Do backlinks matter? The cheap ones that sank my first website

My painting company's website sat on Google's first page for two to three years. Then it slid off. The most likely reason was a shortcut I took myself: a pile of cheap backlinks.

Backlinks are friends

The easiest way to think about backlinks is friends. A backlink is just another website linking to yours. To Google, every link is a bit like someone saying, "I know this business. They're alright."

Having more friends can make you look more important. Walk into a room where everyone says hi to you, and people assume you're somebody. That's why links matter: Google pays attention to who vouches for you.

But not all friends count the same. Ten friends nobody knows are not the same as one friend who is the president. If the president says you're good, people listen. If ten strangers nobody has ever heard of say it, nobody does. And if those ten strangers all look a bit shady, they start to make you look shady too.

So, do backlinks still matter?

Yes. They're not the only thing, and for a local business they're not even the first thing. Clear pages, real reviews and a site that works well on a phone come first. But when two businesses are close, who vouches for you is part of what tips it.

For a local trade, the friends worth having live close to home. A local association you belong to. A supplier you actually buy from. A community event you sponsored. A local news story about a job you did. They're real, they're relevant, and they make sense together. Nobody had to be paid to say them.

That's the kind of friend Google is looking for: one you earned by being a real business that real people know.

My cheap-link mistake

My own site launched in 2019. It took about a year of steady work to reach Google's first page for most of our searches, and then it stayed there for two to three years. Clear pages, real reviews and a lot of patience. Slow, honest work.

Then I got impatient. I wanted more, faster. And there's a whole market of people happy to sell you links by the bucket, for pocket change.

I bought some. They were ugly: links from sites with no real readers, pages stuffed with links to anything and everything, sites that had nothing to do with painting or with my city. Ten friends nobody knows, times a lot.

Not long after, my site dropped. I can't prove it was the links. Google doesn't send you a letter explaining every move it makes. But looking back, it's the most likely reason. It looked like a penalty, and it came after the shortcut, not before.

"Years of slow, honest work, undone by a shortcut I paid for."

Davis, on cheap backlinks

Why cheap links backfire

Think about it from Google's side. Its whole job is to show people the business that really deserves to be first. If anyone could buy their way to the top with a pile of junk links, the results would be useless, and people would stop trusting them. So Google works hard to spot links that were bought instead of earned, and it doesn't like them.

At best, cheap links do nothing, and you've wasted the money. At worst, they tell Google you're trying to cheat, and your site gets pushed down. Climbing back up is slow, and it can be slower than the first climb, because now you have to earn back trust you used to have.

That's the part nobody selling cheap links mentions. They're not selling you friends. They're selling you a reputation problem, and you only find out once it's yours.

What we do instead

I learned this the expensive way, so you don't have to. We never buy links. Not cheap ones, not expensive ones, not "packages" with a nice name on them.

We build sites that deserve to be linked to, and we help you go after the few friends that matter: real, local, relevant places that would vouch for your business anyway. It's slower, yes. But a friend you earned stays your friend, and Google has no reason to hold it against you.

If you want a site built to be found and kept clean, have a look at our websites, or ask us on a free 30-minute call what your trade and your city would take.