Is Chamber of Commerce membership a "paid" link, breaking Google's rules?

[RickyShockley]

Hi guys,

This drives me nuts. I hear all the time that any time value is exchanged for a link that it technically violates Google's guidelines. What about real organizations, chambers of commerce, trade groups, etc. that you are a part of that have online directories with DO-follow links.

On one hand people will say these are great links with real value outside of search and great for local SEO..and on the other hand some hardliners are saying that these technically should be no-follow.

Thoughts???

[Afearnley]

In my years of experience I would say the folks behind the algorithms are pretty good at distinguishing between paid link-farms that are devoid of any real world value and legitimate directories where payment is required as a part of membership towards which the weblink is only one minor facet.

Said differently , membership in legitimate business associations that happen to have a web component is an SEO positive.
The various additional incoming and outgoing web linkage, also from businesses or domains of prominent authority,  probably further verifies to the search algorithms the difference between the two groups.
For example, I recently purchased links in various medical association directory buyer guides. This may have had a significant positive effect on rankings. Or, maybe it was the other 5 major improvements I made in the same week. But my gut tells me it was the additional incoming links from these very prestigious and directly business related groups that made a positive nudge.

[RickyShockley]

Hi James,

I hear ya and I agree. But my confusion lies in the fact that Google has explicitly stated that _any _link that requires payment to be acquired is technically not suppose to count toward your site authority and should be no-followed

[Afearnley]

I think your interpretation is a bit tightly wound - in this case, you're not paying for the link, you're paying for a membership into the Chamber of Commerce. That you get a link is a bi-product, and it is not 'what you pay for', there's much more to the CoC than web links. I'm sure you're correctly quoting something from somewhere, and I'm not going to bother to do the research to debate in quote format about it.  I'm just letting you know, in all my experience in SEO client sites, that purchasing a membership in the Better Business Bureau, the Chamber of Commerce or a long list of other legitimate local business directories, that these links seem to have a very positive affect on SERPs. But maybe I'm just getting lucky.
In the end, there's no need for confusion. Experiment and see what happens. That's what makes SEO so fun!