I wanted to break the silence for a minute to let readers know that, in spite of my apparent inactivity, I am actually hard at work. This is my personal blog, so updating it is not always a priority; but it will be updated soon enough with more original content on natural search and mobile SEO. Several things in the works, including a mobile SEO's guide to mobile site creators, version 2 of the mobile SEO's guide to mobile analytics, an iPhone query study, an update of the Mobile SEO White Paper, and a few other things. In the interim, you may be interested in checking out any one of several articles and blog posts that have come out recently:

Search Marketing Standard

Mobile Optimization Essentials
Fall 2008 issue
The article is only in the print version of the magazine, but if you have access to a copy I would highly recommend checking it out. Includes articles by mobile gurus Kim Dushinski and Bena Roberts, as well as information that I hadn't shared on this blog previously about mobile SEO.If you've read the article, please leave your comments in the article's forum.

FindResolution

Don't Pay $6 Million for SEO
Published September 9, 2008
About the recent Target accessibility settlement, and how it impacts SEO.

SEO Stands for "Always Keep Learning"
Published August 25, 2008
Five tips for learning search marketing beyond conferences.

SEO Doesn't Die. SEOs do.
Published August 18, 2008
A response to the recent SEO is dead resurgence. Personally I think the movement is better off dead.

A Quick Lesson in Title Tag Optimization
Published August 13, 2008
Quick steps to title tag improvements, using Search Engine Watch as an example.

SEO for Broadcast Media
Published July 24, 2008
How to optimize a television commercial for search.

Google Makes Flash Better, Not Best for SEO
Published July 10, 2008
About the recent improvements from Google in indexing Flash.


If you're a social bookmarker like me and you like any of these articles, Sphinns, Diggs and Stumbles are appreciated as always.

Thanks again for your patience. Stay tuned to the Natural Search and Mobile SEO blog for more original insights into SEO and mobile.

I’ve been keeping busy this month with various endeavors (including vacations, wedding planning, article writing, client support and process development), but I’ll be continuing to post new content in the near future to this blog. In the meantime, here are various articles I’ve written in the past few weeks to keep you entertained and informed until the next update.

Just a note to let my readers know that I updated my blogroll today. Since I started this Natural Search and Mobile SEO blog in May of last year, the focus has been as much on mobile search as it has been on desktop SEO, and I wanted to reflect that in the list of blogs I endorse. I also wanted to trim some of the fat, as I noticed several of the blogs on my blogroll were blogs I haven't read in months, or even, in some cases, unsubscribed from.

The result: 24 links deleted, 11 links added.

I've also updated the Mobile SEO Resources page with more great sources of information on mobile SEO.

Currently the first result in Google for “youtube keywords” is a video claiming to do video keyword research using WordTracker. The problem with doing keyword research for videos this way is that the most popular queries in WordTracker, which takes its data from meta search engines, are not necessarily the most popular queries in YouTube. In fact, in most cases they’re probably entirely dissimilar. Fortunately for video SEOs, last week brought a better video keyword tool for YouTube queries: YouTube itself.

Using the new YouTube Suggest tool I discovered some of the most popular YouTube queries and categories. The results aren't entirely surprising, but can be used to justify Arts & Entertainment spend in YouTube, or to find alternative subjects that still bring in a lot of search volume.

Anyone else going?:
AgencyBootcamp.com

Representatives from Facebook, MySpace, Intel, CafeMom and Izea will be there to answer questions. I have quite a few about how large brands can best leverage social media.

Ping me if you're planning on attending. I'll be there. Would be nice to meet some of you and see familiar faces.

If you’re looking for my recap of the Mobile Monday session, that should be posted on the Find Resolution blog later today. Here are the best of the rest from this past week, via my del.icio.us bookmarks.

Highlights from my del.icio.us bookmarks for the week of April 13, 2008.

The best of the Russ Beattie Mobile Web is Dead rebuttals, Google's mobile search growth announcement from their Q1 earnings report, and some good basic SEO advice from Google on accessibility and permanent redirects.

The best of my del.icio.us links for the week of April 6, 2008.

Highlights from my delicious bookmarks for the week of March 30, 2008.


Mobile as Bridge Between Old Media, Internet and POS
Several mobile visual search developments position mobile as a way of tracking success of print and broadcast media.

Bango announces high mobile conversion rates
Probably not a good idea to release this on April Fool's Day, but 2-8% average conversion rate is no laughing matter.

DeviceAtlas
Large database of mobile device information.

Microsoft To Upgrade Mobile IE Browser, Live Search For Mobile With New Mapping Features And Voice Search For Blackberries
MSN announces new mobile search improvements, including voice search for Blackberries.

Find Resolution: Building Links with Big Brand Websites, Part 2
Tactics for link building for larger sites.

Yahoo Introduces Wide Range Of Mobile Search Improvements
Information on the Yahoo! mobile voice et al announcement.

Today's iPhone Users are Young, Rich, and Technically Savvy - ReadWriteWeb
More iPhone demographic information.

CTIA: Sprint Uses 'Instinct' To Compete With iPhone - InformationWeek
Here come the iPhone clones. Announcing Instinct.

Inside the Marketers Studio: Five Paths to Mobile Search
Great post about different mobile search use cases.

Jupiter Research Predicts Big Business For Mobile Ads, Marketing : Mobile Marketing Watch
"Jupiter Research sees little reason to doubt that mobile advertising and marketing will continue expanding and thriving in the coming years."

If you manage digital content for a Fortune 500 site, you may be as tired as I am of the focus so many SEO sites seem to have on optimization for small business sites. No doubt small businesses are equally important, and there are far more people optimizing content for small to mid-size businesses (including me and my team), but there are a number of us out here with other problems that don't get nearly as much attention.

Though this is primarily a blog dealing with optimizing mobile content for mobile search engines, in my role as a consultant I need to understand how to optimize many types of digital content for many types of search engines. In this industry I've met many who are mobile marketers first and SEOs second. I'm an SEO first and a mobile marketer second. That said, it always perplexes me when I hear my fellow SEOs claim that SEO for mobile is basically SEO for the web, as in many cases the two couldn't be more different.

If you're wondering how they're different, and you haven't done it yet, be sure to check out my two-part post on the new FindResolution blog, How Mobile SEO is Different, which outlines five key differences between SEO and its mobile counterpart.

Stay tuned this week to the Natural Search and Mobile SEO Blog, where I will be posting more original content related to SEO for Mobile, including a review of several mobile analytics providers and what they offer to the mobile SEO.

Reflecting on several up and coming trends in the industry and presenting what I hope will be several positive outcomes for this new year, including mobile marketing converging with mobile SEO, the SEO community discussing strategy, and the search engines continuing to blur the lines between marketer and media.

Search Engine Journal is holding its annual search blogs awards, and a variety of industry pundits are currently nominating each other for awards. In the spirit of PageRank's links as votes ethos, I'm reposting my list below, along with a link to each and a short explanation of my rationale. Kudos to Loren Baker and Search Engine Journal for annually allowing us to pat ourselves on the back.

The official Google Webmaster Central Blog has a very comprehensive post this morning about trafficking in links that pass PageRank, and why webmasters who want to do well in Google natural search listings should avoid it. Small business owners may disagree with Google's long-standing opposition to paid links, but as I see it they're really looking out for the interests of small business owners and others without large marketing budgets with the stance.

Since SEO education is as much about knowing the basics of what it takes to index and rank a web site as it is staying abreast of the latest trends and algorithm changes, reading SEO blogs is an important part of any SEO training process. At Resolution Media we have a ranked blogroll that we use to help our employees navigate the blogosphere. Recently I’ve added quite a few blogs from the TopRank Big List, increasing the number of search blogs on our blogroll to 412, and have noticed that quite a few of these blogs have a rating of “1 – disposable”—even many of those that are listed on the Big List. There are a number of reasons for a blog getting a low rating on our blogroll, including being less relevant to our client base, but many of them are simply there because of lazy marketing writers with little to say. If you’re an SEO Blogger, please help me in making the blogosphere a better place for all of us by eliminating these 8 worst practices from your blogging bag of tricks.