My understanding about SEO is that it has 4 tiers. This is due to how search engines rank results. They want to relevant results first, but they also want resul

My understanding about SEO is that it has 4 tiers. This is due to how search engines rank results. They want to relevant results first, but they also want results that seem high quality (i.e. authorities in the subject) first. They have algorithms to judge relevancy and authority based on e.g. keywords and number of links. The idea is that organic results should be on top, but when you think about it there is no way for that to happen. So the 4 tiers are: 1. Pages that don't optimize keywords and don't get links. This is most pages. 2. Pages that optimize keywords but don't get links. This is some introverted nerd who knows SEO technically but sucks at marketing. 3. Pages that don't optimize keywords but get links. This is a real product or service or thing that is popular made by someone who has no idea about SEO. 4. Pages that optimize keywords and get links. This is some serious internet marketing stuff. "SEO spam" falls into the 4th tier. Optimizing keywords only gets you in front of unoptimized pages that nobody links to. A real SEO strategy includes getting as many links as possible somehow and, in some cases, by doing "black hat" SEO by buying links or spamming links in comments of Wordpress blogs and so on. Essentially, genuine 4th tier SEO means establishing a presence on the web. But this is why the whole idea is fundamentally broken. Imagine someone is a nobel prize winner who writes extremely technical posts on their blog. They are the authority of all authorities in the subject, but their content is by no means popular. Only a handful of people in the world could appreciate what this multi-PhD monster of knowledge is talking about. Their posts will never get links and their keywords probably sound like made-up gibberish for Google. Basically, if your job is being an authority on something, you are not going to waste your time building a presence on the web. It's like search engines constructed such a high bar on "quality web results" that it will never get cleared by actual quality results that aren't deliberately trying to clear that bar.