For example, in South Florida, our agency and efforts are alive and well. We have a few team members that meet with local businesses, advise them on the proper use of social media, and teach them the importance of leveraging their physical address for location-based marketing.

Location-based marketing is the general term that fits itself perfectly between the strategies known as social media and SEO. It’s where the two worlds collide. And right now, they are colliding inside of Google Places (Maps).

For each of us at Social Media Schools, we will see unique search results when we’re looking for local sushi restaurants. This is obvious. However, what goes into optimizing one’s rankings for these searches is a monster that is still being analyzed. We do know that the searcher’s own social graph is starting to play a role in the rankings. For example, if a Facebook friend of his/hers reviews a restaurant or +1′s it, it’s more likely to show up in the forefront. This notion makes a social presence even more important for businesses. If you’re engaging with customers and encouraging reviews and votes (of all sorts), you’re simultaneously benefiting your overall SEO status.

Whitney, for example, is a team member that resides in Sacramento. Sacramento Search Engine Optimization is a little bit different for her. She just moved out to Sacramento from Colorado and currently has little to no friends in her online social graph that would have any reason to ever engage with businesses that exist there. This is when the basic principles of SEO take full effect, but as aforementioned, we have yet to completely understand the other types of effects that social media, as a whole, might have on her Google searches.

Do your own search experiments and see what you find. Leave your comments below. We’d love to discuss this evolving world with you in depth.