Love this post, the more people we can stop using these techniques the better they work. If you break Google's guidlines you are a criminal and will go to prison sharing a tiny cell with Bubba.

Seriously, stop using these techniques. They do not work.

They work even less in the niches I target so please stop using them before it's too late.

Seriously stop.

Nice people do not break rules.

You must follow the rules of Google else you will be sent to hell and have your soft bits roasted over a hot flame whilst you nether regions are poked with sharp, point things.

I mean it, they don't even work.

No one has ever ranked for breaking Google guidelines so why even attempt?

Remember, Google is watching and they see all.

OK, really serious now.

These techniques are evil. Evil I say and the gods of Google will come down from the mountain top and reap furious vengence on you.

Convinced? No I didn't think so.

Lyndon for the WIN

Haha, just re-read the article after scanning it first time...

"you now have to trick the search engines into thinking you’re not using any tricks (i.e. by being as natural as possible)"

I mean COME ON! Do you give this advice to clients?

I agree without a doubt Matt D

Too many myths.

• too many links too fast (myth)
• link anchor text too similar (lol, this is so funny, try to think logical)
• not enough deep links to other pages (dont understand this... what this got to do with anything)
• too many links from low quality or unrelated sites (well if you have many links from those you will get low juice, no penalty for this at all)
• too many reciprocal links (low juice nothing else, no red flag)
• all links are from the sidebar or footer of a page (not important at all)

Also i read about PR sculping, this is history...so....

I didn't honestly read more much more than the title, and sub-headings, but it makes me very sad when seo and criminal are even in the same sentence, let alone when I know two of the people in the body of the article to be people I would trust very very much to make good life decisions.  I think allowing seo and criminal to appear in the same sentence, is the essence of why seo has always had a marketing problem.

It's discsussions like this, why I decided it was probably best if I didn't write things for the "seo community" much anymore.  Topics like this really make me want to rebrand "what I do", even though I've always been PROUD to be an seo (little less so, when I read things like this).

i agree too - evil stuff...

So is the new google bowling, trying to make a site look like it is into SEO?

I too agree with Matt D but always it is necessary to be cautious