It's ok folks you have not read the title wrong, I have not posted in a euphoric state, we can make http error codes fun!

A while ago I was introduced to this by Lisa Ditlefsen and Chewie, I have named checked Lisa specifically for the reason of my family having someone to blame at the sad, sorry state that I have become, one of which is often described as a geek.

I invite you now to break the conversation codes below and also to create your own conversations in the comments section.

Enjoy!

Person A:  I had a row with my girlfriend the other day; she said my actions were 406

Person B:  Oh, bit of 409 at home I see. What happened?

Person A:  Well it was my birthday and she said she had a surprise waiting for me;                             unfortunately the surprise I was thinking of was 501

Person B:  So you made a 400?

Person A:  Yep, it was a 405 apparently and it was 403

Person B:  Not even on birthdays?

Person A:   No,  that was not 202
 
Person B:  So your 417 then, shame

Person A:  Yeah not the best birthday, I 408, said I was going out and was 410.
                 Hopefully I will come back and find out she has 301


Here is the full list of http error codes to help you in your quest:

• Full list of HTTP Error Codes

100     Continue
101     Switching Protocols
200     OK
201     Created
202     Acceptable
203     Non-Authoritative Information
204     No Content
205     Reset Content
206     Partial Content
300     Multiple Choices
301     Moved Permanently
302     Moved Temporarily
303     See Other
304     Not Modified
305     Use Proxy
306     Unused
307     Temporary Redirect
400     Bad Request
401     Unauthorised
402     Payment Required
403     Forbidden
404     Not Found
405     Method Not Allowed
406     Not Acceptable
407     Proxy Authentication Required
408     Request Time-Out
409     Conflict
410     Gone
411     Length Required
412     Precondition Failed
413     Request Entity Too Large
414     Request-URL Too Large
415     Unsupported Media Type
416     Requested Range Not Satisfiable
417     Expectation Failed
500     Server Error
501     Not Implemented
502     Bad Gateway
503     Service Unavailable
504     Gateway Time-Out
505     HTTP Version not supported

On Wednesday, Base One Search hosted a morning workshop to showcase the potential of utilizing search marketing in B2B.  Inspired by the Base One team, with most of the questions and answers designed by Sam, the following quiz is part of a group activity the workshop partook in.  Find the answers at the bottom in a points based system.

Q1. Discuss which is the best way to make use of future content:
A. Implement an RSS feed which would distribute future content to opt in visitors.
B. Submit content to news feeds such as Google news and content syndication sites. Create a company blog.
C. Distribute content to various industry relevant websites and implement it on your company blog.

Q2. Your business decides to have videos and images to attract new clientele. What do you do with them?
A.    Optimise the images and videos on the site to be found in the search engine results pages
B.    Optimise the images and videos further by distributing them to a number of sites, blogs and social networking sites.
C.    Have the images and videos hosted on your site.

Q3. What would you do to ensure a quick response to customer queries and complaints, in order to maintain positive online brand image?
A. Employ an evangelist who would actively scour the internet for comments or issues surrounding your brand or industry. Hire an online reputation management organisation.
B. Develop a blog to help visualise and create the personality of the company.  Utilise Google alerts so that you are informed when there are mentions of your brand name. 
C. Create a company support e-mail address that would deal with complaints and queries.

Q4. Set the stage for an SMM (social media marketing) campaign.  Which way would you assign your time?
A.    Distributing e-mail campaigns to trigger interest and traffic.
B.    Focus on unique viral idea.  Host your viral campaign on your site including implementing social buttons to promote it. Utilise a range of social media sites including stumbleupon, Digg, Facebook to reach a wide range of audiences.
C.    Develop a micro-site to host your campaign to further target online social communities. Create a Facebook group. Utilise social bookmarking sites such as Digg and Stumble Upon to generate traffic.

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Q1.  How to best use future content:
A. 5 points - the RSS feed will allow you to build a strong relationship with your customer as you continuously interact with them.
B. 10 points - You will benefit from the wider scope of keywords. Submitting content to Google news and content syndication sites will ensure you gain exposure and increase brand awareness of your service.
C. 20 points - By targeting relevant sites to host your content it ensures you drive targeted traffic to your website who are likely to convert due to the pre determined mind set of researching your service. You also obtain highly valuable links which would help boost your site visibility in the search engines for selected keywords.

Q2.  What do to do with new images and video:
A. 10 points - Obtain links but would also benefit from increased traffic as optimising videos and images would position your brand within Google for appropriate search queries.
B. 20 points - Previous benefits of A and C plus benefit of creating "noise" surrounding brand. This would not only gain exposure but also obtain extra links and visitors through mentions of your site via industry blogs.
C. 5 points - Links to the videos would help your Search Engine Ranking Position for targeted keywords.

