Receptional Blog

Google Rolls Out An Unknown Algorithm Update

17/04/2012 - 16:10

It would appear that Google are today (and have over the past 24 hours) been rolling out an update to their algorithm which is causing significant problems for webmasters and site owners. Initially reported by Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable Barry highlights that the Google Webmaster Help forums have seen significant activity from... Read more...

Brighton SEO Roundup – 13/04/2012

16/04/2012 - 09:07

It may have taken place on Friday 13th but last week's Brighton SEO Conference passed by without any major catastrophes, despite Dixon's best attempts on a crowded M25. We even managed to take notes. If you were or weren't able to attend Brighton SEO this past Friday at the Brighton Dome, here is a list of tips we picked up during the sessions:... Read more...

Finding The Right Google AdWords Partner

16/04/2012 - 08:31

I spent a large part of last week looking at the competitive marketplace with regards to potential PPC suppliers, and it really does surprise me how many companies and individuals claim to be PPC Gurus, so I thought I would share some of my thoughts with those looking to source a PPC agency. There is a lot of choice for advertisers these days,... Read more...

Bas van den Beld on What is Social Search?

09/03/2012 - 16:25

Bas, http://twitter.com/basvandenbeld is a quiet hero of mine. He has built www.stateofsearch.com into a fantastic and reputable resource for our industry. He does not present all that often – so it was great to hear him keynote at the UK Search Awards conference today, where MajesticSEO and Receptional was also speaking as a category winner.... Read more...

Social Media Week – February 13-17

13/02/2012 - 10:15

Social Media undoubtedly plays a huge part our digital lives, and this week marks the fourth annual week dedicated to exploring the changes. From the 13th to the 17th of February, digital marketing professionals will gather in London, New York, Hamburg, Paris, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Toronto, and 14 other major cities around the world, to... Read more...

Why Don't Google's Seller Ratings Add Up?

24/01/2012 - 15:46

Browsing Google Product listings recently, I noticed that the seller ratings seemed much higher than you would expect based on the breakdown of reviews provided. Companies with many 1 star reviews seemed to enjoy quite high averages which didn’t seem to add up. In the interests of science, I took a closer look. I searched Google for [television],... Read more...

Social Media Ownership - Who owns your followers?

16/01/2012 - 10:50

The huge increase in social media uptake has brought many new legal challenges with it. A man working for a US mobile news website currently being sued for taking his Twitter followers with him when he left. Noah Kravitz tweeted for news site Phonedog under the Twitter handle @Phonedog_Noah, but when he left the company he changed his username to... Read more...

Link Widgets in Action

12/01/2012 - 11:12

If you can demonstrate that you have data that is of value, then link widgets definitely can help you in your marketing efforts. However, for the widget to start creating links for you without you having to touch each website owner individually, your content needs to be useful enough for people to track you down. Take Majestic SEO's "Majestic... Read more...

Engaging with the influential is now more important than ever

11/01/2012 - 13:54

Google’s search results are going social Beginning it’s rollout across the world yesterday as we predicted, Google has finally launched the integration of its social media site into search results. The update to the world’s largest search engine, aptly named “Search, plus your world”, will incorporate pages that a user’s friends have liked, or... Read more...

A blogger's resolution. Don't blog often, comment often!

09/01/2012 - 11:43

Many bloggers began 2012 with a common new year’s resolution - blog more often. For some, this has meant setting out a specific timescale - blogging Tuesdays and Thursdays perhaps. For some, this means blogging at least once a day, without fail. “Yes, regular thought leadership - that's what my blog needs!” The rise of the blogger The huge rise of... Read more...

The Perils of Google's Soft 404 Detection

06/01/2012 - 11:35

A soft 404 is basically an error page with the technical part wrong (the error code). I'll save you the tech stuff, which Google themselves explain well enough. So, when Google visits a page, it checks for common words used to denote an error page - "page not found" "error", “missing” and similar. Historically, this has been... Read more...

Guest Post: Use Site Acceleration to Increase Your Search Engine Rankings and eCommerce Revenue

23/12/2011 - 10:16

Guest Post by David Henzel Learn how to use site acceleration to convert more people and make more money! I was shopping for a watch yesterday, and I found an affiliate marketing site selling every type of watch under the Sun. It was well-optimized for searches for specific types of watches, so it showed up pretty high on Google when I did a... Read more...

Our Holiday Opening Times

22/12/2011 - 12:02

Friday 23rd – 9:00 – 17:00 Saturday 24th – CLOSED Sunday 25th – CLOSED Monday 26th – CLOSED – Bank holiday Tuesday 27th – CLOSED – Bank holiday Wednesday 28th – 9:00 – 17:00 Thursday 29th – 9:00 – 17:00 Friday 30th – CLOSED Saturday 31st – CLOSED Sunday 1st – CLOSED Monday 2nd – CLOSED – Bank holiday Tuesday 3rd – 9:00 – 17:00 Receptional are... Read more...

