Receptional Blog

Welcome to the Receptional Blog where you can read the latest insights by Receptional on various aspects of the internet marketing industry.

How Has Panda Affected You?

12/04/2011 - 09:43

Towards the end of February, Google launched a major algorithm change known as “Farmer” or “Panda” update in the United States. The aim was to indentify and downgrade the rank of low-quality websites and pages. As of today, this algorithm change has gone live for all English queries worldwide. This is for both English-speaking countries such as... Read more...

Google +1 button - Coming soon to the UK!

31/03/2011 - 15:18

This week has seen the launch of Google's new +1 button which has initially been launched in the US but will soon be visible across Google's search pages here in the UK! The +1 button will appear alongside search results, in both the sponsored and organic listings for signed-in users. It is similar in concept to the hugely popular Facebook 'Like'... Read more...

Using QR codes for Business

29/03/2011 - 11:05

First off to make it clear, this is not a post about innovations and developments in the link building industry, so those of you keen link builders should stick to Barrie or Dixons posts. This post follows an observation I made regarding the use of QR codes in businesses. Having recently conducted a task at work inputting business card details... Read more...

Online Ad Spend Worth £4bn – How Much is it Worth to You?

29/03/2011 - 08:50

A study by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the accounts PwC has found that online advertising spending grew by 12.8% in 2010, to break the £4 billion milestone. This growth rate is three times as rapid as in 2009. This fast and healthy growth also outpaced the rest of the advertising market, which has recovered after taking a dive... Read more...

Why you should use Clique Hunter for Link Building

24/03/2011 - 13:45

Why you should use Clique Hunter for Link Building Having worked here at Receptional for just under two months, I have been quickly introduced to more and more tools from the MajesticSEO package which is widely use by our link development team. One of the most useful tools for actually uncovering relevant sources for links comes in the form of the... Read more...

Mobile Phone Traffic up 400% for Receptional’s Clients

04/03/2011 - 09:36

The hype around mobile advertising is not a new phenomenon, with every year supposedly being the year that mobile advertising finally takes off. However, having carefully analysed our client’s traffic statistics for the past 12 months; it certainly seems that 2011 could well be the long awaited year that mobile advertising finally takes off! With... Read more...

Google Profiles Redesigned

03/03/2011 - 16:50

Google Profiles now have a fresh new look and feel, intended to make it easier for us to control and enrich our public profiles, as declared on Google’s announcement. Arguably they have become similar to Facebook profiles with 3 columns in width and 5 thumbnail pictures at the top of the page. But with more fields to publish information on your... Read more...

Link Building with a Passion

17/02/2011 - 16:51

Since I read Gary Vaynerchuk’s first book, Crush It! I’ve noticed more and more similar books and blog articles on the subject of his book; making a living from your passion. I guess I can say I’ve taken his advice, combining my two passions of football and internet marketing into a blog of my own :) I’m one of a million football enthusiasts in... Read more...

Google Personal Blocklist : Further Personal Control of the SERPs

14/02/2011 - 22:24

A debate has surrounded Google for a few years now regarding the quality of their non-paid a.k.a. "organic" search results. One side of the debate has presented the argument that the search engine results pages (SERPs) are receiving increasingly large volumes of spam due to companies gaming the system through SEO techniques - as such it has been... Read more...

Linking Your Google Analytics with Webmaster Tools

11/02/2011 - 12:32

From the start of this week, you can now link your Webmaster Tools verified site to your Google Analytics profile, when they use the same Google Account. Not only does this mean your Analytics profile are accessible within Webmaster Tools, but you'll be able to easily access a few features: The Google Analytics Referring Pages report - directly... Read more...

Receptional's Client Satisfaction Survey Results

09/02/2011 - 16:33

Here at Receptional we pride ourselves on being a proactive/innovative business, and because of this we are always looking to improve the way in which we operate. Being a proactive business, it is always worthwhile for us to ensure that our existing clients are happy with our services and to investigate whether there is anything more we can... Read more...

Google Instant Launched on Google.com Shopping Search Results

07/02/2011 - 15:05

Today Google made their latest addition to Instant Search which was launched in September last year by introducing it to Google.com Shopping result pages: There is at present no indication of when this functionality is likely to be rolled out in the UK and indeed worldwide however it surely won't be long until we all start to observe similar... Read more...

Email Marketing with Receptional

07/02/2011 - 10:40

Receptional are proud to announce that we have added email marketing to the list of the services we offer. Receptional's email marketing system includes everything you need to create, send, track and profit from email marketing. It also includes powerful tools to completely automate your follow up marketing and customer feedback loops. Core... Read more...

