Google has a fairly lengthy set of , including quality rules distinguishing what is and isn't acceptable. Your SEO team should be intimately familiar with these, but it's a good idea to be familiar with them yourself, the better to judge your SEO team's efforts.

3. Take the High Road

According to SEO software maker , acquiring links from known link brokers and sellers is the second worst thing you can do for your search engine rankings. (The very worst thing, it says, is "cloaking with a malicious/manipulative intent," or presenting different content to search engines than you display to users, while next in line is linking to Web spam sites.)

Undertaking such illegitimate tactics is, from an SEO perspective, like shooting yourself in the proverbial foot. Don't do it! Just a singe instance could bring Google's wrath down on you, as we also saw in the late last year.

The five best things you can focus on in your SEO efforts are the following, according to SEOmoz: