ElementsDaily

When it comes purchasing domain names, I’ve seen a lot of my colleagues purchase hyphenated domains because the non-hyphenated versions were already taken by someone else. I don’t really think that’s a wise practice because most type-ins (surfers who type in a domain name rather than landing on a website via a search engine) will type in the name without the hyphens. In that case I just recommend spending a little bit of time and getting a bit creative to come up with a unique domain name.

But if you dismiss the type-in traffic, can a hyphenated name really hurt you? Not so according to Bing’s program manager, Brett Yount and Google software engineer Matt Cutts whose blog has become the voice of Google’s best practices for SEO. Both have publicly stated that hyphens in a URL act as keyword separators.

Retailers who are actively involved in marketing their products and/or services using Facebook may have a distinct advantage over their competitors, according to the latest Morpace Omnibus study.

Businesses are using Facebook as a means to offer and receive product recommendations. The study concentrates on three key areas: which consumer segments are most likely to use Facebook and how frequently; how often consumers search for or share product/company opinions or information, and which demographics are most likely to use the social media website.

“The results show us that Facebook is a tool for retailers to directly communicate with their target market,” said Morpace Retail Vice President Kirsten Denyes. “Retailers can offer consumers product information and exclusive coupons and discounts to create viral product buzz among Facebook consumers”, Denyes added.

Among the primary reasons consumers join a Facebook fan page are: “To let my friends know what products I support,” (41 percent) and “To receive

We are pleased to introduce Internet Marketing Specialist, Russ Lubin, who recently joined our team. Russ’ role at Elements will be helping our clients with Traffic procurement, SEO strategies and Social Media Marketing. After receiving a Bachelors degree from UC Santa Cruz, Russ started a web-design and hosting reselling business in 1997. Over the years, his focus gradually evolved into performing online affiliate marketing strategies for a variety of industries.

Russ started his new role at Elements last Monday. “My plan is to take my years of online marketing experience to help create successful traffic procurement strategies that

Ran across this phrase & thought it had a couple of different play on meanings that could apply to Elements.

SEF – “Search Engine Friendly”, User optimized.

The context might be a little different, but here is the statement.

“Whilst I do get the idea of SEO, I pretty much agree with what you say. I always try and build sites so they are ‘SEF’ – or Search Engine Friendly. I.e. proper mark-up, decent headings, browser titles, and structure. Apart from that, I think decent content will do just a good a job, if not better, than an SEO chap can do.”

SEF! I think that’s a great way of looking at it. “My site is search-engine-friendly but user-optimized.”

Here is a link to the full article if you are interested: (Jessica the author is writing from a marketing viewpoint)
http://boagworld.com/marketing/i-dont-get-seo

We thought this was interesting. The national survey conducted by Cision and Don Bates of The George Washington University’s Master’s Degree Program in Strategic Public Relations found that 89% of journalists are using blogs, 65% are using Social Networking Sites, and 52% are using Microblogging Sites to find newsworthy content. Reliability, however, is one of the biggest concerns with these online sources. Read the full report.