Online Marketing for New Websites

04/02/2011 - 12:21

The fierce competition on the World Wide Web is enough to scare off any new business from thinking about producing a website. However, with the right strategy, realistic expectations and an appropriate budget, any business can start to make the climb up the search engine rankings. In my role as a business development consultant I talk to quite a... Read more...

Building Links Your Competitors Cannot Build

20/01/2011 - 16:32

While most link builders want to find the quick and easy solutions to attain links to their website, or their client’s website, they should be informed that those links will only take them so far. With tools such as Majestic SEO and Yahoo Site Explorer around, it’s not difficult for one of your competitors to plug in your domain, download all of... Read more...

The Free Paid Search Clinic Comes To ICE

18/01/2011 - 12:33

We are making our debut at ICE Totally Gaming this month and our Paid Search Team are looking forward to sharing their industry knowledge with new and existing online advertisers. For those who already run paid search campaigns on AdWords, Yahoo or Bing we will be offering a Free PPC Clinic to demonstrate the depth of knowledge we have acquired... Read more...

T Mobile says - don't use your phone for downloads, videos or games.

11/01/2011 - 13:34

As a T Mobile customer with an "unlimited" internet plan, I'm more than a little disappointed to have come across this amendment to their so-called "fair use" policy: From 1st February 2011 we will be aligning our fair use policies so our mobile internet service will have fair use of 500MB. Of course, "aligning", that explains everything.... Read more...

2010 Top Twitter Trends

14/12/2010 - 10:20

Twitter has published a list of the top 10 Twitter Trends in 2010. A staggering 25 billion Tweets were published in 2010. Twitter grouped multiple related terms into topics as they compiled this list. Therefore the FIFA World Cup list will have a vast array of terms given the number of countries and players that were trending during the... Read more...

Gambling Advertisers… Get the Odds Back in Your Favour Now!

09/12/2010 - 16:47

Tweet For the past 6 months our paid search team have been reviewing the paid search strategies of the major online gambling advertisers and thought it was about time that we shared our findings. Hopefully this will create a healthy discussion on paid search within the Igaming space and more importantly make advertising budgets go much... Read more...

Link Building through Social Media

26/11/2010 - 15:27

Tweet Social media sites should not be overlooked as a good opportunity for carrying out link building. Whether you're on the major sites, or more specific, niche sites for your blog/website, whatever you mix, there is link building potential everywhere you sign up. My theory, and practice is to use these sites to network with people in... Read more...

The Top 10 Reasons Why Your AdWords Ads Are Not Displaying!

26/11/2010 - 10:34

It can be extremely frustrating to have spent hours, or even days, setting up the very best AdWords campaigns only to find that when you activate the campaign, nothing seems to be happening. Why this occurs is a relatively common question that AdWords advertisers put to us so hopefully the below will help you to find out why your ads are not... Read more...

Page Rank Unmasked

08/11/2010 - 02:18

Tweet If you are patient enough to read all this through, the results are pretty explosive if you are into SEO. I have a way to predict the PageRank® offered by Google's Toolbar with a correlation of around 0.8 (R2=0.65)*. At the moment my working theory is that I may be able to predict Page Rank nearly 7 times out of 10 and should be able... Read more...

Wikipedia's 2010 Fundraising Appeal - Form Usability and CRO Case Study

21/10/2010 - 14:36

Wikipedia recently launched their annual appeal for donations. This involves the familiar "A personal appeal from Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales" banner being shown some of the time at the top of the articles on the site. On clicking this, the potential donor is sent to a landing page at wikimediafoundation.org:Form Usability IssuesA couple of... Read more...

Receptional in the Media

20/10/2010 - 14:09

It’s been a busy year so far for Receptional and its employees so I’m going to look at a selection of conferences we’ve attended and discuss ways in which we’ve gained exposure around the web. Dixon has been clocking up the air miles this year attending some of the top Internet Marketing conferences around the world, guest speaking at... Read more...

Google Updates Link Reports in Webmaster Tools

14/10/2010 - 12:56

Google announced yesterday on their Webmaster Central Blog they have updated the link reports available in Webmaster Tools. The Links to your site overview now shows you Who links the most, Your most linked content and a sampling of the anchor text used by external sites linking to your site. Who links the most Listed in order of the domains... Read more...

