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Some of these are completely internal to the server and client or are out of date so you are very unlikely to see them.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

Business need to knows about inbound and outbound marketing

06/14/202104/10/2013 by scmarketing

As previously addressed in the Smart Cow blog we’ve mentioned there are two main types of online marketing. These are inbound marketing and outbound marketing.

Outbound Marketing

Starting first with outbound marketing this is seen as the more conventional way to market. Through the more traditional ways of paid adverts and email marketing, this reflects very much old school marketing prior to the Internet, where people would place ads in magazines and drop leaflets through letter boxes.

These are really useful if you have a new product, new website or are in a very competitive market and currently are unable to get good organic results for your keywords. Outbound marketing can be targeted by precisely to your potential clients through data that you or your media channel has acquired. You may have an email list for your email campaign or you may rely on demographic information collected by social media channels to manage your pay per click campaigns.

Inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is a much better long-term strategy to promote your business. As we all get very savvy about magazine adverts, and leaflets posted through our front door the same is said for some email campaigns and online advertising. Most of us these days are very media savvy and can quite easily filter out unwanted marketing material. Reflecting back into the real world, a lot of what you will buy will be through recommendation, whether this is a product or service if one of your friends has recommended it you are quite likely to do the same. This is where inbound marketing holds the key, if you have people promoting your products through you to their social media channels, online blogs, forums or any other method you are more likely to pay attention and if you had seen an advert embedded in a website.

But to build this trust and authority that will get many people to recommend you, your services or products takes a lot of time to invest. Think of being original and using your own personality within your content you place on the web as well as making sure it is appropriate for your target personas you have created.

Summary

Look at where your business is now online and where you would like it to go plan your marketing campaign now. If you’d like more help and advice on how to do this do get in touch, we would be more than happy to help.

As an inbound marketing agency in Surrey, we specialise in digital marketing for accountants as well as providing digital marketing services and web design for local businesses within Croydon.

All the very best from the cowshed we hope you found this useful.