tedster - 2:41 am on Mar 28, 2012 (gmt 0)

And option two is not the same as building shady backlinks - there is a wide variety of legitimate action that can boost a website. In fact, I'm quite troubled by the apparent equation that SEO=Spam.

Solid SEO needs to be a 3-way win:

It's good for the search user
It's good for the website itself
It's good for the search engines

If you miss on even one of those three areas, then you just plain miss.