Simply put, if your content isn’t good enough to attract solid links naturally, it doesn’t matter how “optimized” your website is. In other words, if your site sucks, no one is going to link to it. And that is going to mean poor natural rankings in the search engines.
Why?
Because much of what determines the ranking of your site (or any particular page for that matter) is really about what happens off of the site or specific page. This happens in the form of links from other sites, and getting natural one-way links to your site has become really hard.
Introducing social media as Super SEO
Social media has become the mainstream way to attract links for sites that have content problems.
Use sales techniques to get links to your site
The same forces that prompt people to buy from you can also move others to link to your website because the content is that compelling. If your content is lacking, then we need to figure that out soon and correct it.
The point is, social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and even StumpleUpon or Reddit have become the way many contractors build links TO their sites these days, and if you don’t have a linking strategy then you are doing SEO with one arm tied behind your back. And no, exchanging links with that other guy in the contractor forum is NOT helping you as much as localized links in your area would.