[TomAnthony]

I think you both (parent and grandparent comments) have good points. The fact of the matter is that there are numerous factors towards rankings [1] that interact in complex ways. Furthermore, unless your a Google engineer this is a black box situation, so nobody can ever be sure.

The fact is that social signals correlate well with search results [2], yet it is hard to show which direction the causation might be flowing [3].

petecampbell is right that body content keywords are important, as are backlinks. pknight is correct about the spirit of the article and the problem of over optimisation. However, the article did feel a little like the authors understanding was not fully up to date. However, that is the case for a large portion of bloggers and so it is no bad thing to reiterate it.

The key takeaway is: concentrate on making great content that people want to read, and many of them will share it (via social media, or by linking to it) and you will be off to a good start in both search and social. There are other factors, but doing this part right is the most important (and often hardest) step.

[1] http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors [2] http://www.searchmetrics.com/en/searchmetrics/press/ranking-... [3] http://www.seomoz.org/blog/do-improved-social-signals-cause-...