I don't think this is a fair comment. I don't consider someone like Patrick McKenzie to be a "spammer" or "shadowy salesman", but I do consider him to be very good at SEO, copywriting and marketing.

HN has a weird doublethink when it comes to SEO/marketing. We are all "hoorah!" startups, but how dare you try to make your site more appealing to a potential customer.

Sure, there are tons of scammers that use SEO...but there are tons of scammers in every field.