Codicil: Anyone who knows me know I’m the second last person in the world to suck up to the boss… (I’d say last but that’s too much like aspiring to a recognizable title, which I don’t as a rule do.)

I would like to think I’m a good employee, showing up on time, putting in an honest day’s work, playing nice with all the other kids, telling all the other kids where I got my toys (cause let’s face it, no one really likes to share).

Its true! Let me explain. While I was at Pubcon in Las Vegas last week, I sat in on a couple of sessions about video optimization, and had this revelation that almost certainly will come to fruition. Search optimization of videos will become a very important component of movie, video, and television production going forward. Accordingly, I want to ensure that our company is prepared once this inevitability occurs … so Stephen Spielberg, I want to throw our name into the short list of potential SEOs of Record now. Here’s why you’re gonna need us … soon! You can reach me directly at jeff (at) searchenginepeople.com (hehe).

“… it’s really not a matter IF the mobile phone will become the dominant internet platform any more but WHEN…” - Yahoo! analyst Russell Beattie

With 15 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers accessing news and information via the mobile browser, mobile search represents a huge growth opportunity for SEO’s. The Kelsey Group recently revealed that nearly half of mobile users will be looking for a mobile phone with better Internet capability when they make their next mobile phone purchase.

Recently a client asked me for some Podcasting Tips.  I was surprised at how little information is out there on Podcasting compared to other forms of internet marketing.  This is surprising given that advertisers are expected to spend will spend more than $400 million on podcasting by 2011 from $80 million in 2006 (eMarketer). Our podcasting clients have found that their Podcasting Series has helped to position them as a leader in their industry.

In any case, being the good Account Manager that I am, I spoke to a few of our marketing and technical specialists, and pulled together this top 10 list of Podcasting Best Practices:

This battle is a lot closer than most of you can imagine. I’m constantly hearing about how the Yellow Pages are dying and there’s no value in them. While most may say that I’m biased because of the number of years I spent in the industry, the same cannot be said for Google Analytics.

Google Analytics cannot lie, it has no biases and, thank goodness for the Yellow Pages, paints a much different picture than many so called experts. You just have to know what to look for.

Can a good search presence improve an offline marketing campaign’s results? You may be surprised to hear … ABSOLUTELY! Offline and search campaigns are actually very symbiotic in nature. See the proof abreviated in graphical form below, but also be sure to check out the full study.

The Proof:

Courtesy iProspect

The Cudos:
The study was commissioned by iProspect and was performed by Jupiter Research. It was titled iProspect Offline Channel Influence on Online Search Behavior Study. Check it out! Our industry needs more of these studies performed. Google, Yahoo, ermmm MSN … please step up!

Hot on the heels of a posting titled ‘Differentiate (Your Avatar) or Die’ by Michael (aka planetc1) over at Sphinn, and following the unique experince had recently by one of the ladies here in our office, I was prompted to create an avatar experiment and then test it. Essentially, she (our female staff member) changed her StumbleUpon avatar, and upon doing so, her friend count increased very quickly with virtually no effort.

Now, I’m sure many of you have theories about this, but it certainly caused many of us at SEP to chat and theorize in the office. After much debate, we hypothesized that:

Further to my August 23rd post, “Yellow Pages Goes Social” I talked about how the Yellow Pages Group in Canada had launched their integration of Facebook for users who want to save and share their favorite businesses by using their link function on Facebook.com.

Darby Seiben, Senior Manager - Traffic, Distribution and eProduct Management with YellowPages.ca, posted a great update on his blog letting us know that yellowpages.ca expanded this one step further by integrating the “add to facebook” directly into the search results as well as the business profile page for every business in Canada

When I was writing my piece on “Search and the Pareto Principle” (aka the 20/80 Rule) last week, I was playing around with Sphinn (a Digg types news submission and sharing service for those in the SEO/SEM/SMM industry) and found some really interesting information that I thought might be worthwhile sharing.

Here are some of the findings as of yesterday:

1) there were 4371 profiles on Sphinn … that’s a large number of people engaging in seo/sem/smm to one degree or another