I'm sorry, but much of this post just comes across as whining about being too lazy to do the things you have to do to get seen and linked to in a competitive niche. You don't like social media? It's a lot of work? Sorry, son, but your competitors just might not be as averse to some hard work as you are.

Mark, I don't think you fully understood the message. I know it takes work to be successful. About social media..my point is that with all these new social platforms we are spreading ourselves too thin and instead of creating content for our sites we create content for social media platforms.

I agree with Pawel. It's fine for Matt Cutts to advise on how to best create backlinks from his ivory tower but it is not so easy for small and first time site owners to catch a break if they do not already have a following. I don't think Pawel was talking specifically about people in the SEO biz. The more hoops a small web owner has to jump through in order to get her fledgling site off the ground the less likley that it is ever going to happen and the web wil be a poorer place for that. In fact, what made the internet such a beautiful innovation (to me) to begin with - the fact that it leveled the playing field between deep pocket corps and small mom and pop businesses - is fast becoming a thing of the past anyway. Shame.