Name: Smart Cow Marketing
Price range: $$$

Content managed systems (CMS) website development

11/15/202110/09/2013 by scmarketing

When the Internet first started and businesses realised that they needed to have a website presence, it fell upon the IT developers to create websites as much as they had created IT programmes in the past. This was all well and good however when the actual business client wanted to make a change to the programme they had to go back to the programmers. Being clever little business people got very frustrated with this and demanded new functionality that allowed it so that they could update the content of the site without having to go through a developer. Businesses requested the developers to create software that the business users could update themselves, unless almost putting the developers out of business.

Thus the birth of content managed systems (CMS). These are extremely powerful and allow business users to update their sites instantly and bypassing the developers. This was obviously seen as a great business benefit and has cut out much of the processes that are involved in developing a computer program which at the end of the day is exactly what a website is.

Unfortunately, many of these processes included testing both the functionality and user acceptance. Business users have been placing content onto websites sometimes without testing against the various versions of Internet browser, and relative functionality within the site. So, this then calls back the programmers to develop tools that enable draft versions and testing to take place.

mojoPortal

There are some great CMS products on the market which provide great power and functionality to the business users and at a very affordable price. Most people have heard of products such as WordPress Joomla! and Drupal, they will have their benefits as well as drawbacks to all great products. Here at Smart Cow Marketing we have assessed all the relevant CMS systems on the market and from our point of view in delivering a quality products to our clients we have opted for a product called mojoPortal. We strongly believe that this provides a combination of security and functionality as well as the ability to develop bespoke tools for our clients.

The ease of access which clients can change content within the site is second to none as well as allowing the option for version control and managing content through draft and by giving users different level of authority. We have a great team that can develop fantastic skins that go over our websites to provide a bespoke and stylish website. Smart Cow Marketing is also very proud to be associated as they recommended developer by mojoPortal.

Digital marketing agency London

Smart Cow Marketing is an online marketing agency and web development company based in Croydon, Greater London. If you have any web development needs or looking for a specialist in mojoportal development then please get in contact on 020 3137 1826.

Search Engine Optimisation

11/15/202110/03/2013 by scmarketing

Evolution of the search engine has made great steps over the past decade. Initially we were presented with a variety of different search engines such as ask, Alta Vista, Yahoo and then along came Google. Google was a bit of a game changer, subsequently taking over the market of search engines. Its look has stayed the same however the functionality has significantly changed from the early days.

Early search engine marketing

Initially site started off with the rent on the content within the site, so if your business was selling red training shoes and your site mentioned several times throughout it the keyword “red training shoes” there was a good chance that you would be ranked highly for those keywords. There are also places within the pages of the site that the developers would specifically place the appropriate keywords, these are known as meta tags. However, the search engines and again in particular Google spotted that the use of keywords was being abused and some sites were just pushing their keyword again and again in a page in order to get the rankings up. This sometimes meant that not the most appropriate site rank higher against other more popular sites. So, search engines had to work out how to produce results based on popularity.

Search engine algorithms

So, the evolution of the search engine algorithms grew at a pace, looking at all different ways in which they could assess how popular a website is. One of the key ways is having a look at “offsite” methods to see how popular a site is. So, they started counting the number of external links pointing to a site, and in effect view in each of these links as a vote of approval for the site. And again this got abused by people trying to optimise the site so the search engines got smarter and made sure that the links were from other appropriate high rank sites. So, if a link was coming from the BBC website this would hold much more credibility than if you have 100 links from very poor websites that you had created just for the sole purpose of creating external links.

So the battle began between search engine optimisers and the search engines in order to try and outsmart each other. Much as you would have athletes trying to improve themselves for athletic competition. Some athletes will try to use banned drugs just as some online marketing companies may use black hat methods in order to gain better results. Ultimately though as we all know good will always prevail in the drug cheats will get caught in the black hat methods will always be overcome in new updates to the algorithms. Hence that is why at Smart Cow Marketing we will only use our methods in order to gain an increase in the rankings. And logically this always tends to be the best method as the ultimate goal for the search engines is to provide relevant content and we believe that white hat methods are the only way to ensure that your site is represented accurately on the web.

External links mean votes

So as these votes/external links and on-site content help the search engines decide which sites to promote depending on the keywords the search engines continue to look at new ways to enhance the user experience in providing the most relevant content. With the recent surge in social media sites is becoming much more apparent in the results of search engines and they are looking at content and recommendations within these media channels as yet another voter approval for the relevance of websites.

The search engines are constantly upgrading their algorithms that work out which sites should be placed above another which has a twofold effect. Firstly, it is great for the use of the search engines because it means that the results are always going to be the most appropriate results for our keyword searches and they are becoming more and more intelligent as time goes on. Secondly, it means that businesses do have to work hard at in ensuring there site is producing relevant content and is ranked appropriately. We have moved light-years the days of having a website for “red training shoes” was just enough, you now have to work at keeping your site and online presence relevant just as much as if you were a store owner and needed to keep your shop clean and smart for new visitors to find your products clearly.

London SEO agency

Smart Cow Marketing is an agency based in south of London in Croydon. We work hard for our clients to ensure their sites get noticed online, getting great results for the appropriate keywords. We have seen some of our clients who it would initially appear had great looking websites did not rank for the keywords. We have taken the sites got them to rank highly if not at the top for their chosen keyword. If you would like us to do this for your business and give us a call on (020) 3137 1826 or drop us an email at saymoo@smartcowmarketing.com

Web marketing

11/05/201909/25/2013 by scmarketing

If you search the Internet, you will find many various definitions of marketing. Basically it is:

‘Communicating a service to someone else’.