Most Common SEO Issues 2011 Countdown - Number One

16/12/2011 - 14:01

It's only just over a week away from Christmas, snow has settled outside the Receptional offices and we’ve reached the final instalment of our Top Five Most Common SEO Issues as Seen by Receptional in 2011 list. For any latecomers, the title will have given it away but we’ve been counting down the most common SEO problems we’ve encountered over... Read more...

Most Common SEO Issues 2011 Countdown - Number Two

15/12/2011 - 15:46

It’s Thursday, and this is number two on our Top Five Most Common SEO Issues as Seen by Receptional in 2011 list. Previous issues making the countdown were Titles & Meta Elements, Content and XML Sitemaps, which are all worth checking out, if I do say so myself. Der Der Der Dun-Dun-Dun, Der Der Dun Duuuuuuuun So number two, rarely considered... Read more...

Most Common SEO Issues 2011 Countdown - Number Three

14/12/2011 - 14:48

Welcome readers to the midway point in our weeks countdown of the Top Five Most Common SEO Issues as Seen by Receptional in 2011. If you were unfortunate enough to miss numbers four and five of the countdown, don't worry, dry those tears, here they are: Number Four – Content Number Five – XML Sitemaps Today’s issue, at number three on our chart is... Read more...

Facebook preparing mobile advertising platform

14/12/2011 - 10:07

Already with over 800 million active users, Facebook is focusing heavily on mobile technology in 2012, according to two unnamed individuals cited in Bloomberg yesterday evening. Facebook is putting together a mobile advertising offering that will be launched by the end of March 2012, consisting initially of sponsored stories ads, which feature... Read more...

Most Common SEO Issues 2011 Countdown - Number Four

13/12/2011 - 14:34

Welcome to the second instalment in our Top Five Most Common SEO Issues as Seen by Receptional in 2011. For anyone who missed yesterday’s blog, the premise of this countdown is to highlight common SEO problems – the issues we see time and time again on the vast majority of websites. Number five in our list was XML Sitemaps, an issue that sparked... Read more...

Most Common SEO Issues 2011 Countdown - Number Five

12/12/2011 - 13:50

It’s that time of year again, aromas of spruce trees, turkey and brandy soaked puddings caress cold noses, blinking lights adorn our streets & houses, lofty voices send carols spilling from warmly lit churches and bloggers sit hunched over keyboards, tinsel reflecting in their monitors as they fervently hammer away posting end of year lists.... Read more...

Twantrum monitors consumer rants on Twitter

06/12/2011 - 11:58

A simple site that monitors consumers bad mouthing brands on Twitter has recently launched, courtesy of three Australians, James Aviaz, Julian cole and Ryhs Edwards. Simplistic in its design, Twantrum uses Twitter’s API real time search to pull out mentions of consumer brands with anger-related keywords, and displays them for all to see. Twantrum... Read more...

Strategy first. Social media ROI will follow

05/12/2011 - 15:10

Back in February of this year, research highlighted that 74% of CMOs predicted 2011 to finally be the year that social media efforts could be tied to a quantifiable return on investment (ROI). Yet, as we’re nearing the end of 2011, how social media marketing can be measured remains an often unanswered question. We often have clients approach us... Read more...

Get back the Google interface you knew and loved

02/12/2011 - 09:27

For those frustrated with recent Google user interface changes, here’s a quick tip to “revert” to an interface closer to Google’s previous one, with less whitespace and easier access to cached links and other advanced features. Here are a few things that I’ve disliked about Google’s newer UI and other frontend changes Two clicks to get to the... Read more...

Passing the Google AdWords Fundamentals and Advanced Search Exams!

30/11/2011 - 12:14

This week I successfully completed my Google AdWords Advanced Search exam, which along with the Fundamentals exam which I previously took in July has now completed my Search Advertising Certificate. Fortunately I passed both of them first time, but I don’t think it would have been possible without spending time revising for them and using AdWords... Read more...

Use Google Verbatim to Assess Anchor Text Impact.

30/11/2011 - 10:02

This is one for the SEO techies and link builders. Short of time? The Google Verbatim option appears to strip the relevance usually provided by (some?) link anchor text. You may find this useful in analysing rankings. I came across an interesting quirk of Google's new "verbatim" search option today. In addition to removing various query... Read more...

Obama joins Google+

24/11/2011 - 10:55

Following from the launch of Google+ pages, the search giant’s latest foray into social networking has gained another boost. The President of the United States, Barack Obama has joined Google+. Actually, Obama’s presence is in fact a brand page run by his campaign team as appose to the President himself, but his arrival is no less prominent. ... Read more...

