Search engine optimization is a very useful thing, but it’s not the only game in town.  A fresh Pew Internet report found that less than half of Internet users perform a search on any given day.

So, although the Pew report didn’t have much to do with businesses or marketing, what might we take from it?  Email should remain an important part of every campaign, with 60 percent of over 2,250 adult participants checking it on a daily basis.  Even though search is catching up, email-checking remains the main online activity.

Much farther down the list, with just 13 percent of folks participating daily, were social networking sites.  This doesn’t mean they’re in any way bad, of course; you’ll just need to weigh the less popular nature of social networks against the dollar cost of other things and the amount of time you’ve got available.

Then, when engaging in an SEO, email, or social media campaign, you can optimize for all the other things on the list: news, weather, “research hobby,” and “surf web for fun.”  This might be a good way to capitalize on the surprisingly low overall percentages (since it almost appears that some Internet users do nothing).

One last note: don’t forget about the Olympics.  With all the hubbub focused on the Summer Games, mentioning them seems like another good way to draw some views from every source.

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