1.) Bad Links Are Devalued, Not Penalized
Since Google’s Penguin 4.0 update bad quality links are now devalued, rather than penalized, by simply not being acknowledged anymore. Prior to this, Google would lower the search rank of pages that bad quality links pointed to as a form of penalty.
2.) Total Number Of Links Is NOT A Ranking Factor
The total number of backlinks a website had used to be a ranking factor. As Google’s algorithm became better at understanding content on webpages this changed. Now, backlink numbers alone don’t mean anything. Moving into 2019, only the authority and relevance of the page that the link is on matters.
3.) Nofollow Links Don’t Pass Authority
Nofollow links aren’t beneficial for ranking purposes, only traffic. As stated by Google verbatim: “In general, we don’t follow them. This means that Google does not transfer PageRank or anchor text across these links” (source). This is important if you buy links for ranking purposes (which is against Google’s TOS) because you are getting ripped off if they are all nofollow links.
4.) Negative SEO Is Not A Problem Anymore
Thanks to backlink fact #1 negative SEO isn’t a problem anymore. In the past, negative SEO was a vicious ranking strategy that played to Google’s harsh treatment of websites with bad quality backlinks. By creating a bunch of backlinks from web pages and domains that are blacklisted and/or completely irrelevant with spam and pointing them to competitor websites in an effort to lower their search position rather than raise it (thus the name “negative SEO”) for a greater chance of taking their place, a period of rank tanking commenced before Google finally addressed the problem with an update.
5.) Content Should Always Come First
Before you go chasing backlinks (since they are an official ranking factor) content should still always be priority one. Remember: Backlinks are powerful but, without pointing to a page with content that is high qualty, useful, and relevant to the visitor’s search query, they are useless.