• The ASK.com blog has an interesting post on what makes a search engine semantic ^[1]. It’s pretty interesting when reading their examples of how a four year old would act as a search engine. But more importantly, a search engine can’t be called semantic until they can be less keyword based and more understanding of the human search.
• I have to give Sam Niccolls an ‘A’ for effort on his post about how TechCrunch blogs about porn frequently ^[2] and actually generates a ton of traffic from these high search volume keywords. It makes you wonder, what keywords you could be including in your blog to enhance your SEO rankings – aside from Porn that is.
• On the SEOmoz blog, Lucy Langdon has a thorough and reasonable post on the benefits of using niche blogs for traffic and link-building. ^[3] To define, these are blogs that focus on a specific subject and are updated regularly. She offers great advice on how to find these lesser-known blogs and the value they can offer.
• On the heels of the “United breaks guitars” ^[4] debacle, Matt McGee’s post on how social media and PR can sometimes matter more than SEO ^[5] is especially relevant. Something interesting to keep in mind.
• Want to know how Twitter decides their “Suggested Users List” – (aka Who to Follow)? Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Land has a nice post on Who Does Twitter Love? ^[6] Getting on the list is a far stretch but it would sure do wonders for your social media efforts.
• Here is a smart post from Search Engine Journal on How & Why to Optimize Image Size ^[7]. Noting how slow download times are no good for crawl rate, the post offers tips on how to decrease your image size in Photoshop and with other tools.
• An interesting podcast from PersonalLifeMedia featuring Bruce Clay ^[8] answering all kinds of questions about SEO, submitted by a group of other internet marketers. It’s always interesting to hear what works for others!
• It’s good to keep up with search volume trends ^[9] in order to know where you should focus your optimization efforts. As usual, Google still has the lion share of search, but Bing and Yahoo continue to duke it out.

Jessica is an Account Supervisor at Hanapin Marketing ^[10], a search engine marketing firm focused on generating results through PPC and SEO.