Does Google punish you for bad incoming links?

I just watched a good video at the Free Traffic System about this very topic.

They confirmed what I already knew…

No they do not because you cannot control who links to you. What Google does do however is put an emphasis on quality one-way links as opposed to the quantity of them.

This makes it fair and encourages you to work on getting quality back links to your site. So what makes a quality backlink?

To me all I do is look for relevancy in the link. I try not to worry about page rank because every website could increase in the eyes of Google in the future.

The strategy has paid off for Team-Schuman very well by giving us thousands of back links of which many of them turned into quality back links to.

The key is however that you watch who you link to. That is what can hurt you in the eyes of Google.