I understand the frustration with most search results today. It is not fair. And in a competitive space few not so good sites outsmart the genuinely good ones.

I understand the frustration with most search results today. It is not fair. And in a competitive space few not so good sites outsmart the genuinely good ones. But.. >> My understanding was always that "If I wrote it, they will come". Its never the case neither on web nor in the offline world. There probably have been many great artists, actors and writers who never saw appreciation from critical mass. Presenting right and getting others speak high of you is critical for success of a person, a product, a concept or just about anything especially when you are dealing with masses. Presenting right - the finder should understand - make it right or make believe that you are right, I know the latter is not fair but the end result people see value in what you have. Hence yes you need to take care of things they understand, the title, keywords in text, alt on images etc Getting others to speak of you - works as a fairly good starting point to evaluate anything new. As one understands better can always correct. Links, context & authority define this on web. As in the offline world either you proactively get people to vouch or the quality is exceptional that people talk about it. Sadly post the initial assessment based on reference, a later correction based on content is very hard due to the limitation of technology - it can take months to years to conclude your site is a blog talking about wooden furniture (say) and you can be trusted not to be something else overnight. Its good to question the status quo but if you aren't building a better widely adopted search engine, its better to be found by the current one. Edit: format, removed unnecessary quote.