Right, my point is that making good content may not be sufficient, but it is necessary. If you aren't making interesting content, the other stuff amounts to a rounding error.
There are all sorts of people who will fiddle with tags and whatnot to try to perfectly shape their site because they're scared/lazy to not make good content. But there is nothing that has a higher ROI on time than making interesting content. Sure, try to make interesting content around the long tail terms that you can optimize for, but at the end of the day, you have to make interesting content.
A webshop selling airline tickets won't rank better if you add "interesting content", thats just not the way it works.
What? Yes it will. More recent links from people will give it more page rank score. If it's a new algorithm that helps find cheaper tickets and beats out the major competitors, for example, it'll get tons of links really quick from blogs talking about it.
Ask the developers in the appstore whats more important, interesting content or a position in the top 5.
"What? Yes it will. More recent links from people will give it more page rank score. If it's a new algorithm that helps find cheaper tickets and beats out the major competitors, for example, it'll get tons of links really quick from blogs talking about it."
Right..so if e-commerce businesses just hired smart people to build algorithms and hope for viral effects they will rank high. You make it sound so easy.. unfortunately I would say this is unrealistic in most cases. In a realistic world you have to admit that it is very hard for businesses in saturated markets to just add "interesting content". Having a budget for online marketing, including seo, adds measurable ways to achieve sales. Spending a fortune on technology might be out of proportion compared to your business size. Having a sale, good customer service, coupon codes will give the same kind of buzz in the blog scene around your product. It is still part of the puzzle and you need more than one part to solve the puzzle.
"I don't think you get how this works."
Then tell me whats wrong with my statement about the appstore. Just telling someone he doesn't get it has no added value. You can make your statement more useful by, for example, adding some links to blog posts from people who write about the process of gaining a steady income stream using interesting content.
edit: oops deleted the original post, had to repost it :/
There are more types of websites than just content based websites and sometimes websites who have to compete for the exact same content. The one who understands internet marketing the best will have better rankings than the ones that don't. A webshop selling airline tickets won't rank better if you add "interesting content", thats just not the way it works. Also the "interesting content" might distract people from what they have to do, order tickets. People have to realize that internet marketing is here to stay and it is something you have to think about.
Also your statement about spending time on interesting content gives your the highest ROI is not true. Hollywood and the game industry prove from time to time that they can create hypes and market B quality productions and still make tons of money. This also counts on the internet. Content is evaluated by machines (Google, Bing etc) who determine if it is interesting or not. Doing A/B testing to test which landing page works best is better time spent than spending your time hiring people to create interesting content. Just changing your button can increase sales by over 100%.
Ask the developers in the appstore whats more important, interesting content or a position in the top 5.
There are all sorts of people who will fiddle with tags and whatnot to try to perfectly shape their site because they're scared/lazy to not make good content. But there is nothing that has a higher ROI on time than making interesting content. Sure, try to make interesting content around the long tail terms that you can optimize for, but at the end of the day, you have to make interesting content.