After almost ten weeks, I'm finally back from maternity leave. It was a fantastic couple of months and my new little guy is growing like a weed. As you can imagine...leave didn't really mean "not working" for me, it simply meant a shift of focus for a little bit.

For an idea of what I've been up to, you can check out the podcasts of the two webinars that I did with Freshbooks CEO Michael McDerment. In the first webinar, we covered a lot of the basics of search marketing for small business owners. In the second webinar we delved into things like link building, viral marketing and managing your online reputation.

I also went back and spent some time working on The Lactivist project again. From building a whole new blog interface to civil disobedience to exploring the concept of blog carnivals to starting up a new fundraiser, I worked on bringing focus and direction back to a site that gives me loads of opportunity to experiment with the very ideas that I share here on Search Engine Guide.

I've also been gathering together information and data so that we can get a new update to the Small Business Guide to Search Engine Marketing out sometime after the first of the year. We'll be adding quite a bit of information on blogging, viral marketing and in using visitor segmentation in your web analytics to help guide your future marketing efforts. If you've already bought the book, we'll drop you a note when the latest version is available for download. If you're planning on buying the book, don't hold off...you can read through all the juicy goodness now and simply read through the newest content as soon as we get it mixed in with the book.

Finally, I've been updating old talks and working on some new talks to gear up for Search Engine Strategies Chicago, which is going on as I type this. If you're at the show, you can catch me on Wednesday at 2:00pm in the Link Baiting & Viral Search Success sessions as well as on Thursday at 9:00am in Bid Ideas For Small Sites and Small Budgets and finally at 12:30pm in 75 Minute Search Abs. (Oh yes, and for you baby crazy types, I'm bringing Emmitt with me and he's very cuddly!)

So here's to rounding out 2006 and gearing up for 2007 with some fabulous content, some interesting blog posts and the same great news round-ups that you've come to love.