10 Terrible Link Building Myths You Should Ignore
Uncovering the truth about link building myths
Getting to grips with link building in SEO can be difficult to get your head around, for anyone! Fear not, we have uncovered the truth behind 10 link building myths that you need to know about. Let’s look at what they are because they’re very common.
Now let’s get down to the real truth about link building. We’ve explained why you shouldn’t believe these myths, and how the SEO of link building really works.
Link building myth 1: Say ‘no’ to a lower DA than your own
The myth goes that if you receive a new link that’s from a domain with a lower domain authority (DA) than your website has, it’s bad for SEO. This is in the sense that it might provide zero value or even damage your DA and have a negative impact on your organic rankings and website performance.
The truth:
What is domain authority of a website? It’s a score out of 100 provided by Moz to indicate how good that website is and Google can take this into account when it decides where to rank your website. However, it is not a causal indicator of its wider value. For example, just because a website might have a DA of, say, 30, that isn’t a final decision that the website is poor. It could still have high quality, helpful, relevant content that’s engaging to its users, and have lots of good editorial links. And if you get a link from a lower DA website than yours, you will still reap the benefit of any of the referral traffic that comes from that new link.
Let’s be clear that it’s not unknown for some very low DA websites to have a medium or even high spam score (you can check the spam score at Moz). If you’re linked to a website that has a particularly high ‘spam score’, this can impact your rankings as Google notices your association with that website. But in relation to the myth, always check out the quality and spam score of the website you’re considering a link with.
Find out more about what domain authority is and how it affects your SEO.
Link building myth 2: Say ‘no’ to links from directories
The myth goes that you should just completely avoid all directories linking to you. It says that all directories are terrible quality and will damage your performance, so just don’t do it.
The truth:
Not all directories are poor quality. Yes, there are lots of paid link and SEO-focused directory sites that can crop up and you should regularly check for these (because you’ll want to disavow any spammy links). But there are lots of directories that are genuinely useful for its users.
For example, if there is a directory of shoe shops in London, and you own one of them, you want to be on that directory. The benefit, irrelevant of whether it’s a ‘nofollow’ or ‘dofollow’ link, is that you’ll get any referral traffic of users who click your link. Plus, you’ll get the added brand awareness which is always a positive. If you do happen to obtain a ‘dofollow’ link, you’ll also get the advantage of the link juice too.
You’ll need to use your best judgement if there’s a chance to get a link from a directory. Check their DA and spam score, and decipher how relevant it is to your industry. This can be time consuming, but we have specialists who can help, as part of our SEO services.
Link building myth 3: Fast links means you’ll get a penalty
The myth goes that if you get new external links too fast, Google will penalise you. It says that if you, for example, get more links from one month to the very next, it will see this as suspicious and Google will hit your website with a penalty. You’ll be likely to see a damage to your website traffic and overall performance.
The truth:
If you’re starting to regularly build ‘dodgy’ new links (that’s low quality links that could be classed as ‘spam’), Google may start to pick up on this and take notice at your link profile. This could cause a penalty if you are link building in a very sneaky, ‘black-hat’ way.
On the other hand, if you’re working on a regular basis to carry out best practice SEO to build your links up in a way that’s above board, you don’t need to worry. For example, if you’ve created a new valuable piece of content and have shared this across platforms and you’ve suddenly gained several new backlinks (because it’s worthy of them), this is good practice and you shouldn’t expect to see a penalty because of this.
Link building myth 4: Outbound links lose and leak equity
The myth is based on very old SEO practice (which is now outdated). PageRank is a part of Google’s algorithm and it used to be that if a page linked to external websites, the link equity or weight of those links would get smaller when you add more.
The truth:
Do not be scared to link out to external websites, whether it’s a ‘nofollow’ or ‘dofollow’. You should do it more. When you add links from your page to websites that offer further high value information for your users, this is good practice SEO. When Google assesses your link profile, it will see your outbound links. A 2020 study found that there is a causal link between the number of outbound links and how well you rank on Google.
Link building myth 5: Don’t ask for links outright
The myth is based on some occasional cases of poor practice link outreach. This is where a company might manipulatively promise a discount if the website adds a link to them, or a similar situation.
The truth:
If there is a piece of content, such as a directory or an article, that talks about your business or your website, it’s completely natural to want to get in touch with them to ask if they would kindly mind adding a backlink to that page. This is because they’re already talking about your brand on that page, and it’s usually good PR. This process is called link outreach, and is good practice to do.
