The proxy is not the goal
An obsessive focus on SEO often obscures the real goal. The problem is that SEO metrics are usually proxies for something else: attention, trust, relevance, sales, or whatever the business actually needs.
Once you find the simple proxy and decide to make it go up, there are lots of available tactics that have nothing at all to do with improving the very thing you set out to achieve in the first place. When we fall in love with a proxy, we spend our time improving the proxy instead of focusing on our original (more important) goal instead.
Gaming the system is never the goal. The goal is the goal.
This is where SEO becomes dangerous. It gives people a visible number to improve, which is useful right up to the point where the number replaces the thing it was meant to represent. Ranking higher is not the same as being more useful. Getting more traffic is not the same as earning more attention.