Say Goodbye to Google's Keyword Tool

08/10/2010 - 15:34

Tweet Here at Receptional our SEO team have not been fans of Google's new version of it's keyword tool, which can often return unreliable or contradictory data. Using the two tools in parallel, it was clear that the old tool returned different, and what seemed to be more reliable and useful data than the new tool. The new tool will also give... Read more...

Testing With AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE)

06/10/2010 - 08:25

Tweet Having spent the past three weeks setting up campaign experiments and analysing their impact, I can feel myself slowly morphing into a bit of a number bod so I thought I would now share my thoughts and findings from the first wave of my campaign testing. For those that haven't come across the 'Experiment Tab' under 'Campaign Settings'... Read more...

Link Building Using Bing's Linkfromdomain Search Query

30/09/2010 - 15:03

One excellent feature Microsoft Bing has, is their Linkfromdomain search command. This unique feature on Bing is one thing that does make me use their search engine. It's great to use for link building. I'll show you why. Using the Linkfromdomain search command returns pages that are linked to, from that domain. For example, I've used this to... Read more...

Adtech Conference 2010

23/09/2010 - 15:22

Tweet Having attended Adtech yesterday for the first time I thought I should write a blog on my thoughts regarding how it went and who impressed me the most. Having looked around the stalls for some time it was clear the agencies that had spent the most money making their stands snazzy got the most interest from customers. However in contrast to... Read more...

Get Free Branding Using Google Display Network

23/09/2010 - 15:11

Tweet One of the main benefits of placing image display ads on the Google Display Network (GDN) is the opportunity to considerably increase your online brand awareness whilst visually engaging your audience and consequently increase brand-name search traffic to your site. Google (2010) states that users spend around 5% of time searching and 47%... Read more...

The Importance of Online Marketing

23/09/2010 - 15:06

Tweet Professional Online Marketing 101 I wanted to write my first blog entry on the importance of having a positive online presence and persona. I have noticed that we have had a lot of leads come through to us, wanting to improve their online marketing; however they shy away from spending the necessary money in order to achieve this. In... Read more...

An Instant end to Google? Bing, HTML5 and Internet Explorer 9

22/09/2010 - 16:08

Tweet Further to Microsoft's recent release of Internet Exporer 9 and their drive to establish a new search "experience" through Bing, we can now observe the effects of the HTML5 enabled browser on their search engine. View the demonstration below: Google Instant The recent release of Google Instant search has had very mixed reviews across the... Read more...

About the Twitter 'URL Injection' Attack

22/09/2010 - 09:15

Tweet Yesterday Twitter was subject to being 'hacked' for a number of hours - see Twitter Mouseover Hack. I don't follow very many people on Twitter and didn't directly experience this hack myself, but the way it worked was very interesting and so simple that anyone with a little experience of coding html would understand how it works - it's... Read more...

How has search changed in 1 year and 15% discount code for Pubcon 2010

15/09/2010 - 14:55

In a couple of months I will again be speaking, moderating and (for the first time) sponsoring Pubcon in Las Vegas. Last year I was interviewed by Vanessa Zamora and gave away some useful advice (at the time) on Link strategies, URL shorteners and the Future of Search. The result was a well produced video which is still worth viewing: So how did... Read more...

Instant Search: Google's Biggest Ever Mistake?

13/09/2010 - 11:36

Tweet Last week Google rolled out Instant Search, a major overhaul of the way pages are retrieved and displayed and the SEO community is still coming to terms with the news. I talked about the facts of this earlier - Google Rolls Out Major Search Update - so I won't go over the nuts and bolts again. Predictions of the "Death of SEO"... Read more...

Google's Most Explosive Logo To Date?

07/09/2010 - 13:55

Today, Google has the most explosive logo I have ever seen on their homepage. Their logo consists of dozens of balls that form "Google" - but bounce around the screen once you move your cursor between them, before coming together to reform the logo once you move your cursor away. Keeping an eye on the monitors around the office, I can see... Read more...

Google Adwords Top Spending Advertisers Revealed

07/09/2010 - 09:23

AdAge has obtained an internal Google document revealing Adwords advertising spend for the first half of 2010. A total of $574 million has been spent, with AT&T being Google's largest Adwords customer in June this year. Here are some revealing charts stolen from AdAge: AT&T Mobility spent over $8 million alone in June, Apollo Group over... Read more...

