Content:
What will you write about?

Links:
What is the anchor text, and what pages are you linking to and from?

Navigation:
until your keywords are known, you don’t even know what your pagination is.

Keyword research is the ABSOLUTE King of web marketing and SEO research, and anyone who thinks otherwise is losing money.

Many people dress up their content as a beautiful Queen to lure the ‘hard to woo’ King (i.e. links). The concept of link-baiting revolves exactly around that. You create useful content, then you make sure everyone knows about it (through newsletters, thoughtful posting on blogs/forums etc), and that in turn leads to links coming into the site.

I do agree that there has to be a balance, however if you invest in building content predominantly, it can very often lead to much stronger natural links (often being more relevant and more permanent).

Actually, I think whatever you make a king, will ruin the site.

Content is king? Then you get no links or keyword research or anything else.
Links are kings? Then you dont write content or use research.
Research is king? Then how much do you spend time on content and links?

The thing is that the only thing you need is balance. Only if you work hard on keyword research, content and links and links, you are good to go.