VRPdommy

Content is favored by 'content' and 'engagement' which is tracked by time on the page as well as the number of hits drawn by specific keywords, keyword phrases found in 'content'.

The old keyword list are not used anymore. Google combs the site and determines themselves what they are. Matching that with 'search words and phrases' with weight given by engagement.

So you could have a site on the sex life of ants and if you are not using the right words in content or have the most interesting pages deeper in the site, it is likely to rank low.
Use the wrong words and likely be marked as a adult site.

Not saying I agree with it all. You could loose your life's blood if a algorithm changes. And they do in attempts to lower the results of those with no real content. (spoofing search)

But my experience has been all the attempts to spoof the seo require constant work to keep it on par. Your just after the traffic and you don't care how you get it. While if you just do it the natural way, it is so much less work. But it does require real content. And that is what many are hoping to get away with. Getting traffic for adds/leading to sales from little to no real content or misleading content.

But don't forget you have page rankings, article rankings and site rankings.
Analytics may show you only one of these somewhat, but google is tracking more than their own analytics platform is showing you.

It's as much work to keep doing continuous seo as it is to do real content. But less frustrating. Content authors do not realize their true value.

How can anyone argue trumps claim when it is possible to spoof the results.
Company's do it in a effort to 'drown out their competitors' when possible even with 3rd party sites (hired seo specialist co's). As applied to politics, that is part of the Russian election meddling is about. Put up fake/misleading content and artificially drive up the seo value. Well, apparently, the algorithms have changed. Welcome to seo.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.