Sorry, sad geek talk, but I was going through my fatter-than-Al-Gore RSS feed today and happened upon a very nice post in SEOptimise entitled: The Six Most Marketable SEO Skills. (No charge for the follow link boys! )

To summarize:
1> Analysis
2> Programming
3> Web Design
4> Social Media
5> Blogging
6> Sales

Good stuff - but only if you are not worried about getting outsourced to India or China. The problem with what I will call Type-1 skills is that someone 25% as good as you for 10% the cost will take your cake, outsource the cleaning of the plate to Malaysia, and send his kids to private school on it. And there will be a mile of people behind him trying to figure out how to take his job.

So I’d add that I was please to see sales (self-sales, really) on the list but would put:

A> Keen understanding of the clients market
B> Competitive analysis of the business
C> Focus on bottom line effects
D> Excessive client service

None of those can be outsourced. In bulk anyway.

In fact, the pyramid leverage model should inform your own push to get <1> - <6> out into a cheaper local (Des Moines? Bangalore? Saxapahaw?) so that your overall client value goes up. The trick is to provide more overall hours at the same price (and higher profit margin) rather than the obverse. The key here is your ability to create a larger client base.

I suspect that many of the people reading these posts are wondering why I seem so uninterested in SEO technology. Nothing could be further from the truth. I love the tech. A lot. But I know that the first principal of affording the time to play with the toys is to provide a client with enough value that they pay you obscenely well.