Hi there. It looks like you have put a lot of know-how into this post and hey ... thanks for that. Not everyone wants to share his or her "secrets". Anyway, it is interesting that you write about the fact that people "smell" cheap posts. This made me think about false-positivies.
Some people maybe see a short post as not worth although it is dense and doesn't need much more words. Others see it as what it is so the length shouldn't be considered a measurement of quality.
Your post is not that long, not that short, just right and delivers all that has been promised in the title (which is also good for upvotes I guess)
Yes, but that's not really what the problem is...
It's Postlings. Deliberately created.
I wrote about the postlink problem here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@intelliguy/how-much-work-do-you-expect-from-your-followers-do-not-spam-your-followers-with-postlings