Now it's getting off topic though. Viral marketing is not synonymous with Social Media Marketing. You can marketing virally (i.e. ebooks, etc), and never engage social media sites.
I am also not sure who has the free time to do SEO to just "bless" a random plumber with business.
In my opinion, if you are doing SEO and not leveragin Social Media sites, you are missing out. for example, you can see references to a websites poularity on StumbleUpon in the Google search results. I am fairly confident that Google would not waste the time to have it a part of the search results if they did not take its popularity on SU into consideration.
Please know that my goal is not to argue for the sake of arguing. I have just seen very good results from using Social Media in conjunction with SEO.
Anthony
I am also not sure who has the free time to do SEO to just "bless" a random plumber with business.
In my opinion, if you are doing SEO and not leveragin Social Media sites, you are missing out. for example, you can see references to a websites poularity on StumbleUpon in the Google search results. I am fairly confident that Google would not waste the time to have it a part of the search results if they did not take its popularity on SU into consideration.
Please know that my goal is not to argue for the sake of arguing. I have just seen very good results from using Social Media in conjunction with SEO.
Anthony