Stephan Spencer is an author of The Art of SEO published in October 2009 by O'Reilly and co-authored by Eric Enge, Rand Fishkin and Jessie Stricchiola.

Stephan is the founder of Netconcepts. Netconcepts started out as a web design and marketing agency, but over time morphed into a leading SEO firm. Stephan, and Netconcepts, had been heavy into the science of SEO since 1999.

Netconcepts was acquired in January 2010 by paid and organic search software/services agency Covario. Covario is one of those rare companies to have made it onto the Inc 500 list two years in a row -- in 2009 and now again in 2010.

Stephan is the inventor of the automated pay-for-performance natural search technology platform GravityStream, now re-branded as Organic Search Optimizer.

He is a Senior Contributor to Practical Ecommerce and to MarketingProfs.com, a monthly columnist on Search Engine Land, and a regular contributor to Multichannel Merchant magazine. He's also contributed to DM News, Catalog Age, Catalog Success, Building Online Business, Unlimited, and NZ Marketing magazine, among others.

Stephan is a frequent conference speaker on SEO and other online marketing topics for the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), American Marketing Association (AMA), Shop.org, Internet Retailer, SMX, IncisiveMedia (Search Engine Strategies), O'Reilly/TechWeb, PubCon, ECMOD, IQPC and IIR. His hundreds of speaking gigs have taken him around the globe - everywhere from Berlin, London, Toronto, Santiago, and Auckland, to New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and places in between.

Stephan is an avid blogger. He blogs at Stephan Spencer's Scatterings, NaturalSearchBlog.com, BusinessBlogConsulting.com, ChangesForGood.org, and Google, I Suggest... He's also been a contributor for the following group blogs: Searchlight (part of the CNET Blog Network), Shop.org Blog, and MarketingProfs Daily Fix.

He holds an M.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

• ‘Tis The Season For Link Baiting
• The Secret Life Of The Black Hat SEO
• 25 Super Common SEO Mistakes
• Google Power User Tips: SERP URL Parameters
• Google Power User Tips: Query Operators
• SEO Checklist Part 2: Best Practices
• 29 Worst Practices & Most Common Failures: SEO Checklist Part I
• 36 More SEO Myths That Won’t Die But Need To
• SEO Myths Reloaded: Clarifications, Consensus And Controversy
• 36 SEO Myths That Won’t Die But Need To
• Anatomy Of A Google Snippet
• Organic Search & Paid Search: Are They Synergistic Or Cannibalistic?
• In The SEO Game, It’s All About Strategies And Systems
• The Science Of Scoring Your SEO
• 10 Last-Minute SEO Tips For Holiday Shopping Season
• How To Choose Content Management Systems For SEO
• Link Economics 101: A Prerequisite For Advanced SEO
• The Social Media Underground
• Can The SEO Industry Switch To A Pay-for-Performance Pricing Model?
• What?! A Search-Hostile Site That Still Ranks Well
• A Deeper Look At Robots.txt
• URL Rewrites and Redirects: The Gory Details (Part 2 of 2)
• URL Rewrites & Redirects: The Gory Details (Part 1 of 2)
• Optimizing A Large-Scale Web Site? Do The Two-Step
• Tools of the SEO Trade
• Making Sense Of Google’s New Dynamic URL Recommendations
• Redirects: Good, Bad & Conditional
• SMX Advanced: Black, Blue, And Read All Over
• Supercharge Your URLs For Maximum SEO Impact
• SEO Is Not Free Traffic
• Being Off-Topic, Off-Message, Or Off-Brand Can Be Good For Your SEO!
• How to Write a Killer RFP (Request for Proposal) For Hiring An SEO Firm
• Think You’re Successfully Flying Under Google’s Radar? Think Again.
• Sculpting Your PageRank For Maximum SEO Impact
• Effective Tagging For Both Usability & SEO
• The Search Engine Unfriendliness Of Web 2.0
• The Pros And Cons Of Microsites As An SEO Option
• Twelve SEO Mistakes Most Bloggers Make
• Scalable On-Page SEO Strategies
• Deconstructing Grouped Google Results
• Search Friendly CMS Does Not Equal Search Optimized One
• The Art Of SEO For Wikipedia & 16 Tips To Gain Respect
• Good Cloaking, Evil Cloaking & Detection