For the majority of cases, yes. I mean, you can get lucky and have people naturally link to you via good content. But, who's that lucky and how will they even be seen so fast? So SEO is it .

There are 3 simple steps, all needed:

1. Good content
2. Good SEO
3. Good choice of keyworkd

Yes, if you want your site to be successful, then you need to seo it.

its the need of the hour.. there are millions of sites.. but those who are in top 10-20 in google search engines in popular keywords.. rules the world.. seo is definitely one of the main inputs in search engine rankings!!

SEO optimizes your site to improve your rankings, SERPs and traffic. So its needed to maintain its rankings and traffic.

If you want a business in global market then you must need search engine optimization

I think the answer is it depends.

If you are building a website for an existing community, the community will come to you and those businesses and services that support that community will link to you. When I built a website for a car club community 5 years ago, I did not know what SEO was. I use a good CMS product and built a website that was easy for the community to use. They created great content; articles, news, training, photos, calendar and forums. Within about 6 months it was listing in the top 3 of relevant keywords.

Now if you are trying to build a community or draw in customers, SEO and all the technics listed on this forum should be top priority.

In both cases, building a site that supports basic SEO is a requirement.

my 2 cents

if you want your site to be successful you need to optimize it.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is the practise of making your website function better in the eyes of the search engines. SEO is really needed if you want your site listed in higher position in search engines result and making it more visible to your customers.