SEO: Is Content King?

Okay, so it appears that there are quite a few members here on unity that advocate "Content Building" as the most crucial aspect of SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Here is how this theory usually goes: Create great content on your website and your website will naturally succeed.

This line of reasoning definitely appeases the major search engines, whose ultimate goal is to allocate better ranking to sites that provide better content.

Telling someone to build great content and they will succeed, however, only creates more questions than it answers.  That is why I'm really hoping to get some of these "Content is King" advocates to answer some critical questions.  These questions are posed sincerely and with a genuine and honest interest in learning more about SEO.  I am definitely not an expert in SEO, and I honestly believe there is a lot I still need to learn.

1. Do I write all this content or do I expect my members to participate through bogs, forums, and articles?

2. How much quality content do I need on my index page?

3.  How will the search engines know that this content is high quality?

4.  What if my members are posting content that is riddled with slang, spelling, grammar and sentence structure errors.  Should I delete this content as it will not appear to the search engines as quality content?

5.  If I write articles containing great content, should I post these to my site, to high ranking article sites, or both?  What about duplicate content penalties?

Writing "great content" for a chat, dating or social networking site can be a bit tricky.  It's unlikely you will be able to reveal any undiscovered and mind blowing secrets about relationships that have never been mentioned before.  Thus it may be quite difficult to write content so good that it has no choice but to go viral.

I once wrote a very sensational article about dating (under a pen name) and posted it to five of the top article sites.  On one of these sites my article got read over 1,600 times in the first week and got tons of comments, feedback, and link clicks.  On the other four sites my article only got read a few times each, and with little to no response.  Sadly, after a few weeks the article was no longer getting any attention at all.

Now I'm definitely not saying content isn't extremely important.  I'm only saying that is very, very discouraging when you do create good content and it goes unnoticed and unappreciated (and unlinked to).