In the early days, SEO was about keyword density, stuffing titles and meta keywords, putting misspellings on the page... After that, there were directory listings, paid links, exact match anchor text... Pretty boring! Fast-forward a little, and we’ve got Panda updates emphasizing original content and general quality of your site, Rand saying that being a brand is important (video), Eric Enge writes how businesses should have a clear differentiation (which helps linkbuilding), Vanessa Fox tying SEO to user experience (UX) with Searcher Personas, and there’s a leaked Google document saying that if a website exists just to make money, “it’s spam...”

Going from primarily a routine work, to coming up with business’ unique value propositions, becoming a thought leader, being genuinely helpful to others, establishing customer and searcher personas, even being involved in UX and usability of your site... What happened? Chances are, in your / your clients’ industries, SEO has crossed "The Chasm" and to adjust, you'll need a great strategy.

SEO Today
Yes, there are still TONS of small businesses which aren’t doing much online. How many local businesses do you know which have their Google Place verified? Living in Albany, NY probably doesn’t help, but definitely not more than 15%. How many of them make a good use of keywords throughout their pages? Not more than 10%. Their business cards say “Like us on Facebook,” but do not list a website address...

Forget the personas, strategically placing keywords on a page, optimizing image alt tags, etc... Just getting a site up with the good structure (e.g., crawlable) and optimizing local listings to include relevant keywords would do it. There’s still a long way to go here, and I won’t argue that 16+% of small businesses truly embraced SEO.

What If?
But, for a minute, imagine if every small business got the on-page stuff correctly, had a useful site, blogged regularly and effectively, had a small network of customers on social media sites, and got a “standard” amount of backlinks from local sites, some related directories, and a few from local media sites. Everybody on the same level, where all low-hanging fruit has been picked. What would then SEOs advise them? Invest $5000 on a link building campaign? (They barely paid $1000 for launching their whole website.) Not likely.

The Reality Check
However for medium-to-big businesses, $5000 link building campaigns is a reality, and it’s in a monthly budget. My point here is that unlike small businesses, bigger ones are willing to pay A LOT to stay in the game (rank on a first page or at least try to), even if it doesn’t provide positive ROI. This gap, I’m calling it a “Reality Check” in a graph below, is a reason which prevents big businesses from truly embracing SEO and reinventing themselves to adjust to the new ways of customers finding them (a.k.a. inbound marketing - see my "Inbound Marketing Ecosystem" infographic).

Truth is, competing for rankings by spending more money resembles an Adwords-type auction -- if everybody does the “standard linkbuilding package,” then the more you pay, the higher you show up. There’s also a “quality score” (effectiveness of processes / outreach program / creativity): the better, the cheaper. Making sure your money go a long way is an effective way to compete for rankings, and this is where SEO stands today for most of us... Can this be taken further, to truly beat competition? I think yes! But there’s no magic pill for that...

Increasing “Linkability” of Your Business

Instead of SEO being an afterthought, I think a significant competitive advantage can be gained by estimating SEO impact of what you do as a business ahead of time and doing great marketing. For example,

• Do your execs regularly contribute to the media outlets and popular blogs?
• When considering new website updates or new campaigns, do you think how it can benefit SEO, as opposed to how it will impact it?
• Do your employees speak at the conferences or local events?
• Are you a part of the truly remarkable business, which people naturally talk good things about?
• Finally, does your business stand out within your industry?

Answer a “Yes” to couple of these, and you’re a WAY ahead already. You’re naturally earning links, opposed to doing expensive / time-consuming outreaches and “pushing.” And guess what? All the things above are also GREAT for your business! To catch up, your competitors would need more time and money, while you can think of the next remarkable thing to do in your business which will simply attract inbound links. “Remarkable” is something people make remarks of, and web’s remarks are links! (Credit for this line goes to Brian Halligan of HubSpot.) Becoming remarkable (“linkable”), therefore, should be your business strategy, which happens to help rankings...

Take a look at the graph below.
1) As “linkability” of your business goes up, required investment to get Page 1 rankings goes down.
2) Whenever your business’ linkability is higher than the industry’s average, you gain a competitive advantage:

(a) paying less money to get similar rankings;
(b) or spending same money as your average competitor, but ranking higher.

More Than a Search
I have been part of the SEO industry (full-time) for a little more than two years, and have seen it change significantly... SEO is now much more than Search. We do inbound marketing. We need to be great at it, while optimizing every step we can, at every level. And those businesses we work with need to embrace this shift and transform themselves to gain a competitive advantage, rank higher, get more leads, and help bunch of people along the way.

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Slavik Volinsky is owner of Volinsky Consulting in Albany NY, where he helps small businesses with online presence, web design, and utilizing inbound marketing to get new customers online. Follow him on twitter @svolinsky or read his blog.