Prohibited Uses of Adsense - SEO?

[signup1]

I read [google.com...]

Prohibited Uses. You shall not, and shall not authorize or encourage any third party to: (i) directly or indirectly generate queries, impressions of or clicks on any Search Results and/or Ad(s) through any automated, deceptive, disingenuous or fraudulent means, including but not limited to through repeated manual clicks, the use of robots or other automated query tools and/or computer generated search requests, and/or
the fraudulent use of other search engine optimization services and/or software;

I am worried, because a lot of SEO can be seen as smart in some people's eyes, and spam in others. I go to [google.com...]

Quality Guidelines - Basic principles:

Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users, or present different content to search engines than you display to users.
Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our terms of service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.
Quality Guidelines - Specific recommendations:

Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
Don't send automated queries to Google.
Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

"Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
means every SEO is evil in google's eyes.

[Macro]

Er, I like to think I SEO my sites but I've never had any problem confining my activities to the guidelines described above.

Your quote in bold text forbids "fraudulent" means. You have a problem with that?

PS: Welcome to webmasterworld

[signup1]

thanks.

the question is what is "fraudulent"? spam? keyword feedig? doorpages? iframe..? how do ou define it?

[europeforvisitors]

How you define it? You don't. Just read those Google guidelines. :-)

[Macro]

signup1, sorry, the only problem I see is if you want to spam, trick, fraud, deceive, or otherwise manipulate search engine results :)

Getting more traffic is always a good goal. And the best way to do it is described here again and again and again: Build good content.

[buckworks]

I sometimes wish people would use different vocabulary for stuff like this. Passages like the one pointed out above would be more useful if they talked about something like fraudulent search engine manipulation instead of optimization.

A lot of SEO basics are simply common sense, and it's simply not fair to use the same label for someone who tries to write more descriptive <title>'s and someone else who steals other people's content to cloak with.

[Macro]

fraudulent use of other search engine optimization services/software

Slightly different to what you suggest :)