Marketing_Guy - 4:32 pm on Oct 3, 2012 (gmt 0)

There's nothing criminal about spamming and there are plenty of people who achieve good rankings without any artificial means and regularly survive Google updates.

The thing that's common between those two groups of people is that they know SEO very well and probably have spent many years researching, testing and refining their approach.

And FYI - good rankings, good sales, good conversions = all perfectly achievable without "bending the rules".