One word - Authority! In the last 6 months SEO has drastically changed. We used to have a blueprint, and honestly it got really easy to game Google's algorithm. Build links with heavy anchor text. Try to get as many as possible. Basically that was it. Not anymore. The game is much more sophisticated now. Although backlinks are still a big part of the algorithm, they have been drastically diminished in their value. It is all about authority now.
Anyone who has a good SEO tool can see this. Just reverse engineer the top ten competitors and you will see. Here is just one example.
This is for the keyword "Mini Split" which is one of the top keywords in one of my niches.
Notice how 3 of the top ten sites have zero links pointing to the target page, and the rest have very little?
Now check this out:
This is the number one guy. Notice how not one of the links uses the anchor text "Mini Split".
Don't believe me? Try it out for yourself (using Market Samurai by the way). Obviously there is going to be exceptions. Remember this is Google we are dealing with, but I can only hypothesize that eventually a large part of the index will start looking like this. Google essentially is telling us SEO people to fuck off.
So in conclusion, what can we do? Build authority sites with good content. Build fresh content as much as possible. If you build it they will come.