So, if you have a look at it from the web point of view what we are looking at is communicating a service to someone else via the web. The beauty and sometimes the hindrance with regards to the Internet is that there are so many different channels for which to market through. This can be extremely daunting for a new small business to find out which is the most appropriate and to focus their energies and money toward using.

Website development

First and foremost the main marketing tool that the majority of businesses need to look at is their own website. This should be viewed as a spine of their online business with all other channels pointing towards this site. We can have other presence online however the majority of these are owned by third company parties such as Facebook or Google. To be in control of your company you need your own website. You can therefore be in complete charge of the content and the message that you want to send across to clients, without relying on the terms conditions and availability of third-party products.

Not forgetting that the in goal is to draw business regardless of the media channel we are by no means saying that the website is exclusive marketing goal and also that all other marketing should points towards it. Just to make sure that from an online point of view this is your shop window, business card, public face.

Inbound marketing (SEO)

Inbound marketing is also known as search engine optimisation (SEO). This is the process by which sites are optimised so that when people search on the Internet for the relevant product or service that you supply your results will show up first. Inbound marketing is generally split into two areas of on-site and off-site.

On-site SEO is where you make sure that the website has been built effectively around your products and services. So you need to make sure that your products and services are represented in the site through keywords strategically placed. These keywords need to be well thought through and to be reflective of what potential clients may search for them looking for your services. Not all keywords are necessarily visible as you read the site as they are placed in meta tag or image descriptions. The whole goal is really to make sure that you think of the search engines (particularly Google) as a reader of your site and make it easier for them to navigate.

Offsite SEO is where you make your site appealing to the search engines by letting them know that people like your site and respect the contents you haven’t it. One of the main ways this is done is through having links on external sites pointing back to your own one. These links from external sites can be viewed as votes of popularity. And with some sites votes/links having more overweight than others.

Outbound marketing

Outbound marketing is more akin to the traditional forms of marketing that we all recognise in the “real” world. So as much as you may receive post, see adverts in newspapers, see adverts on TV or the radio, have leaflets posted through your door, etc. Outbound marketing on the Internet is through similar channels.

Pay per click (PPC) advertising

Pay per click advertising is a great way to get your site noticed it is not coming up through the normal organic search results. This is generally done through creating an advert through a third-party provider such as AdWords, find in some keywords that you would like to bid for to display your advert. So, when someone types in your keywords into a search engine and instant auction happens for these keywords and your advert displayed in order accordingly.

PPC adverts not only happen on such pages that they can be found embedded in banner adverts in other websites, social media platforms and applications.

Email campaigns

Email campaigns can be effective way of communicating with clients as long as they are signed up to receive your communications. So where possible try to capture email details of visitors to your site so you can send messages direct to their inbox. Feel free to have a look through our website for any email marketing tips and anything else email marketing related.

Social media marketing

The Internet has progressed so rapidly and is still just a young creation. However, it has significantly changed how businesses can market. Probably the main way it has changed is by having social media marketing, which can be highly effective way of communicating with clients. In the real world this is much more akin to word-of-mouth recommendations that existing clients would have with other people.

Social media marketing is a mixture of both inbound and outbound in that you are trying to create conversational engagement with your clients. This is really effective in that you get high level of engagement however is also highly time intensive in the campaigns are much more specifically targeted.

Smart Cow Marketing is able to assess your business needs and look at the appropriate web marketing tools mentioned above and identify which is the most appropriate for your business to build campaigns that will get you more clients.

We are based in Croydon, within Greater London and like to work closely with our clients in building their campaigns. So, if your business is within

Greater London or Surrey and would like to benefit from online marketing then please do get in touch.

An SEO Indian summer in Croydon?

07/05/202109/06/2013 by scmarketing

So, the weather in sunny old Croydon has taken a turn and it is not so sunny any more. However, the same cannot be said for the Google outlook. The search engine company has been busy making amendments to its algorithms and this has been playing havoc with sites search engine results.

What is the SEO Forecast?

Using some of our popular insight tools such as Mozcast and algoroo we can see that the search engine giant has been making some significant changes peaking on 21 August with a temperature of over 100°. So, what does this mean to you? Well the higher the temperature, the higher the reported cases of changes to keyword results on excellent many analysed websites. So, some results may go down and some results may go up depending on what these changes are.

Here at Smart Cow Marketing we are noticing a trend over the past three months whereby towards the last third of each month Google has made a significant change to the search engines producing a spike in the results. So, we recommend keeping an eye out using Moscow last towards the end of each month to see if any of your site keywords have been affected.

This obviously makes work harder to keep on top with what impact the changes are and how best to optimise the site for specific keywords. Google will never release the details of the changes to their algorithms whether it be to pander or to Penguin but through feedback to many other online marketeers we can tend to get an idea of what these changes are.

We have certainly noticed some differences with some of the keywords that we have placed specifically to do with businesses based in Croydon and Surrey and seeing how their results have fluctuated. But trying to identify whether this is through on-site changes or more probably offsite links will be quite challenging. The thing that we most fervently adhere to go is to make sure whatever method we use will always be a white hat (ethically correct) technique. We realised that whatever tricks you may try to do to pull the wool over Google’s eyes there will be an update before too long to counter this. So, whatever we do we will always look to make sure that we produce good ethical links and content for all of our clients.

This, it must be said, is also true to many other search engine optimisation businesses and we are particularly impressed with the high ethical attitude shown to many of our competitors, and long may this remain.

Digital marketing agency Surrey

If you’re at all interested in increasing the performance of your business online and are based in London, Croydon, Surrey then we are always more than happy to have a chat about how we can help get the solution that best suit you. You can contact us on 020 3137 1826 or request a Free online business report from Smart Cow.