Marshall Simmonds, SEO guru for the New York Times, told a group of Boise reporters and PR flaks yesterday that Google search queries are getting longer.So how long are your searches? Do you type a whole sentence, or are you more about quality of search terms than raw, uncut length?

I'm not always a fan of Guy Kawasaki's work, but really enjoyed his post on the OPEN Forum - A Dozen Don'ts for Entrepreneurs. I thought I'd take a stab at replicating it with some of my biggest warnings for those in our field.For the list below, the word "clients" is interchangeable with "marketing manager" or "executive team" for in-house SEOs.

Buyers search differently than in years past. Buyers have many more options when they search. Search results are evolving. The content buyers can consume about sellers is getting more diverse across social media platforms. Sellers must create a broad footprint on the web to be found the way buyers search.

Even though Microsoft's timing and coordination in launching Bing left a lot to be desired, it's done a pretty good job of delivering a user-focused product. The jury is still out as to whether consumers (and, for that matter, businesspeople) will make the switch to Bing from their favorite search engine.

PulseRank could soon become a standard industry buzzword and practice for SEO professionals attempting to optimize Web sites, as engines move from static into real-time search. That's the promise of up-to-the-minute information streams -- the type that come from the microblogging site Twitter.

I've gotten a lot of email recently from folks asking what they can do to get involved in the world of search marketing and SEO. Tonight, Mystery Guest and I attended the Seattle Job Social event and had a really interesting experience talking to people about SEOmoz, the positions we're hiring for (SysAdmins of the Northwest, please email us!) and the field of search engine marketing. The same issue came up again and again - how do I break into that market?

As Microsoft tries to take away market share from Google with its new search engine, Bing, it is battling Google feature by feature. One feature where Microsoft seems to be edging out Google is with displaying recent search trends. This may not be a major feature, but it shows a weakness in Google’s armor.

Microsoft recently published a PDF about Search Engine Optimization called Bing: New Features Relevant to Webmasters. This is the second SEO-related offering in as many weeks. During SMX Advanced, Microsoft launched the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit. I’m working on a review of that as well, but it requires Vista or Windows 7 and IIS [...]

While Google continues to dominate in search market share and volume, social media sites are the only properties showing positive growth, according to comScore's numbers comparing May to April.

Quality SEO is presently a significantly undervalued skill set. Since this value proposition is not yet understood by many management team executives, it often lacks the executive support it requires both in terms of financial resources and supporting needed operational changes.