I can only comment on my own experience. I'm assuming that the application wants to earn revenue, and not do so from advertising (ad-only models rarely work). That means sales. I've been purchasing on the net since 1996. Unless the site has a product that no one else on earth and no other site has, the true differentiator (and driver) of success in the long term will be dollar value, user experience, and customer support, not search engine placement. In that scenario, good "placement" on sites like epinions.com and resellerratings.com, etc. from regular customers is much more valuable. Let's face it, just about any product being sold nowadays, including software, is a commodity item. If it's a high ticket item, then chances are a face-to-face (or several) will be required to get a check, which makes search engine placement just about irrelevant, as a good salesperson working on 100% commission (the good ones always work on 100% commission) will have no problem developing their own leads.

If it were me, and I was designing a business model, the last place I would be spending time and resources would be search engine placement, or gyrating an application to enhance search engine placement. ;) But that's me.

The search engine placement lists and groups are very similar to the "get more traffic" lists and groups. I've lurked on both over the years, and I could never get past the idea that in just about every case, it's pretty much just endless discussions about churn. Generic traffic is just the same set of eyeballs over and over, and the traffic brokers you run into will NEVER back up their claims with sales conversion numbers, because they know full well that there is no relationship between the number of people visiting a site and the total amount of sales. They'll claim "10,000 unique visitors to your site this week guaranteed!!" but that has no bearing whatsoever on sales. I'd rather focus on making my customers stunned by the value and good customer service I provide. I'll get lots more sales that way over time.

John