As a social marketing tool, StumbleUpon Paid Discovery )a.k.a. StumbleUpon ads( is underrated. Paid Discovery helps people who are likely to be interested in your infographic - or your clever article or how-to guide, etc. - find your infographic at a fraction of the cost of traditional promotional methods.

The Loch Ness monster is a myth. Despite concerted and scientific efforts, the only signs of Nessie are a few grainy photographs'yet the myth continues. In the SEO community, we have a similar mythical monster lurking, and it's called "inbound links from bad sites can earn your site a Google penalty." Let's put this myth to bed once and for all.

Even though Google+ is still in its infancy, there is already a powerful tool available to link builders. Called FindPeopleOnPlus.com , it's a directory of Google+ users that sorts and refines Google+ users by location, occupation, relationship status, popularity, and more. At the time this article was written, FindPeopleOnPlus had about 1 million people in their directory, all of whom could be sorted by these characteristics.

Many in the SEO community contend that pay-per-click )PPC( advertising is a waste of money. Since PPC is about buying clicks from the search engine, and since SEO is about earning clicks from the search engines, many SEO consultants argue that PPC is just throwing money at a problem instead of working toward a solution. While it is likely true that SEO has a better long-term ROI than PPC, the fact of the matter is that PPC advertising shouldn't be compared to SEO. Why,

We all know that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what we might not know is that a picture can also be worth a thousand links. Contracting a professional photographer to capture images of a news-worthy event can be a great way to both build links and establish new relationships, and based on my experience it can be cost effective as well.

If you've been in SEO for more than a few weeks, it's a safe bet you've seen poorly moderated blog comments or forum threads that have been polluted with spammy links. It's also likely you've found evidence of "link hacking," the unauthorized placement of links on an otherwise quality website via some sort of hacking mechanism. These are forms of link pollution , and much like real-world pollution, they can damage our search environment if left unchecked.

When smart people interview search engineers and hear a cryptic explanation about a potentially new ranking signal - or review a Google patent application - it's interesting news to SEO practitioners like me. I freely admit that I pay attention to these stories and read them carefully. However, when it comes to all the recent emphasis on social signals in search rankings , the tail is wagging the dog .

While it may not be labeled on your desk calendar, today marks the unofficial beginning of a period that I like to call the " Formulaic New Years Content Festival, " or FNYCF for brevity's sake. FNYCF is the time of year when people seem to really enjoy "year in review" and "best of 2010″ stories that re-cap the events of the last 12 months. According to Google Trends,

One of the things I enjoy most about SEO is that I get to work with a lot of creative, talented specialists, especially copywriters. For those who don't know, a copywriter is someone who writes marketing copy. In essence, a website content writer is a copywriter. The world has thousands and thousands of copywriters. Sifting through the masses to find a talented, affordable, and likeable copywriter is not always an easy task. But after some time,