I think this is not the case anymore. With facebook, twitter and all the other social networks people interact more easily and exchange resources and information. It's a lot easier to publish something nowadays.

Don't confuse marketing with SEO. Marketing, even if sometimes looks dodgy and it's filled with those awful magic words and phrases, even if most marketeers tend to be full of sh*t and not really know anything about what they are doing; marketing is still very important. That is the key of how to get out of obscurity, not SEO.

I think this is the biggest problem in web development nowadays, clients are really undereducated and believe SEO is a synonym for marketing. And this is encouraged by marketing companies who, to earn more business, fill the clients' heads with crap about SEO and how that is the most important thing online.

And they do this because with SEO you can't go wrong: - if the website loses traffic: "well that is Google changing their algorithm, it's an external factor, not our fault" - if the website earns traffic, even if it's because the content is good, the SEO company will try to absorb all the praise.

That's why I hate SEO.