Whether you’re into social media, professional networking, PPC campaigns, email marketing, or any other type of online marketing, its a necessity to know it is still ALL about search.

I had to really give this some thought after encountering several freelancers and small businesses who do “search engine marketing” but NOT social media. This makes little sense to me and became even more strange when I was asked by someone else about social media for lead generation. Sure, social media MAY eventually generate leads on its own, but if you want people to take action on your website, you have to get them there. That is still done through search.

You’re site is optimized, you create inbound links to your site by commenting on relevant sites, other sites are linking to you and so you are ranked somewhere in the search engines. You want to do more. PPC ads get you into keywords that only the “big guys” have, but these often cost a fortune.  Email marketing gets the word right to people who have had some contact with you (or you have purchased a big list and are spamming, BAD! STOP!), but the new people are finding you in Google, Yahoo!, etc. by searching for the keywords you are optimized for.

Social media can help your optimization. Twitter posts are public and links you post about your site or your blog are more inbound links; this is given even more weight by search eninges if its re-tweeted by others. Your LinkedIn profile is public, so make sure your website is on there and update your status with new blog posts to keep that content fresh (search engines love fresh content). Do the same things on your Facebook page.

This may not make your website go to #1 in Google, but you will start appearing more often in your keywords, company name, etc. across various sites that YOU control. Potential leads can search and gather tons of information about your business as you lead them to your actionable website.

So do it all, because it’s all search marketing. If you have a firm working for you who “doesn’t do” social media as part of your search strategy, then they are not doing all they can for you.