The biggest misconception about SEO is that its intent is to be spammy. SEO is in fact directed towards more effective communication with search engines. Using web analytics, and intelligence we optimize content to be more direct towards users, and search engines by using keywords etc that users are searching for. We're basically improving communications just like quality CRM does only with search engines, and users. Link farms are highly transparent and easily flagged by Google. They have extremely sophisticated algorithms to determine who the spammers are.