News :: Receptional Internet Marketinghttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/Copyright News :: Receptional Internet MarketingI 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/IndexTools - Receptional's web analytics partner - will leap forward in the beginning of 2008 by introducing the IndexTools Marketing Optimization Framework, which provides a holistic approach for our clients and partners to advance far beyond traditional...Wed, 19 Dec 2007 12:47:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/traffic-analysis/receptional-to-offer-lifetime-visitor-metrics-in-2008/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/The conference season is well and truly upon us. Here is a list of events that in which Receptional have been asked to participate over the next couple of months. If you are able to come to any of the events, please do look us up and come and introduce...Wed, 17 Oct 2007 10:26:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/receptional/forthcoming-seo-conference-dates/OK, so the natural search engine optimisation campaign you have been running for the last 6 months is kicking in, traffic is through the roof. You're number one worldwide for your chosen search term and life looks good. Return to your office and prepare...Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:39:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/traffic-analysis/Search-engine-traffic/Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a web distribution format that allows readers to automatically receive content, and thus lends itself to content that changes frequently such as news articles and blog entries. For businesses, RSS can be used to increase...Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:43:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/online-trends/tips-for-rss/One of the potentially most exciting things about Microsoft going into search is their Adlabs system.I say potentially, because it offers the POTENTIAL to be really useful. They are tantalizing us with so many potentially useful research tools.Take their...Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:55:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/keyword-analysis/adlabs-keyword-suggestion-tool/About once a year I get to speak at somewhere slightly out of the ordinary. Last year it was Reykjavik, in Iceland: this year it is Vilnius, Lithuania. There are a number of reasons why this is special over and above the location. The most relevant for...Mon, 01 Oct 2007 17:44:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/news-index/how-web-20-got-me-to-lithuania/There is often a perception that if you hire an SEO consultant to do the work for you, then the SEO work is off your plate. The reality is that even if you outsource to an SEO consultant, there are still things that you must do in-house. These are the...Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:48:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/news-index/you-still-have-work-to-do-even-if-you-use-an-seo-consultant/Google has just announced that its controversial "Best Practice Funding" scheme for European agencies (including those in the UK) will be scrapped at the end of 2008. The scheme effectively aims to remunerate agencies in a way that makes it especially...Thu, 20 Sep 2007 18:14:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/news-index/paying-too-little-for-ppc-management-you-could-be-losing-out/Since Google's inception, links have been at the core of the search giant's algorithm, as such for any SEO company, webmaster and site owner the pursuance of links is a significant issue. Whilst the text of a website will inform the search spiders...Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:26:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/internet-marketing/paid-links-back-on-the-agenda/Charlie Holbech is the Head of Partner Division at IndexTools and has been working in the Analytics Industry for the last 4 years. He studied Business & Marketing with Computer Sciences at Anglia University entering the tourism industry when he left....Sun, 09 Sep 2007 12:15:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/Writers/bio-charlie-holbech/ Microsoft signalled at SES, San Jose ( August, 2007) that their search engine was due to launch their webmaster portal, following Yahoo and Google in this improved way for webmasters and search engines to communicate.Google launched their WebmasterTools...Thu, 06 Sep 2007 16:45:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/internet-marketing/live-search-webmaster-portal-is-coming-to-a-search-engine-near-you/Google's vice president of product management for advertising, Susan Wojcicki, said behavioural targeting is not something that organisation has participated in, for a variety of reasons.Wojcicki told reporters at a briefing that she believes that...Mon, 03 Sep 2007 16:19:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/news-index/google-shying-away-from-behavioural-targeting/This week is the start of SES San Jose (SES stand for Search Engine Strategies). The largest conference - possibly on the planet - dedicated to search engine marketing. One of the first sessions of this five day marathon conference, running up to...Tue, 21 Aug 2007 13:58:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/online-trends/base-camp-is-changing-for-online-searchers/ Plagiarism is becoming a huge issue as the internet gets bigger. The internet is massive, and a lot of webmasters appear to think nothing of grabbing other peoples content - after all who'd notice...? Not only does having your content copied...Fri, 03 Aug 2007 09:50:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/seo/lost-rankings-duplicate-content/ It is no secret that the search engines are trying to overcome the best efforts of SEO's and webmasters who attempt to influence their rankings. As part of an optimisation project there is an element known as the link building strategy. There are...Wed, 25 Jul 2007 17:31:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/seo/google-working-on-prime-real-estate/Matt Paines is the MD of XSEO Ltd an SEO Company, he is also a Director of FeatureFeed Ltd a provider of bespoke news content to webmasters and site owners, for inclusion to their web sites.Trained as an Electronics Engineer in the early 80s, Matt stayed...Wed, 25 Jul 2007 16:49:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/Writers/bio-matt-paines/Managing Director, Receptional Internet Marketing. I founded Receptional with Dr. David Smith in 1999 but was active in search engine optimisation for a few years before then in a previous business - running Murder Mystery parties. At that time,...Wed, 25 Jul 2007 10:40:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/Writers/dixon-jones/It's taking a few years to get sorted out, but buying link building as a commodity can damage your wallet - if not your web site. What you should be dreaming up is a sound marketing strategy, not an SEO link strategy. The real trick is to be able...Wed, 25 Jul 2007 09:41:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/link-building/problem-with-link-building-services/The launch of a free, comprehensive (more so than other free tools) analytics solution by Google Analytics in 2006 meant that web analytics could be utilized by everyone who chose to do so. Good thing or bad thing?Personally (odd though this may sound),...Tue, 17 Jul 2007 16:17:00 GMThttp://www.receptional.com/newsroom/traffic-analysis/analytics-reporting-vs-analysis-an-overview/