Both AltaVista and Google instructed the audience that good and useful content is what improves your ranking. If that was true, there would be no need to read advice from sites such as this one or hire a professional SEO to optimize your pages for the engines. As you might have guessed, those tips have little to do with the actual ranking methods in use. Yes, having good content is an important, probably the most important factor of creating a successful site. It also helps you to obtain some things needed to rank higher on the search engines, such as link popularity.
Search engines live by delivering high quality content to their visitors.
If they were allowed to choose, they'd rather see people focus on creating this content for them instead of spending time trying to manipulate their ranking systems. An understandable view, but it makes talking to search engine PR people rather annoying from time to time. But don't be depressed, all hope is not lost. In the middle of these usual boring comments, there were some pearls which are worth a closer look. Google and AltaVista both strongly recommended against using programs that artificially increase your link popularity.