I have to say … this was a pretty boring month up until these last couple days. No offense to anyone, of course. But have a look: If not for the current hot news, there wouldn’t even be a RANTS category below. Fortunately, we got some news and several terrific rants. Whew! Blogger of the month has to be Matt Bailey; I think he only wrote three posts all month, and all three are included below. Well done, Matt.

Here’s my roundup of the best search/marketing posts during May. If you’re new to SBS, this is a monthly feature and will lead to something fun later in the year. You can find earlier “Best Of”s for each month in the archives. Only rule is that my own posts are not eligible.

Small Business

• Steve/Small Business Branding: How To Be Unremarkable
• Kevin/Small Business Branding: Branding on a Shoestring Budget
• Christine/Search Engine Land: Free Web Design Tools From The Big Three: SEO Friendly Or Not?

Local Search

• Bill/SEO by the Sea: Yahoo tackles Geographic Challenges of Web Search Results

Social Media

• Matt/SiteLogic: Social Traffic: Useless Gossip or Powerful Word of Mouth
• Robin/Master New Media: YouTube Video Marketing: Ten Ways You Can Use YouTube To Promote Your Online Content

SEO

• Matt/SiteLogic: Branding v Optimization- Something Has to Give.
• Bill/SEO by the Sea: Mindmapping Audiences and Tasks for Category and Keyword Development
• Aaron/SEOBook: Information Architecture is the Most Underrated Component of Effective Search Marketing
• Matt/SiteLogic: The Basics of Search Engine Optimization
• Dharmesh/Small Business Hub: 7 Signs You Should Run Screaming From An SEO Consultant

Blogging

• Chris Garrett: Where Blogs fit into your online marketing strategy
• Chris Garrett: Sales Lead Blogs - The Art of Selling with Your Blog

Online Marketing / General

• Jeremiah Owyang: Web Strategy: How to evolve your irrelevant corporate website
• Jeremiah Owyang: Web Strategy: The “Air Traffic Tower” helps to keeps you aware, coordinated, and relevant
• Cameron/Search Engine Land: 5 Reasons To Put Viral Content On Mini-Sites

PPC

• John Ellis: Seven Habits Of Highly Effective Pay-Per-Click Advertisers

Metrics

• Avinash/Occam’s Razor: Excellent Analytics Tip #11: Measure Effectiveness Of Your Web Pages

Web Design

• Rand/SEOmoz: 17 New Rules for Successful E-Commerce Websites

Google

• Danny/SEL: Google 2.0: Google Universal Search
• Graywolf: Google Love Affair with Wikipedia

Rants

• Todd/Stuntdubl: How Sequoia Venture Capital Will Pop the Bubble of Web 2.0 - Mahalo or MFAhollow?
• Jennifer/Search Engine Guide: Hey Jason, Search Results are Never "Done"
• Brian/Scoreboard Media: Mahalo: That’s Hawaiian for 8 Visitors A Month

LOL Funny!

• John/Got Ads? Two Rocks Humping
• Scott/Web Professor: Tracking Google Base Referrals using Google Analytics (love the images!)