Every year SEOMoz puts out a great study of what factors top SEO experts believe to be most important in impacting your rankings. Here is a link to this year’s study which puts a great deal of emphasis on the quality and variety of inbound links to your site. As much as I value the information in a study like this, I’m struck by the fact that SEO experts still remain obsessed with the concept of how to drive people to a single site. With all of the developments in social media content and services permeating the web we need to move away from our obsessions with our own site rankings and develop SEO models that are based on optimizing how we are found within the total search experience of the user.

A study by the market research firm PhoCusWright indicates that travelers who select and purchase their travel options online spend over twice the amount of those who execute the entire process offline. This does not necessarily mean that online travelers spend twice as much per trip but they spend twice as much annually. So, in fairness, it could mean that the online traveler is a more frequent traveler than their offline counterpart. However stats like these place continued emphasis on the online channel for destination marketers.

A recent report by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has indicated the mobile internet usage is higher than many may have thought with an interesting demographic leading the way- African Americans.

Though a certain social network whose name starts with “f” and rhymes with “racebrook” is the one on everyone’s mind these days, do not overlook the possibility that there may be a niche social network out there that could be just the thing for you. Wikipedia has a great jumping off point for those looking to get an overview of the variety of social networks lurking about on the surface of Planet Social Media. Click here to check it out.

According to a study by Borrell Associates, Facebook will receive over $500 million this year in advertising revenue with over 74% of that revenue derived from local businesses using Facebook to target users geographically. Click here for more information but Borrell is quick to note that despite the striking focus on local advertising on Facebook that the overall numbers still represent only a a tiny fraction of the overall dollars spent on local advertising. However what interests me is not the overall percentage of local advertising budgets that is going to social networks but rather the speed with which any percentage at all has gone to them and the fact the Facebook is the preferred choice.

For those who have not had a chance to read about it lately, here’s a link to an article about how Zappo’s put 104 ad agencies through the hoops in a botched RFP process.

This is my invitation to Zappos to participate in my RFP process: