I do not think for a minute that
SEO is dead if you ever had the chance to optimize websites for anyone would would see real quick that no matter how many links a page would have they would never stand a chance.
Also it depends on what search engine you are optimizing your site for because as most everyone knows already they are not all the same.
I have a newsletter and most of my subscribers know I will do experiments to my main site just to see the affects it has in the search engines.
I can tell you it does matter how the site is put together dont get me wrong inbound links are very important as well.
I rate links at 33% how your site or sites are built 33% and the most often overlooked the keywords on all your sites how do they relate 33%
SEO is more than just keyword density it is a lot of different things combined much more than I could go into here.
If anyone thinks that
SEO is just getting lots of links leading to your website and that in itself will get you to the top of the search engines think again.
There are examples PROOF of this all over the internet I have seen sites with over 50.000 links leading to them and they have a page rank of just 2.
I picked some of these sites apart to try to find them in the top 10 of any major search engines and could not find them anywhere.
Yes links are important but unless the sites are related and built right but when it comes to the search engines your sites need to be optimized.
And going further page rank for that matter really don't matter as much as it used to in the past which I think Google did the right thing to make this change because in the past you could monopolize the search engines because of this.
Is
SEO dead? HELL NO if you believe that I have some ocean front property for sale in Kansas.
James Mackinlay
JRM Website Marketing And Internet Promotion