domain name to the left of the “.” So the SLD for smartcowmarketing.com would be ‘smartcowmarketing’.

Without a domain name, you would still be able to access a web page, but you would have to type in a long string of numbers (IP address) this locates the website but isn’t very user friendly. A domain name provides a friendly and much more memorable alternative.

You can also use domain names for email addresses. There are many good free email providers such as Gmail, Hotmail, and yahoo. But if you’re looking for a username that is professional and personal to you or your business, it is becoming increasingly harder to find one that isn’t already taken, so you’ll most likely be left with something like ‘Jack16382@gmail.com’ this doesn’t look professional and it isn’t personal to you. Therefore buying your own domain name allows you to have an address that is much more specific to you or your business. For example you could have ‘yourname@yourcompany.com’ this is a much more approachable address for your business. There are many online services that let you create your own domain addresses for a website or email for a small price, usually per year.

One of the best reasons to purchase your own domain name is for security. One of the most popular reasons for buying your own domain name is to register your name or your company’s name regardless of whether you intend to use it or not. While this is a great reason to buy a domain name, it also protects you from other people trying to register your identity and trading off your identity.

Domain names have become increasingly valuable over the years as the ‘better quality’ domain names become registered. It is now incredibly rare to find a domain name of just one word that is in the dictionary. This means that if you’re lucky enough to find one, you could be sitting on a pot of gold as some domain names have sold for tens of thousands of pounds. Domain names have no limit on the price they’re sold at as it is completely down to the value it has to the buyer/seller. There is an increase in the popularity of random domain names so you can never tell if yours will be valuable.

Digital marketing Croydon

As a digital marketing agency in Croydon, we’re well placed to offer local businesses digital marketing services and online marketing advice.

Get in touch to chat about your business goals.