I want to introduce you to Michael Colemire, a Kentucky artist, and newly initiated asker of dumb SEO questions.

I talk to a lot of people about SEO and social media marketing. It is my job, so that makes perfect sense. I answer a lot of questions, debunk a lot of myths, and develop a lot of ideas. I brainstorm with industry know-it-alls, and I brainstorm with people who know little or nothing about these topics, but want to grow their business.

Something I found interesting while I recently visited on the phone with my friend and long-time reader of my blog was that he was afraid of asking dumb questions. His name is Michael Colemire, and he is a very talented sculptor and wood carver. He is not a marketing guy, but he has some great works of art to market, so he wants to learn.

Have you ever been hit by a stroke of Genius, telling you that automated directory submissions will help your ranking in search engine results? Maybe you thought that some nicely crafted meta tags would help your search engine ranking. I may be a bit too hard on people at times, but common sense just completely eludes many people when it comes to SEO (search engine optimization). Many website owners want to rank in the top of search results so badly that they will try almost anything. Well, as long as it is cheap, easy, and sounds techie-fancy.

When I started to write this, I was going to rant about automated directory submissions. Then I realized that I have touched on the topic of directory submissions before. I still have something to get off my chest, and I still have something to say about the toxic lies and misinformation that have been created surrounding the SEO industry. It is often fueled by greed and hope of getting something for nothing.

I suspect that you want to know, “is Twitter good for SEO?” Either that, or your bum is feeling pretty sore, and you are willing to try anything. I am happy to help with the Twitter part, and I am sorry about your rump. Try pistachio, but don’t blame me if it doesn’t work.

I am surprised that more people have not discussed the topic of Twitter and SEO to provide their opinion-based answers. I think that a lot of people are afraid to touch on this, for fear of giving an unpopular answer, or being wrong. Well, leave it to me to tell you this: “Yes, Twitter helps SEO!”

Twitter can help with SEO efforts, directly, as well as indirectly when Twitter users share the information in places such as blogs, social bookmarking sites, and elsewhere. If somebody tells you otherwise, you are listening to the wrong SEO advice.

It seems that a lot of people talk about the mechanical aspects of marketing these days. When the Internet is involved, people seem to get really hung up on the technical issues … the mechanics of marketing. Sure, it matters, but the mechanics of today’s marketing starts to seem like the equivalent of marketers of the past calling a printing press their best tool.

I am a marketing guy, and a web guy. I write a lot of articles about SEO and social media marketing, and it is something that I know well. I write about topics such as SEO tips, blogging tools, social media measurement, marketing strategy, and much more.

I work hard to teach people how to help themselves, and when they need some extra help, I provide services for hire. Now I want to share an important tip that may very well help you more than any other!

I have heard many arguments about separating SEO and social media by trying to decypher which is more valuable. Here are a few questions that marketers use for producing arguments:

• Which is more important … SEO or social media?
• Which discipline provides the higher return on investment?
• How do you calculate the ROI of social media?
• SEO? Isn’t that some sort of fairy dust?
• How do you separate chicken poop from toothpaste?

OK, that last one was my own personal interpretation, but seriously … how can people get this so mixed up that they stand in their corner spewing their respective knowledge without coming together in the center and having a big group hug?