The author seems to only have a superfluous understanding of SEO. Yes, keywords matter, as well as inbound and outbound links, but, these days Google is also quite sophisticated about surfacing results that meet the criteria for Good Page Experience and pass the Core Web Vitals. That means responsive web sites, with highly optimized images, font delivery, minimal on-load jitter that load super fast, even on old mobile devices. All of that is good for the end user.