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.
Yes. In 2026, websites can rank without backlinks if they have strong topical authority, excellent on-page SEO, high-quality content, and good user experience.
Everyone seems to miss the key point: no matter what SEO techniques you use or what tips and tricks you apply, they won’t matter for the vast majority of sites. Zero-click searches and in-app answers are now the standard. Users get what they need without ever leaving Google. Google scrapes your content, feeds it to its AI, and delivers the answers as if they came directly from Google. You all know the spiel. Honestly, I stopped worrying about SEO about two years ago. In fact, I don’t even care if search engines crawl my sites anymore. I get more traffic from social media than from all search engines combined.