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Why URL name and structure is important to website success

07/13/202105/22/2013 by scmarketing

Smart Cow top tips

There are many tactics in search engine optimisation. Some people read posts in hundreds of blogs about building optimised URL and they keep tweaking until getting it just correct. After a few months, they find that they are sitting on many layers of 301- type redirects; you didn’t make any link building for your website, neither created any content.

I know that it is not what the motivational search engine optimisation speakers want you to hear, but in reality, these changes carry a big risk. Even if you made a perfect change for executing site-wide URLs with 301-redirects – is going to take long time for search engines to process. During this long time, your rankings will bounce up and down. And you may get some kind of errors. If the scheme of your new URL is not better than your old one, some pages may lose their rankings permanently.

From a search engine optimisation point of view, the URL structure of website should be:-

• Straight forward: URLs with copied contents should have canonical URLs set for them because there shouldn’t be any confusing redirects on the website

• Meaningful: URL names should have correct keywords in them, not gibbering punctuation marks or numbers.

With emphasis on the right URLs: URLs in any website don’t have equal importance in general. Actually, it is very important to check that all the pages that you need to submit to search engines are tested for being 100% working hence search engines can crawl your website and index your pages fast.

We hope that this article is of use, feel free to forward it to whoever may find it useful.

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.

What are server response codes and why are they important

07/13/202105/20/2013 by scmarketing

Website tips from Smart Cow Marketing

Over the life of a website you will be (if you manage it that is) presented with Server Response Codes or ‘HTTP Status Codes’ in regard to different elements of your site’s maintenance needs and functionality. There are many response codes that you may be presented with when you work on a site but the most common ones are 404 errors and 301 errors.

Every time a HTTP request is made to a web server, the server can respond with many different responses.

Some of these are completely internal to the server and client or are out of date so you are very unlikely to see them.

Key server codes

Server response codes are classified as follows:
• 100s – Informational: process is continuing after request has been received.
• 200s – Success: process finished successfully after request was received.
• 300s – Redirection: Request has been received, but needs to perform an additional step to complete the request.
• 400s – Client Error: The Request made by client is for a not valid page.
• 500s – Server Error: Server failed to complete the request although valid request was made by the client.

While there are many different HTTP status codes, most are not directly important to SEO.

It is important to use server response codes for improved search engine optimisation such as using 301 Redirects which are recommended when you are redirecting pages or sites because other redirects such as the 302 redirect codes do not inform crawlers of search engines that a site or a page has permanently moved.

Also deploying a custom-made 404 (page not found) page can prevent people from leaving your site if one of your pages has moved or been renamed and can just point your visitor back to the homepage or referring page and so not losing them.

We hope that this article is of use, feel free to forward it to whoever may find it useful.

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.

5 Key points for your business website

07/13/202105/15/2013 by scmarketing

Business tips from Smart Cow

You should very much look at your online business in the same way you look at a physical presence for a business.

As much as a physical shop needs a good foundation and architectural designs, a website needs also to be built with a good foundation and structure.

You can pick up or create a website in no time these days and it will probably look nice and appear to do the job that you want. But as with almost everything in this world you get what you pay for. If a website or a stall is sold at a bargain price that is probably a reason for it. The real store may be in the wrong location, may not be set up properly, have never been marketed and therefore has poor trading. Just the same with the website, if you do not invest in the initial infrastructure the site, although looking nice, will not be found by potential customers searching for your services.

Here’s five key points that a business owner must be aware of when commissioning reviewing your business website. The list could have gone on and on but these are some of the key points you should be aware.

If you’re unsure on any of these, contact your current web developer or give us a call at Smart Cow Marketing on a 020 3137 1826 alternatively email at saymoo@smart-cow.com.

Below are our top five tips with links to the Association articles provide more detail to help you and your business.

1. Sitemaps (Why your website needs a Site map) give the search engines an understanding of the layout of your site to make it easy for them to give web browsers and understanding of where to find your content.

2. url structure (Why the URL name and structure is important to the success of your site) give the search engines the best chance possible to help out your business by naming pages correctly and structuring the site accordingly.

3. Bot accessibility (What is bot accessibility and how It affect how your site is seen by the search engines) make sure that none of your hard effort goes to waste and search engines can find the content within your site and that it is not hidden from view.

4. Unique Content (Why you have to have unique website content and what happens if you don’t) always make sure your content is unique and relevant to your target audience by copying and using other people’s content is not true to the values of your business and will be marked harshly by the search engines. Your clients must see you as a true expert in your field.

5. Server response code (what are server response codes and why are they important) what happens when wrong in your site? Make sure that errors are managed appropriately so that even if a visitor has a bad experience it can be recovered easily.

Don’t forget to visit the full articles of each one of these top tips and we would love to hear your comments of the top tips needed when building a website.

Happy online marketing from all of Smart Cow.

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.

An inbound marketing overview for SMEs

06/14/202104/12/2013 by scmarketing

Inbound marketing should be at the cornerstone of any business that has an online presence. This is where you can build your reputation and authority by placing content and building links into your site.

Gone are the days where having a website alone would be good enough for your business no matter how small. Search engines such as Google are always working to provide the best content for their search results. So, if you look at it logically and imagine yourself as a search engine how high would you rank your site against your competitors?

Does your site have useful and informative content that directly relates to your products and services and will make you stand out from your competitors? If your site is regularly updated with content the search engines will recognise this and will reward you accordingly with a high-ranking.

This is of course based on the content being relevant original and interesting. The search engine algorithms such as Panda, a highly intelligent tool, and can tell how spammy your content may be. If you overload it with keywords this will be noticed, also if the content is poorly written without authority this too will be noticed. The search engines are able to tell whether or not you use industry related terminology in your content so sites can rank highly even if the keywords are not often used the related and relevant ones are.

The other way to see if the content is relevant and has authority is how well it has been received by readers. Visitors view the page and then bounce straight back out it will be noticed and recorded by the search engines and markdown appropriately. However, if a page is visited and then promoted through social media channels or links from their own blogs this will be seen as a sign of authority and will be ranked accordingly.

In summary, never try to trick the search engines, just be true to yourself and your business and post good relevant content on the Internet. If you try to trick the search engines then sooner or later you will be found out and pay for it.

Use your personality and your expertise to promote your business and you will reap the rewards.

Inbound marketing agency in Surrey

For more inbound marketing tips, browse our website or contact us today.

We hope you found this useful and if you want to leave a comment please do.