How to Run Adwords Campaign Reports

06/09/2010 - 15:32

Google have recently made it quicker and easier to run Account, Campaign and Ad Group reports in Adwords, despite no clear advice on how to run these. Once you're in the Reports tab on Adwords, you will notice Google has recently greyed out the option to run Ad Group Performance reports and such (screenshot below). Hovering over the ? only states... Read more...

AdWords Advanced Reporting & Analysis Exam

06/09/2010 - 13:45

Having recently passed the Advanced AdWords Reporting & Analysis Exam I thought I would feedback on the format to follow on from the Fundamental and Advanced Search Exams that I took a couple of weeks ago. The exam was actually much easier than I had anticipated and was certainly not as demanding as the Advanced Search exam, which was a... Read more...

What will Twitter changes mean for Internet Marketers?

02/09/2010 - 08:48

An email is going out to all Twitter users about changes that are taking place. Nothing new about that - I just updated an iPhone app and had to first say I had read and understood 55 new pages of iTunes terms. Yeh - right. But THESE Twitter changes may reduce the control of sophisticated Internet Marketers - especially those using url shorteners... Read more...

Upcoming events Receptional will be attending

27/08/2010 - 12:36

Receptional are always looking for exciting events to attend as they are great places to meet industry folks and expand our knowledge of the Internet Marketing industry. Here is a short run-through of the upcoming events we will be attending in the coming months. Social Media Advertising Event 2010: Receptional is pleased to announce we will be... Read more...

Google Realtime Search in Full Flow

27/08/2010 - 10:23

Google's intention with Realtime Search since they first introduced this feature last December was to bring the freshest information on the web. Yesterday, Google introduced new tools to find us find what we need. For starters, Google Realtime Search has its own dedicated landing page now; http://www.google.com/realtime?esrch=RealtimeLaunch::... Read more...

Problems of Visualizing Data

24/08/2010 - 19:32

I saw this today and I think that it is really useful if you have to report on stats and data, especially in Marketing. Thankyou to David McCandless The talk is brilliant and I urge you to watch it if you have 18 minutes spare. But it presents us with a challenge at the 13 minute mark, which I have been seeing when I have similarly tried to... Read more...

Google Images Add Find More Sizes Option

23/08/2010 - 15:51

As Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land pointed out in a blog post today, Google have taken one out of Microsoft Bing's book and added the option of Find More Sizes when searching for images in Google Images. While their Barry showed a boring example of a cow as his image search, I felt the need to republish his news with a more appetising example... Read more...

Receptional Gain New Google Certified Partner Status

23/08/2010 - 12:44

Receptional are now Google Certified Partners! Receptional are now pleased to announce their new Google Certified Partner status, following changes to the Google AdWords certification program. Google announced back in late-April their intention to roll-out a new Google Certified Partner program that focuses on AdWords, with the aim of this program... Read more...

4 Quick, Simple Ways to Build Links

17/08/2010 - 16:09

1. Social ProfilesSites such as Technorati and Google Profiles are popular in this industry for building profiles and generating free links to your website. On sites such as Technorati, you can input your RSS feed for additional links to your latest posts. Aside from Technorati and Google Profiles, there are several networks out there you can... Read more...

Web Usability: KISS for a HiPPO

17/08/2010 - 12:09

Dear Usability People, I am a HiPPO. I have a website that I'm really proud of because it looks awesome and people tell me it's great. Unfortunately my website isn't selling as many things as I would like and so I am emailing you to request your consultancy. Kind Regards, HiPPO At this stage I would like to point out that I do not consider... Read more...

New Twitter Features Help Build Your Social Following

17/08/2010 - 09:51

Twitter has recently released a couple of new features that aid us in building up our social network. The new features - "Who to follow", "Followed by" and "You both follow" are being rolled out and on its way to 100% availability. I was one of the fortunate few to have this feature last week. Firstly, the "Who to follow" option appears in our... Read more...

Google AdWords Fundamental and Advanced Search Exams

16/08/2010 - 15:01

After successfully completing the AdWords Fundamental and the Advanced Search exam, I thought I would share my experiences as although both exams required various levels of caffeine, my approach to both was pretty similar. Thankfully I passed both with relative ease, but am extremely glad that I invested a couple of hours of revision to... Read more...

Google Transcribe Audio Fail: Matt Cutts %uh

28/07/2010 - 15:36

Google's attempt to introduce subtitles on YouTube videos is somewhat impaired. The audio transcribe option on most videos which involve talking brings up subtitles for the video, supplied by Google. Unfortunately, their audio transcribing has produced a number of howlers in the videos I've watched. A good example is in one of Google's own.... Read more...

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