I don't think the suggestions are superficial. A company does not need to follow every single one of these tips in order to increase their applicant signal/noise ratio. Many companies would achieve this goal if they simply refused to "look like a recruitment agency" and took the time to write job posting for humans, and not robots. I tend to be turned off by completely impersonal job postings, even when they list interesting technologies. Also, imo, a company has little to gain and much to lose by trying too hard to be cool: as stated in the article, you don't need ninjas, and you don't need to tell us that you only hire the top 1% (if you have to say it, it probably isn't true).

But you make a good point about the salary, and it is especially relevant for large companies.