Matt Cutts: - SEO Mistakes: Nearly hidden text

I want you to take a look at this post from Matt Cutts, Google Engineer: Matt Cutts: - SEO Mistakes: Nearly hidden text He's not saying anything overly profound with the explicit words he uses. He says that you shouldn't try to hide text and trick the search engines by making spam text a slightly different color than the background. What is more profound here is that he is calling out this tactic. He can monitor this. He is saying that what you think might possibly be sliding by the engines, he is catching. In previous posts, he has shown that Google also can detect spam that is being covered up by CSS. On top of this, the post-Jagger update at Google has filtered sites that have suspicious linking patterns. It all comes down to this: be legitimate. You are going to be better off being as natural as possible. At this point, I suggest rethinking any optimization that artificially increases content or links. If you can't do it legitimately, I don't recommend doing it. I can see the thread now over at WebMasterWord, "SEO Is Dead." It's not. If anything it's more advanced than ever. Legitimacy is much more expensive for a corporate site than faux inflation.