Search engines don’t penalize paid links

There’s been a lot of talk around the web about the search engines not valuing or even penalizing for paid links from services like ReviewMe or PayPerPost.  According to SEOMoz, that’s just not true.

Tim answered first and said that Yahoo! wouldn’t try to pick one post out of twenty or fifty on every blog that might be running advertorials or paid reviews just to stop link value from that particular post. If the engine looked at the site and saw that in general, the outgoing links were of high quality, there would be no discount of link value for paid blog material.

The rules for paid links are the same as for any other kind: they should be relevant, they should come from quality sites, etc.  The fact that money changed hands doesn’t mean the link doesn’t qualify in every other way, and the fact that money didn’t change hands doesn’t make the link good.

When you think about it, this really just makes sense.