Link building has been considered one of the most consistent and reliable strategies in improving search rankings; and like most online marketing techniques, it is a reliable way to attract traffic to a website. This is true since the beginning of the SEO industry. Moz explains it here: 

However, there are weird, crazy myths about link building in SEO Orange County that are still practiced but are best stopped. Here are a few:

1. The first thing to remember is to never get links from sites with a moderate or a lower domain authority than your own ( Domain Authority is a machine learning system, and it takes and looks at all the site’s metrics). While it is easy to get spammy links from low-quality websites, they don’t get many good backlinks and is considered to have low DA. There are lots of high-quality sites that have low DA, though, and a link from such a site could be precious.
2. Next would be not to get links from any directories because Google will penalize not just those directories, but most of the sites whose link profiles come massively from those types of domains.
3. Talking about the penalty, don’t acquire links too fast or you’ll get penalized. By doing gray hat/black hat link building, link buying, or even link swapping schemes within your networks, will surely make you trip over on some of Google’s filters.  So make sure your links are from real sites that way you need not worry about its pace.
4. Don’t link out to other websites otherwise your web visitors and Google would think that the external link you’re linking out is more important than the information you impart on your site.
5. The variations in anchor text should be kept to specific proportions because if the search engine looks closely and finds that your anchor text doesn’t match your brand or that your anchor text is the same as the keyword you’re trying to optimize, it might penalize you.
6. Google will also take notice if you ask for a link in return for a discount or some other forms of favor. The search engine looks at it as some form of blackmail. Links are earned out of respect for your content or website; it is never demanded.

There are still other myths and wrong practices not mentioned. The point is, if link building is not properly done as an SEO Orange County strategy, its significance as a ranking factor will be downplayed. In so doing, it will reduce the value of all links, including those good links built by the people who actually know what they’re doing.