A citation to my Marmite article in Wikipedia.
A few years ago before the Penguins & Pandas of the online marketing world it was possible to do what you want with your website content and build large volumes of low quality, easy-to-get links and still rank on Google. Unfortunately, those days are gone and it is now harder to rank a site organically for your chosen keywords. These days it is all about quality and once you’ve nailed the content which is in your control, it becomes all about links. Generally the harder the link is to obtain the better quality it will be and the bigger impact it will have on your rankings. Link diversity is also important with Google comparing the proportion of each type of link in each niche as well as nofollow vs dofollow link ratios (which is why I am now happy with either type of link).
In a rare move by Google this week they have 
Whilst the book ‘Confessions of an Advertising Man’ was written back in 1963 before online marketing (and the internet!) was invented, it is still an incredible book that any marketing professional can learn from. The book is written by David Ogilvy who is considered the ‘Father Of Advertising’ by many and a ‘Creative Genius’ by most. At 37 years of age he founded the New York based advertising agency which later became