Backlinks are bridges. Build as many backlinks as you possibly can. Google has stated over the past 15 years that backlinks cannot hurt you. They said it would be much too easy to manipulate a competitors rank.
That being said. Not all backlinks will help you. That's why you need to get as many possible backlinks to as many pages within your website as possible. Don't overload your index page. Get links to your subdomains as well.
SEO is...
1/3 quality updates
1/3 update quantity
1/3 backlinks
SEO is also multifaceted. It's the only thing we can all agree on.
~Ray
hardlinks.org