10 Link Building Myths: What You’ve Been Told vs. What’s True

If you’ve ever felt confused by mixed advice on link building, you’re not alone. From quick fixes to outdated strategies, it can be tough to know what really works.

We sat down with our CEO to sort fact from fiction and reveal the biggest link building myths. Think of this as your no-nonsense guide to building links the right way.

So, let’s clear things up!

Why is link building important?

Link building is important because it improves your website rankings in the SERP, your domain visibility, and increases brand awareness and traffic to your website.

In the next paragraphs, let’s find out what the most common link building myths are and what they’re untrue.

10 Link Building Myths That Are Wasting Your Time

Myth #1: Backlinks from High Spam Score Domains Can Lead to Penalties

A high spam score doesn’t mean your site is spammy. Instead, it simply shows the percentage of sites with similar 27 features that have been penalized by Google.

Moz’s guidelines also emphasize that the score doesn’t directly affect Google’s ranking or lead to penalties.

So, getting a backlink from a site with a high spam score won’t negatively impact your website if the site is credible and has valuable content. 

While assessing spam scores is useful, it’s important not to rely solely on metrics when making link building decisions.

Myth #2: Backlinks from Low DR Websites Are Risky

Domain Rating (DR) is a metric by Ahrefs that measures the strength of a website’s backlink profile. A common myth is that backlinks from low DR websites are risky, but that’s not necessarily true.

Low DR doesn’t automatically mean a website is unreliable. In fact, newer websites or small businesses with low DR can still offer valuable backlinks. The key is to assess the overall trustworthiness of the website and watch out for website red flags like:

• Website content of low quality
• Poor website design
• Excessive spammy outgoing links
• Lack of contact information
• Non-indexable domain, Etc. 

In other words, don’t over rely on link building metrics, as they don’t tell the whole story.

Myth #3: Backlinks from Sites with Low or Zero Traffic Are Useless

It’s a common belief, driven by link building myths, that backlinks from low or zero traffic sites have little value. 

In reality, the traffic a referring page receives has minimal impact on the backlink itself. Backlinks affect your profile at the domain level, not by the traffic a specific page gets. 

But why does this happen?

When it comes to link exchanges, many people aim to get backlinks from high traffic websites while offering links from low traffic ones. This can lead to receiving links from sites with lower traffic, but that doesn’t make them dangerous.

A study by Ahrefs backs this up. Among 44,589 SERPs studied, just 1 in 2,229 had top-ranking pages with links from referring pages with traffic, and about 20% of SERPs didn’t have any such links.

It means that you can still rank on the first page of Google without links from traffic-rich pages, even if other pages in the SERP have them.

Myth #4: Link Exchanges Can Lead to Penalties

Excessive link exchanges that aim to manipulate search rankings are against Google’s guidelines because it believes good content should naturally attract backlinks. 

However, not all link exchanges are inherently bad. There are two main types of link exchanges:

• Direct exchanges (A-B): Website A links to Website B, and Website B links back to Website A. This can look manipulative to Google and raise red flags.
• Three-way exchanges (A-B-C): Website A links to Website B, and Website B links to Website C. This approach is one of the best backlink strategies and is much safer, as they don’t directly link to each other and are less likely to trigger penalties.

So, while link exchanges are not welcomed by Google, three-way exchanges are generally a safer and more effective way to build backlinks.

Myth #5: A High DR Equals a Credible Website

While a high Domain Rating (DR) might seem like a sign of credibility, it’s important to remember that it can also be easily manipulated. 

Some websites, especially link-selling sites, use tactics like link farms or paid backlinks to artificially increase their DR.

So, always assess the website’s quality by looking out for the red flags mentioned above.

Myth #6: Getting More Than 30 Backlinks Will Trigger a Penalty

The number of backlinks isn’t a problem—what matters is their quality. You can build as many backlinks as you need, as long as they come from reputable and trustworthy sources.

John Mueller, from Google, also states in one of the Google SEO office-hours that the total number of backlinks a website has doesn’t matter at all to the search algorithm. They evaluate the quality rather than number of backlinks.

Further reading: 

How Many Backlinks Do I Need?

Myth #7: You Need More Backlinks Than Your Competitors to Outrank Them

It’s easy to fall into the trap of link building myths and believe that having more backlinks than your competitors will help you outperform them, but it’s not that simple. 

Your competitor could have hundreds of backlinks from poor websites, which won’t do much for their SEO. What really matters is:

• Are these backlinks coming from reputable and credible sites?
• Are they from unique domains? (multiple links from one domain can hurt)

For example, your competitor might have 500 backlinks from news and magazine sites, but you might have 30 good backlinks from reputable SaaS sites, which carry far more weight in terms of SEO.

Myth #8: You Must Add a Sponsored Tag to Links in Guest Posts

It’s required to add a rel=”sponsored” tag, if you’ve paid for the guest post or link placement—failing to do so can lead to penalties from Google.

Google’s John Mueller stated that it’s important to qualify these links in guest posts with the rel=nofollow or rel=sponsored attributes to prevent them from impacting search results. 

But here’s the catch: if you add a sponsored tag, the link won’t help your SEO, as it basically tells Google the link isn’t natural. 

Further reading: 

FAQ about link building myths