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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.

Stick men indicating link building for SEO

Creating personas

07/13/202104/10/2013 by scmarketing

We have talked before when starting an online marketing campaign about the importance of creating a buyer persona. This provides you or your marketing team with a representation of who your target audience is. This is based on either data you have acquired or through creating a fictitious character of your ideal client(s).

These personas bring to life an individual that you are marketing to and so can make the campaigns more personal and realistic as opposed to just using marketing jargon that is inappropriate and not targeted. Just as much as you will use different language in talking to friends and relatives, business partners, people in authority, new clients, existing clients etc. You will need to adapt your marketing campaign appropriately.

You may feel that you get the majority of your business by going through personal assistance (gatekeepers) rather than going direct to the managing director, therefore you should think about their goals and motivators and words your marketing campaign appropriately.

Goals

For your fictional persona identify a couple of goals they may have personally such as growing the business, getting a promotion, looking good in front of the boss.

Challenges

Now imagine what challenges they may present you that your product or service may be able to assist them with, also looking at the challenges such as budget and timescales. With these identified you can then create a list of ways that you may be able to help your potential client.

Where possible, collect real quotes from clients that most resemble this made up persona that relates to your product and service which helps build a conversation in your own mind is how best to promote your services to them. Look at what their common objections may be and write these down, capturing these now will allow you to present a case that compels them to use your product.

Marketing message

Once you have built this personality and can picture them in your mind you’re ready to build your marketing message. Just a few words of what you can do to help your potential client.

Elevator pitch

Then expand on this and create the so-called elevator pitch. Create one or two sentences that would sell your services to client as if you were stuck in an elevator from the first to the 10th floor and this is your only opportunity to sell yourself to them. By the time you get to the 10th floor they must have enough information to say yes.

Summary

Create a persona, or many personas to bring to life your potential clients. As awkward as this may seem the first couple of times it is key to ensure that you have a personal message that will be warmly accepted as opposed to a cold marketing message that will be ignored.

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.