Writing on the official Econsultancy blog, Patricio Robles stated that the use of paid links is "a risky proposition".
He commented: "Link building is often a challenging task but as paid links become more risky, the start of the year is the perfect time to refocus on long-term link building."
Developers concerned with SEO should therefore revert to the "old-fashioned" yet highly effective techniques of building links, Mr Robles added.
He suggested that websites should always link to other sites that might be beneficial to their visitors - those sites in turn are more likely to link back.
Quality content is another sure-fire way to build links to maximise SEO potential, Mr Robles claimed.
The best way to ensure this, he added, is to constantly update it and to prevent it from becoming static, by producing blogs for example.
Despite Mr Robles' claims that paid search is "risky", the director of emerging media and client strategy at 360i David Berkowitz stated on media Post that SEO should be planned in tandem with paid search in 2009 for the best results.
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