Paige steered me towards this Forbes article on The Death of SEO: The Rise of Social, PR, and Real Content and all I can say is Thank God. SEO, as a job descriptor, always struck me as the Used Car Salesman style job of the Internet. Just an awful role to ape the system to make your client seem more relevant than they are. Obviously the change to the Google search results being more socially fueled isn't new news but it's nice to see some of the bigger press outlets reporting on it and flying the flag to signify the death of an industry that was never needed in the first place. The end advice from the article is this:

Invest in real, valuable, relevant content that your audience wants. Make it so compelling people talk about it and share it.

If this is a piece of insight that you're just now coming to realize you've got a lot of work to do. Good luck!