Thanks Halfdeck.
You make many points with which I am in agreement. I'm not sure we're arguing much, if anything, different.
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Peter, you claim on-page SEO has very little to do with ranking. Prove it. Change the post title from "free seo course" to "expensive as hell golf course." See what happens to the post ranking. It's not like those keywords are high traffic so changing the title temporarily isn't going to hurt your traffic.
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I agree - it isn't true to say on-page has no effect. But I didn't say that.
On page,
by itself, has little effect on ranking
compared with other factors, like linking and established domain reputation. That's why new sites with on-page SEO can have a tough time competing with established domains that have little, if any, SEO work undertaken.
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Have you read SEOmoz' top ranking factors?
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Sure, but these people appear to have been quoted out of context. Going by what has been stated above, I'm in agreement with Aaron and Stuntdbl.
Bottom Line: The point I wished to make in my original article was that if you have an established, highly regarded domain, you barely need to do anything in terms of SEO, other than simply add on-topic content.
In contrast, if you don't have an established, highly regarded domain, you need to work quite deliberately on SEO in order to compete with that site.
So, ranking can have a lot to do with where you publish, not how. The reason for that is the existing value placed on the domain by Google.
See Wikipedia.