Are Paid Links Worth the Risk?

In my more than 2 years of doing SEO, I have heard a lot of times about the risk of using paid links. It has been said that Search Engines especially Google don’t like paid links, when they are used to manipulate rankings rather than just boosting traffic. The question though would be, how accurate are their algorithms that track what these kind of links are being used for?

Here’s a good article about paid links.

Link Building 101

Is link building still a part of SEO? To me it still is. Though it’s not the same a few years ago wherein webmasters just swap links or drop links everywhere. As algorithms of search engines change, link building techniques change.

While reviewing some link building strategies, I stumbled upon this link building article from SEObook.