Is having a long list of names or places considered spamming?

[DXL]

If someone has a sports website, I understand it to be spamming if you have a paragraph that reads: AthleteName Pictures, AthleteName Bio, AthleteName Merchandise; basically repetition.

But is it spamming if you have a page on your site with a large amount of quality content, and then somewhere on the page a paragraph with the names of a few dozen athletes? No repetition of words or names, just a line of text "On our site you can find info about the following athletes" followed by one long paragraph with a list of totally different athlete names seperated by commas.

I see designers ranking well in the SERPS doing this all the time by listing the names of 20-50 small cities on a particular page that already has keywords related to their services. This obviously works (especially with obscure cities), but is this black hat and asking for a penalty?

[caveman]

DXL, it's a good question, and there is no set answer. I hate to sound clichéd, but my best advice is do what makes sense for the user, and keep an eye on what competitive sites are doing. Then shade to the slightly conservative side, unless you are more risk oriented. If you would feel fine defending your decisions face to face with a rep from a search engine, chances are you will be OK. The caveat is that if you keep your eye on sites doing what you'd like to do, and you see one suddenly having trouble rarnking, it's a piece of evidence that that tactic might be problematic.

A lot of it too depends on the specific category, and exactly how what you want to do is implemented.

You're on the right track insofar as you see a potential problem here. So look at what's going on around you, and to the extent that it looks safe or borderline safe, develop a strategy that you feel good about personally. And keep an eye on it. Make sense?

[DXL]

That makes sense. I'm striving to stay white hat as much as possible, but to get about as close to the limits of what's acceptable because my competitors aren't SEO-savvy. Its tough because doing what's best for the user doesn't necessarily involve listing a bunch of cities that you can service, but clearly it gets results. I avoid pages with duplicate content, so having a list of places/products seems like a sure way to pick up traffic here and there for obscure searches.