Link building myth 6: Only 1 link per domain
The myth goes that you should only let each one domain link to your website once and no more.
The truth:
If a good quality website wants to link to your website more than once, this is good! Not only does it show that their website appreciates yours so much that it wants to send its users to you, but you will actually get more of that referral traffic with the higher number of backlinks.
Link building myth 7: Links are the top ranking factor
The myth goes that the number and quality of your backlinks are the top ranking factor, out of them all. So only worry about your links and forget about all other aspects of SEO. Ie, if your link profile is spot on, you’ll rank.
The truth:
Your link profile is important. But it is absolutely not the only ranking factor. Google will absolutely review the number and quality of backlinks regularly before it decides where to rank you. But, it also takes into consideration a whole host of other contributing factors.
This includes but isn’t limited to:
- how fast your site runs
- how mobile friendly it is
- whether it’s user-friendly on the whole for users to navigate
- whether your site’s naturally optimised for on-page SEO
- the quality of your off page SEO, including how many broken links you have
- whether you have any missing or duplicated content, or orphan pages
- whether you have a sitemap set up correctly
- whether your pages are keyword stuffed
- whether you’re using Htags in the most effective way
Link building myth 8: Nofollow links mean no SEO benefit
The myth goes that if you obtain a backlink but it’s coded like this, ‘rel=nofollow’, then you won’t gain any SEO value from it, so you should leave it out altogether.
The truth:
If you do get a backlink that’s tagged as ‘nofollow’, this means that the domain your new link is coming from isn’t sharing any link juice to your site. So if you’ve got a DA of 30 and a DA website of 80 gives you a ‘nofollow’ link, you won’t reap the benefits of their stronger domain authority.
Having said this, just because it’s a ‘nofollow’ link, that doesn’t mean you don’t get the benefit of that all important referral traffic. If you’re being linked to from a new domain, visitors can still click through to you. So, you won’t get the link juice, but Google over time will see more people spending time on your website, and this will put you in a better light with Google.
Link building myth 9: More emails means more links
The myth goes that if you send a high number of emails every month asking for backlinks, you’re going to get lots back. So by that theory, the myth suggests you should send as many as you can, and you’ll get links in return.
The truth:
Building links by manual email outreach is incredibly time consuming. Sending lots of emails asking for backlinks on content that’s already mentioned you (or a competitor) won’t necessarily result in success every time. It’s quite rare that you get a new backlink from every outreach email you send. However, they are absolutely invaluable when they’re successful, so research your opportunities and choose the most likely ‘win’ to contact. And then keep the rest of your SEO strategy ticking over because remember it’s not all about links.
Link building myth 10: You don’t need links to rank
The myth goes that you can rank in the SERPs without consistently working to build a very strong backlink profile. You can forget about the number and quality of backlinks because you can just focus on other aspects of SEO like keywords.
The truth:
Your backlink profile is just one factor in amongst multiple others that affects your ability to rank in the SERPs. Google takes lots of elements into account, and if you have zero backlinks, it will consider this as well. A study by Moz showed that 77.8% of “top results had at least one” backlink to it, and that over 99% of “all top results” had a backlink to it.
22% of those pages did rank with no backlinks. However, they may have had a strong internal linking profile which Google rewarded. But the key takeaway here is that higher keyword rankings can tend to be seen for pages that have more quality backlinks. To rank for a competitive keyword, it’s typically unlikely you’ll manage to rank at the very top of the SERPs without having obtained any backlinks.
That’s a wrap on our top 10 link building myths. We hope we’ve cleared the air on some common misunderstanding in the industry.
Find out some other SEO myths and their truths. For more information, you can find out what SEO is or get to grips with internal linking in SEO.
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Frequently Asked Questions about link building
Why is linking so important?
When a page’s content is that credible, authoritative and trustworthy, this can make people or companies want to share it and link to it. The more quality links you have from domains, the better you can rank.
How important are backlinks for SEO?
Backlinks are important for SEO because each link acts as a ‘vote’ from that domain to say they trust your website. The more good domains you have linking to you, the higher you’ll rank.
What is a link building strategy?
A link building strategy is a plan or schedule you create on a regular basis to increase your backlink profile. This can be through PR, content marketing, skyscraping, email outreach, broken link building and more.
What is link building and why does it matter?
Link building is the process of growing the number of backlinks to your domain. For example if another domain adds a hyperlink to your website. It matters because Google ranks you based on your link profile.
How can I get free quality backlinks?
There are a few ways you can build natural backlinks, but they are often time-consuming. For example, you need to create exceptional content that people want to link to.
