It feels like building links to weak or scattered content clusters does almost nothing now. Are you seeing that links only “kick in” after a site establishes strong topical coverage, or can links still push mediocre content up?
Topical authority is still a thing. Backlinks should always be made with the niche in mind. Generic backlinks are almost useless. A perfectly executed silo on a third party site making a backlink to your most important page should have way more impact than a simple niche page doing the same thing, even if both pages share the same intent. Simply put: A normal dog toy page --> backlink to your dog toy page --> strong backlink because of the same niche A hub dog toy page with several secondary pages making internal links back to it --> backlink to your toy page ---> Super STRONG backlink I learned about this method a few months ago while watching a french SEO vid. Now, I won't lie. I didn't try this method up until now, though it makes a lot of sense. Basing myself on what you said, I think this type of info could be a nice lead.