Do Backlinks Still Matter?
I was recently asked a question by someone in the industry. They said they watch our videos, they know that search engine optimization is dead and that search everywhere optimization is alive, but they wanted to know: do backlinks still matter?
Ten to fifteen years ago, there were automated software systems you could pay for that would generate backlinks and make you look popular and valuable to Google. Those got penalized, and the industry shifted to manual backlinking and writing content for robots instead of people. That has since evolved into content marketing adapted for AI.
So the real question becomes: how do you get valuable backlinks pointing to your website that signal your business is an authoritative source? I wouldn’t say backlinks are dead. I’d say they’re more important than ever, but far fewer of them are actually valuable compared to the sheer volume that used to exist.
Think of it this way: you don’t always need a clickable link anymore. You just need to be the cited source on other websites and platforms, including inside a Google overview. Sometimes there isn’t even a link to click at all, a phenomenon known as zero-click search, where people make their final decisions about who to work with based on what an answer engine like ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity says, or what appears at the top of Google, without ever clicking through to a website. But your website still needs authority. The internet, the answer engines, and the search engines all need to recognize that you’re valuable, which means context matters far more than volume.
Instead of just having a link on someone else’s website pointing to you, you want links from places like Wikipedia, Reddit, and Quora. You want links from social media channels pointing back to you. You want strong press releases that get syndicated across the internet and picked up by media outlets and other websites that link back to yours. The quality of a backlink has never mattered more than it does today.
If you have strong backlinks and consistent messaging, and sites like Wikipedia, Reddit, and Quora are all saying that you solve the same problems, answer the same questions, and serve the same areas, AI will connect those dots. Some of the best places to build this kind of presence include Wikipedia, Quora, Reddit, social media channels, high-quality directory listings, podcasts (including their show notes, since AI can listen to podcasts and identify exactly who appears on them), and guest blogging on someone else’s high-influence platform in front of their audience.
Backlinks in general aren’t all that valuable on their own, but a backlink with great context, from a genuinely influential and popular channel, is like striking gold. That’s why digital PR matters, why partnerships and collaborations matter, why your directories and profile listings across the internet matter, and why your reviews and testimonials matter as backlinks that build authority and trust. It’s also why social content distribution matters: when you write things on social media that people actually share, the more a post gets shared, the more value social platforms place on it.
So stop asking yourself how to build backlinks, and start asking how to build visibility and credibility across the web. Backlinks absolutely still matter. If you’re not sure where to start, go to ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity and describe your organization, explain that you’re trying to be found in answer engines and on third-party answer-engine websites, and ask for the top ten backlink opportunities or strategies you should pursue. Then go do them.