Receptional’s Blogger Countdown – Why we chose Klout

22/11/2011 - 15:02

In our recent countdown of the Top 50 SEO Bloggers of 2011, several people have questioned our choice of ranking methodology. There could have been many ways to rank each of the bloggers – best post, most traffic etc. but in the end we chose to rank the bloggers in terms of their Klout score, a simple measure of how influential they are online,... Read more...

10 SEO Signals That Scream "You're Doing It Wrong!"

21/11/2011 - 10:52

Generally in life I follow the principle of if I'm not learning from my mistakes then I'm not trying hard enough. All too often it is easy to get carried away with complacency and miss the blindingly obvious mistakes that are staring us in the face. So how do you know when you've become complacent with SEO and missed some real obvious tricks?? 1.... Read more...

Receptional's Top 50 SEO Bloggers Countdown - 10 to 1

21/11/2011 - 09:40

Search Engine Optimisation is a large part of what we do here at Receptional. Starting out back in 1999, we have witnessed the industry growing in leaps and bounds to become not only a fantastic discipline, but also a great close-knit community. At the beginning of this month, we set out to record the Top 50 SEO Bloggers of 2011, based on their... Read more...

Twitter ads exceed expectations

18/11/2011 - 09:57

For the first time, statistics behind Twitter’s advertising products in the UK have been made public, curtsey of computer games manufacturer Electronic Arts (EA), and the engagement levels have been way above average. EA became the second UK brand (behind Sky) to use the ‘promoted tweet’ service that has already become popular with the American... Read more...

Receptional's Top 50 SEO Bloggers Countdown - 20 to 11

18/11/2011 - 09:56

Welcome to the penultimate part of our countdown of the Top 50 SEO Bloggers of 2011. Be sure to visit the first three instalments of this list first (50-41, 40-31, 30-21), otherwise allow us to introduce the second to last instalment of the Top SEO Bloggers of 2011! 20. Lisa Myers Blog: seo-chicks.com Twitter: @LisaDMyers Klout Score: 51 Mini... Read more...

Mobile internet advertising best practice

17/11/2011 - 11:00

With research indicating mobile internet users may outnumber desktops, it seems the long expected hike in mobile search traffic has finally arrived. Currently, few advertisers are actually taking advantage of some of the opportunities available through mobile marketing, and many are unaware of mobile’s potential to engage audiences. Marc gave a... Read more...

8 fantastic tools for SEO beginners

16/11/2011 - 17:04

Today the SEO team conducted an internal training session for their collegues covering some basic SEO principles and presenting some useful tools that anyone can get and make use of. Below are a few of the tools which we have taken into consideration as basic and important for anyone with little experience / beginner. 1. Xenu's link sleuth... Read more...

Receptional's Top 50 SEO Bloggers Countdown - 30 to 21

16/11/2011 - 09:49

Welcome to the third instalment of Receptional’s Top 50 SEO Bloggers of 2011 countdown. As search engine optimisation consultants ourselves, we’ve decided to bring you a countdown of the top SEO bloggers of the year, ranked by their Klout score. We chose this methodology, as we wanted to highlight those who had spent the time building their own... Read more...

Receptional's Top 50 SEO Bloggers Countdown - 40 to 31

14/11/2011 - 11:19

Welcome to part 2 in our countdown of The Top 50 SEO Bloggers 2011. With search engine optimisation being a key focus of the agency, we have decided to bring you a countdown of the top 50 SEO bloggers of this year. Be sure to visit the first post here, otherwise let’s get straight to it with positions 40 to 31! 40. Andy Heaps Blog: econsultancy.... Read more...

Receptional's Top 50 SEO Bloggers Countdown - 50 to 41

10/11/2011 - 09:34

As Search Engine Optimisation is an important part of what we do here at Receptional, we have decided to bring you a countdown of, in our opinion the Top 50 SEO Bloggers from around the world. We have decided to rank the bloggers in terms of their Klout score, a simple measure of how influential they are across social networks. Klout is a much... Read more...

The agency/blogger relationship - Best practice

09/11/2011 - 11:36

I read an interesting article on Umpf’s blog earlier this morning, a summary of a PR/Blogger outreach event they attended earlier in the month. Hosted by Econsultancy’s Vicki Chowney and featuring a panel of three public relations professionals and three bloggers, a series of best practice discussions ensued on the topic of PR/Blogger... Read more...

Google+ pages launch for businesses

08/11/2011 - 15:20

Yesterday evening, Google launched the long awaited pages for their social network platform Google+. Before now, only individuals were able to sign up, but now the social network with over 40 million users has opened its door to brands too. So what does this mean for marketers? The main thing to remember is that Google+ is a child of the global... Read more...