Q3.  How to best maintain a positive brand image:
A. 20 points - Extension of  your marketing channel as an evangelist will become the face of the company. An online management company will ensure your voice is heard and create noise surrounding your brand. It will ensure your voice speaks and acts as a method for maintaining your brand reputation online.
B. 10 points - Encourages return visits due to "face" of brand responding and interacting new visits from increased trust. Driving traffic to site blog post will appear in search for long tail keywords and these visitors are more likely to convert. This will also establish brand loyalty.
C. 5 points - Lose return visits due to unsatisfactory experience and fake promises.  Still can't relate or see the personality of company.

Q4.  Manage your time for an SMM campaign:
A. 5 points - mass email campaigns will receive some attention and visitors. 
B. 20 points - developing a unique idea is 90% of the success. Time should be attributed to this as a viral campaign can have a significant effect on traffic and interaction. This website will benefit from obtaining links as it is hosted on your primary site. This will help increase the search ranking position of various keywords.
C. 10 points - Utilising social media sites to drive traffic to a site is very beneficial.  A social environment can help you engage with customers and gauge reactions and perspectives towards a brand.

I have a rant that I have wanted to get off my chest for a while now,  it's like an itch that has been just out of reach, one that I have not been able to scratch until now...

One of the most often overlooked SEO issues that can have an explicit impact on your organic search engine rankings is URL structure. This is one of the most commonly overlooked aspects of SEO.   I have witnessed countless times the mess left by poorly optimised and down right messy URLs. It is a crime and if asked I am willing to point those accused out in police line-ups.  Not paying attention to your websites URL structure can make it difficult for the search engine spiders to index your site, let alone rank well! Too often we see website developers not planning carefully their site's architecture and finally ending-up looking for corrective measures after launch. 

It's a bit like constructing a huge tower on poor bases...



Here're some issues we consider important when constructing the URL structure of a website.

Few folders - When creating a directory structure, we have to be careful not to create too many sub-categories under too many categories.  At the most, we should keep the depth of the directory structure to two levels.  Most search engines don't go beyond one or two levels of directory structure, therefore keeping it to 2 levels is good from a SEO perspective but it is also good for the user experience.  This is because shorter URLs are better than longer ones for usability (easier to remember)

Descriptive keywords in URLs - Avoid using numbers (usually from dynamically generated URLs) as opposed to using descriptive and targeted keywords in the URL.  The URL structure should be as straightforward as possible and constructed logically as well as being comprehensible to users.  That is using clear words rather than long ID numbers.
 
Keyword rich URLs - It is also important to have keyword rich URLs. Highly relevant keywords should appear in the domain name or the page URL. This became clear in a recent study on how the top three search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, rank websites. The statistics showed that top ten ranking websites on the major search engines have keywords either in the URL or in the domain.
 
At the same time we can use words in the URL to promote the theme or content of a website, as far as possible we must try to ensure that our URLs accurately reflect the page content.  According to Matt Cutts  (Head of Google's Webspam team) we should keep from three to five words in our URL, having more than that can look a little 'abnormal'.

Static URLs vs Dynamic URLs - A dynamic URL is a page address that results from the search of a database-driven web site.  The dynamic page is basically only a template in which to display the results of the database query using a script.  Whereas static URLs are page addresses, in which the contents of the web page stay the same unless the changes are hard-coded into the HTML.
 
Now, static URLs typically rank better in search engine results pages than dynamic pages and they are indexed more quickly.  This is because a search engine normally wants to only list pages that are unique. Some Search engines decide to combat this issue by cutting off the URLs after a specific number of variable strings (e.g.: ? & =).
 
Example: The 3 pages may look all the same for a Search Engine


This can happen if the search engine purges the information after the first offending character, the question mark (?), now all three pages can look the same:
 
Whenever possible, we must try to shorten URLs by trimming unnecessary parameters. To be brief, static URLs tend to be shorter and more successful than dynamic URLs.  Search engines have been pretty straightforward about that, they have a preference for static URLs...

Use of robot.txt - If we think we can have problematic URLs in our website then we can consider using a robots.txt file to block crawlers access to those particular URLs. Usually we prevent crawlers to have access to dynamic URLs, such as those that generate search results.  We can also use the robot.txt file very effectively by using 'regular expressions' thus allowing us to easily block large numbers of URLs.

Good Navigation - We have to make sure that our visitors can easily jump from one category to another, without having to click the 'Back' buttons multiple times. This is why it is important that we list all the top category links significantly on every page.  We can also use 'Breadcrumbs' to help in navigation, using breadcrumbs are good as they are navigational techniques displaying all visited pages leading from the homepage of a website to the currently viewed page.
 
Conclusion
Even if a website might be having great content, information must be logically organised for both search engines and visitors to access it.  It's somewhat pointless to put effort in optimising a Web page without giving search engines simple access to that page's content.  Badly constructed navigation schemes and URL structures can constantly act as a stop sign to search engine indexing.

Just thought I would share some amusing 404 error messages with you, a bit geeky I know, but chances are if you are on this blog you will appreciate a little bit of geekilicious fun.