News :: Receptional Internet Marketinghttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/Copyright News :: Receptional Internet MarketingWe all use web browsers to access the internet so that we can surf the net, in most cases it's either Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Mozilla's Firefox. They are the user's first point of contact with the web and they all have their own pros and...Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:15:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/seo/seo-and-google-chrome/With IndexTools recently purchased by Yahoo, you can expect great things from this world class analytics system moving forward. In the interim, however, Yahoo have not let new users sign up in directly. The only way to currently take advantage of...Thu, 11 Sep 2008 10:15:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/traffic-analysis/get-indextools-yahoo-analytics-now/Receptional ran a search engine optimisation seminar for its new team members yesterday and Andy Langton (our CTO) led with an exercise... to try to get one of our newest team members - Matt Loughlin - to rank on Google. The results were fairly...Tue, 09 Sep 2008 10:15:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/seo/matt-loughlin-takes-4-hours-to-get-to-number-2-on-google/Several items have come across my radar recently in search that I think will be of more than a passing interest to Receptional's friends, so I have summarized them in to a short Search News Briefing article for ease of digest.Changes to Google's...Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:15:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/online-trends/search-news-briefing/With recent news that the US retailer Target has settled for $6 million in a lawsuit about the alleged inaccessibility of their website, we've decided to republish our accessibility overview for UK website owners. Summary Website Accessibility Accessibility...Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:49:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/online-trends/uk-website-accessibility/The recent announcement by Google that it has started indexing the contents of Flash files was welcomed by many webmasters, but brought with it a whole new set of optimisation issues.Traditionally, optimisation of Flash-only sites involved not much...Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:15:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/search-engines/google-flash-and-the-changing-world-of-search/One of the first things I learned when I started working in online marketing, is that there are two very different camps in the advertising/marketing world. On one side we have the brand-based advertisers and on the other we have the direct marketers....Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:15:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/internet-marketing/is-there-room-for-branding-in-search-marketing/Over the 9th and 10th of June, the entire Receptional team embarked upon an two day workshop which was focused developing client relationships and knowledge sharing. The location was a beautiful lodge in Lincolnshire which provided great facilities...Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:15:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/news-index/receptionals-workshop/As an SEO consultant, I am generally brought in for set projects – advising my clients on their search marketing strategy and, often, implementing things like link building strategy, content production, etc. Obviously, an initial push of this...Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:15:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/news-index/once-is-not-enough---maintaining-your-seo-achievements-over-time/As search marketers, it's our job to know the makings of a well-optimised site and get our clients to implement those as best they can. In an ideal world, all the SEO best practices would be implemented at ground level, at the time the website...Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:30:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/seo/dont-be-too-trigger-happy-in-your-seo-strategy/The URL structure of your site is something you should be putting some thought into. It shouldn't necessarily be a reflection of the way your site is physically laid out (i.e. which parts of it are hosted on what machine) but rather a reflection...Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:30:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/seo/sub-domains-or-sub-folders-and-seo/As the owner of a niche blog, I occasionally find myself at the receiving end of link request emails. As an SEO, I am always fascinated by the different approaches people take to try and get me to pass link juice their way. There is much...Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:15:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/news-index/getting-people-to-link-to-you-is-not-as-easy-as-it-used-to-be/Database injection attacks are a form of hacking that is becoming increasingly common, and is being conducted on an extremely large scale. Tens of thousands of sites, including those operated by governments and universities are currently exploited...Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:15:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/online-trends/sql-injection-attacks-what-to-do-if-your-site-is-vulnerable/At the International Search Marketing Conference last week, held at The British Library, I was asked to represent Receptional and join two other leading European marketing firms in that twilight period just after lunch, to show the audience some...Thu, 29 May 2008 12:15:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/search-engines/internet-marketing-howlers/Many marketers are now using both offline, and online, channels to market, when developing promotional campaigns. A recent survey by eConsultancy showed that over 60% of respondents were planning to increase their online spend in 2008.Including...Tue, 27 May 2008 10:30:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/news-index/integrated-on-and-offline-marketing-for-enhanced-effectiveness/As an online marketing all-rounder, I generally get hired to assess and develop companies' overall online marketing strategy. This can involve anything from SEO, to PPC, affiliate marketing, banner advertising, co-branding, etc. That...Thu, 22 May 2008 10:30:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/seo/organic-seo-and-why-it-should-be-your-first-choice/This month will see the introduction of new UK regulations: the Consumer Protection From Unfair Trading Regulations, aimed at stopping aggressive, misleading and otherwise unsavoury trading practices. These regulations make particular references...Tue, 20 May 2008 10:30:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/news-index/will-new-regulations-spell-the-end-of-grey-hat-seo/I was recently asked by a web editor contact of mine to give him a bit of advice about his company's new website. When I came to look at the site, I was shown their CMS (content management system) that had been written in-house. CMSs are notorious...Thu, 08 May 2008 10:15:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/seo/content-management-systems-and-seo/The UK market for internet marketing is strong and healthy, bucking all the current trends predicting doom and gloom, and economic downturn:• The latest report from eConsultancy, UK Search Marketing Report 2008, that surveyed over 1000...Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:15:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/online-trends/search-marketing-goes-from-strength-to-strength/I came across a funny story the other day, about a programmer who got so suspicious of various sites that hand out so-called software awards on the web, he submitted a simple text file to a number of them only to have his bit of "software" win a significant...Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:30:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/seo/Good-SEO/From the 5th May 2008, Google will be allowing people to bid on your trademark and you will be able to bid on other trademarked keywords in the UK and Ireland. At first sight, this may seem wrong, so I thought it would explain this logic with a...Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:30:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/ppc/google-adwords-relaxes-their-trademark-use-in-the-uk/We all know it makes sense to spend some time thinking about keywords before starting a campaign. After all, you need to know which keywords to target, what competition you may encounter and how best to distribute your efforts. I have never...Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:15:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/keyword-analysis/keywords-think-before-you-target/When we were asking customers what they wanted to see from a new PPC engine like Microsoft adCenter back in 2005, one of the overwhelming themes for discussion was about customer service.Search marketing, in its essence, can be very time consuming, and...Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:15:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/online-trends/are-you-connecting-with-customers-in-your-community/One of the biggest problems I find with SEO is getting clients to implement my suggested course of action correctly. Back in the days where I served as in-house SEO, there were several of us in the office in charge of going out there, researching...Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:17:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/seo/internal-pr-your-key-to-making-the-most-of-external-consultancy/Search marketers manage search advertising. But since last year we've been encouraged by Google to use their system to also manage other types of adverts. Mobile adverts, video adverts and especially banner adverts. A few days ago,...Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:37:23 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/online-trends/google-changes-from-search-company-to-media-company/Writing in this blog last year, Matt Paines talked about the need for one's online marketing strategy to be more conversion focused (quality based) rather than traffic focused (quantity based). Obviously, this should apply to organic SEO as well,...Tue, 11 Mar 2008 09:30:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/news-index/landing-pages-landing-sales/A recent study by Receptional's Web Analytics partner, IndexTools has reinforced Microsoft's claim that their paid search product converts better than Google's across a broad range of search verticals. It was no small study either... covering...Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:00:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/traffic-analysis/microsoft-adcenter-converts-better-than-google-in-paid-search/Internet Marketing Consultant:Starting Salary: £18,000 - £19,500 depending on experienceReceptional Ltd. is an Internet Marketing Agency that currently promotes the internet presence of approximately 70 companies. We are now looking for...Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:12:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/vacancies/receptional-currently-recruiting-internet-marketing-consultants/A former colleague of mine has recently started working for a certain company and sent me a link to their site. I had a look around the site, reading the different pages about the company and the services they offer. After ten minutes I gave up and asked...Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:15:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/seo/making-sense-of-optimised-content/Shimrit Elisar is an all-round online marketing consultant with experience of SEO, SEM, affiliate marketing and media buying. She finds organic SEO the most interesting and challenging of the lot.Shimrit spent two years as the head of marketing at the...Thu, 14 Feb 2008 09:20:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/Writers/shimrit-elisar/What do good SEO and charity have in common? They both begin at home.It always amazes me how many companies are willing to budget for extensive (and expensive) PPC campaigns and/or spend countless hours building external links, without paying sufficient...Thu, 14 Feb 2008 09:15:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/seo/why-internal-seo-work-should-be-on-top-of-your-list/There's no doubt that Microsoft's announcement that they plan to take over Yahoo is going to have a huge impact on internet marketing. For several years now, Google has run away with the show, even though Microsoft had something in the region...Fri, 01 Feb 2008 23:51:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/search-engines/what-will-the-microsoft-yahoo-deal-mean-for-internet-marketing/All too often we come across companies running analytics packages on their websites, for nothing more constructive than to count the volume of 'hits'. Just to blow away a few myths, 'hits' are not visitors! 'Hits' are the number...Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:00:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/traffic-analysis/building-on-analytics/As Dixon Jones fromReceptional will be speaking at Search Engine Strategies in London on the 19th-21st February, we are able to offer our clients and readers 20% off the conference price. Just use the SES discount code "20spgst" when registering for the...Mon, 28 Jan 2008 09:30:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/search-engines/ses-discount-code/Barrie Smith at Receptional has become one of the first people in the UK to pass the new exam from Microsoft's AdExcellence programme. TheMicrosoft AdExcellence programme is a new Microsoft driven official accreditation programme that gives advertisers...Thu, 24 Jan 2008 09:30:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/receptional/microsoft-adexcellence-membership/Ever since the early days of search engine optimisation the whole process in every case was to remove image navigation and replace it where possible with text links or at least Alt tag images. This has been the only way to inform the search engine crawlers...Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:00:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/search-engines/google-to-read-image-text/If you've tried to register a domain name recently you'll be in no doubt how difficult it is to find what you want. Amidst the enormous number of domains that have been registered there exists a huge number that contribute nothing to the internet...Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:36:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/internet-marketing/dealing-with-cyber-squatting/In February I look set to be participating at an unusual array of speaking engagements, starting with a trip to the arctic circle.The annual Reykjavik Internet Marketing Conference and Expo (RIMC) will be taking place on Friday 8th February at the Hilton...Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:50:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/receptional/dixon-jones-next-few-speaking-engagements/Earlier this week we found a curious effect on a client site. The site was ranking very well for its primary search terms, then all of a sudden over last weekend it dropped like a stone to page two of Google, and the once healthy cache had also disappeared.It...Thu, 13 Dec 2007 10:15:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/news-index/beta-sites-and-the-dangers-of-using-google-analytics/Link building and the whole process of gaining rankings has taken another twist recently. Google's algorithm is significantly biased towards the analysis of those sites that link to the recipient site. The gathering of links, being totally white hat,...Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:00:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/link-building/google-on-paid-links/I thought it might help to create a short table comparing traditional terminology with online terminology. I think that in every sense, the online measurement will be better than the offline measurement in terms of accuracy, but there may be slight changes...Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:03:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/internet-marketing/translating-traditional-marketing-terminology-to-the-online-world/I would imagine that for brands like Colgate or Honda, measuring "brand" is something pretty important to someone, somewhere in the brand management department. I would also imagine that somewhere in the web design department there is also someone with...Thu, 29 Nov 2007 09:30:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/online-trends/receptionals-brand-is-gaining-ground/Mel Carson is the Community Manager for Microsoft adCenter in Europe. He works as part of a global team that manages the adCenter Blog, supports customers online through forums like WebmasterWorld, and also does a lot of evangelising about adCenter...Thu, 29 Nov 2007 09:30:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/ppc/microsoft-ppc-research-uncovers-suprising-misconceptions-amongst-small-business-managers/Mel Carson - adCenter Community Manager - Europe Mel joined Microsoft the day the French adCenter pilot started back in the Summer of 2005. As part of Microsoft's Client Service Operations team, Mel's role is to build relationships within...Mon, 26 Nov 2007 16:50:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/Writers/mel-carson-biography/Receptional are very pleased to announce that Google have published Receptional's success story with Moneycorp on the Adwords website.The case study details how Receptional drove down the cost per acquisition for Moneycorp by 60% which impressed Google...Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:12:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/receptional/google-adwords-publishes-receptional-case-study/After last weeks shenanigans with Google, I cannot help but sit here and gloat. For us and our clients the latest update was not a significant disruption. This is not the same for everyone, we are coming across forums and blogs where people are wining...Mon, 05 Nov 2007 16:39:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/seo/a-long-week-in-seo/Last year I wrote about the Google Patent application (from March 2005) on aged domains, this is a significant issue when it comes to optimisation for search engines. The article explained how they were going to filter against new domains on competitive...Tue, 30 Oct 2007 10:30:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/news-index/buying-domain-names/This question comes along all too often. I'm sure you have seen the emails and websites that offer "submission to 1000 search engines for $20". This may be a very tempting proposition, in fact, for such a small amount it's worth a punt, isn't...Thu, 25 Oct 2007 15:19:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/search-engines/which-search-engines-should-you-optimise-for/Over the years I have spoken to many IndexTools users from agencies to direct clients and all of them agree on the importance of tracking internal search. I think it's safe to say that if, as a visitor to a site, you can't find what you're...Thu, 25 Oct 2007 09:35:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/traffic-analysis/internal-search-tracking-and-reporting-is-easy-huh/Jessica Bowman is an in-house SEO at Yahoo! Inc., and does consulting /training for select clients. She revels in the human side of SEO, the art of getting SEO buy-in throughout the organization and getting the changes live on the site.Jessica has managed...Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:02:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/Writers/jessica-bowman-biography/