The importance of engaging with the influential

07/11/2011 - 14:52

Social media has undoubtedly changed the way we communicate with each other, particularly in terms of both frequency and volume. The majority of social media comments, updates and statuses fly by with little longevity, as we increasingly become overloaded with the amount of communication we are trying to receive. It’s akin to trying to drink from... Read more...

Dixon's Presentation

01/11/2011 - 11:08

Here is the transcript of Dixon's recent presentation in New York. Hello New York, thank you very much for having me. My name is Dixon Jones, I think my first ever overseas conference was in fact an internet marketing conference in Vancouver many many years ago, so it is very good to be back at the internet marketing conference. I've been doing... Read more...

He who tweets, wins!

24/10/2011 - 10:27

Over the weekend, Manchester City thrashed rivals Manchester United 6-1 at United’s home ground – a result no punter would have predicted… apart from Twitter. We took five of the biggest players from United and City who were on Twitter, and watched their accounts in the days leading up to the Manchester Derby yesterday afternoon, to see if we... Read more...

The greatest social media marketing campaign of all time

20/10/2011 - 15:29

In my mind, there has always been one social media marketing campaign that really stood out among the others - a campaign way before its time, which literally caused the industry to stop in its tracks and rethink the way forward. That award goes to BMW. Background At the turn of the millennium, BMW posted sales of $33bn, a slight decrease from... Read more...

Secure Search? Say Goodbye to Referrer Data

19/10/2011 - 12:57

Google have announced they are to encrypt searches by default, using the SSL protocol. Simply put, if you are logged in to Google and using a secure connection, the search engine will hide any keywords you type so they will not appear in analytics. As part of a wider initiative to encourage stronger security standards, users will see the https... Read more...

Google Ditches the Plus (+) Operator. Bah

19/10/2011 - 10:07

If you're an advanced Google searcher, then you're likely to be familiar with the plus operator. If you're not, here's the quick explanation: Google rewrites search queries, in order to try to deliver you the correct results, and to help searchers who struggle to come up with the correct syntax for a successful searches. Perhaps the most common... Read more...

Farewell to Google Labs

17/10/2011 - 10:20

As announced earlier this year, Google's experimental site Google Labs has shut down today. This seems to be a product of increasing streamlining going on over at the Googleplex, although it seems rather sad to see it go. A screenshot of the page prior to closure shows that most of the projects within Google Labs are also closing. The exceptions... Read more...

Link Insertion, Advertising of The Future

14/10/2011 - 09:59

Guest Post by Murray Newlands October 27 is the birthday of the first time banner ads appeared on a website. These advertisements appeared on hotwired.com in 1994 and were the seeds to what would become a $24 billion business and generated a CTR of 78%. They were simple ads, for AT&T and Volvo—the latter’s banner didn’t even send the consumer... Read more...

Collecting Leads with LinkedIn Ads

13/10/2011 - 13:19

LinkedIn recently announced a new feature designed to help advertisers collect leads with their LinkedIn ads. The feature, which is currently only available to selected advertisers on a test basis, enables advertisers to collect leads with campaign and contact leads directly on LinkedIn. For those of you out there already using LinkedIn PPC ads,... Read more...

Google +1 rolled out on Display Network

12/10/2011 - 13:08

From Monday, the +1 button began to roll out on Google’s Display Network across the UK on both desktop and mobile and should be visible shortly. The +1 button was rolled out in the end of June this year and has been successful so far on the Google search network, with the idea being that the person pressing the +1 button suggests an ad’s landing... Read more...

How Does Content Monetization Actually Work and When Does it Matter?

29/09/2011 - 09:27

Guest Post by Murray Newlands In simple words, content monetization is the process of earning money through written content. There are several methods to attain this. You can earn money by either selling the actual content content or by working on internet-based writing activities. In the first method, buyers of your content can be anyone from... Read more...

SEO in a Social World

27/09/2011 - 15:46

Simon Heseltine heads up SEO at AOL. That now that includes Huffington Post, which added lots of Social credibility to AOL's search statistics. I caught up with him in Tampa, Florida, where he shared some social insight and how it affects organic search. Firstly, some headline AOL stats: 23% of social media messages include links to content,... Read more...

The truth about working at Receptional...

14/09/2011 - 12:42

The truth about working at Receptional... Not only have I got some valuable experience to add to my CV, I have learnt and improved many skills; event management, organisation and time management to name but a few. I believe they will be really useful both in my future working career and in everyday life. The working environment at Receptional is... Read more...

Latest news & blog entries

Google Rolls Out An Unknown Algorithm Update 4 weeks 1 day ago
Brighton SEO Roundup – 13/04/2012 4 weeks 2 days ago
Finding The Right Google AdWords Partner 4 weeks 2 days ago
Bas van den Beld on What is Social Search? 9 weeks 5 days ago
Jack Menzel from Google+ talks about Personalized Search 11 weeks 1 day ago

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