Interesting.. And, that makes some sense.
However, I can certainly change around my site and rank much higher than sites with more inbound links.
I would love to run a test (and maybe I will):
Create 5 pages (linked from homepage – same keywords):
1. Page with my typical SEO
2. Page with no header tags at all, but with a proper title
3. Page with no images, but with my typical SEO
4. Page with no images, but more like #2
5. Page with keywords throughout images alt tags, once in each paragraph, boldened several times, and titled.
I’d like to see what happens. It just seems strange to me that I saw several sites like that. Yes, they had quite a few inbound links and were very recognizable sites, but still seems odd that they were ranked so much higher.