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I'm seeing some growth starting around Oct 7th, but unlike you, I'm seeing this both for US and other countries, though all coming from the same site, so a bit different situation.

SEOMoz does not have article writing software, however, they have a number of tools that can be helpful when writing an article. If you have a specific topic in mind, you can use tools available for keyword research, research on sites that you could link to, and people that you could email or talk to that might have interest in your topic, and therefore might link to your article.

There are also a number of blog entries on topics that are similar, or similar-but-different, such as creating and marketing with Infographics.

I agree with the branding vs. SEO discussion on this topic--it's a mix really. People like efficiency, and when it comes to typing web site addresses, it's no exception. Our company name is 'SMC Corporation of America' but when it came to domains, we went with SMCUSA.com. SMC.com would have been better, but was already taken by SMC Network Equipment.

You may also want to consider other domains, such as .net, .biz, .us, etc. While it seems Google prefers .com names, it may provide you with more options and you can use a name for branding purposes.

They have included two of the three words in your 'key phrase' in the following:

• URL
• H1 Heading
• Body
• Link
• Image

Those are all things that Google looks at when considering relevance.

Because they have a relatively small amount of text, keyword density will rank the key phrase fairly high.

There is a lot to learn if you are new to SEO. Certainly, anything that you are able to learn from Google will be helpful, as they are generating 80+% of the search traffic for most web sites. I would also learn what you can from SEOMoz, as well as Avanish Kaushik (see his Occam's Razor blog) , SEO Book, and Marketing Sherpa.

The Google focus will tie directly to SEO keywords pretty quickly, which isn't a bad place to start--it's very understandable, but is only a small piece of the SEO puzzle. You need to focus on many different areas, but it all needs to tie back to the business.

The certificates provide an external credential that basically says you have a level of understanding. That gets your foot in the door. What will keep you there is business results.