With AI Overviews and LLM-based search taking over, backlinks may not hold the same weight as before. But some say authority and citations will matter even more. What kind of links are you still building — and are they actually moving the needle now?
I don’t think links are dead. I think the easy-to-get links are just getting harder to justify. If AI results are pulling from a wider mix of sources, being mentioned in the places your audience already trusts probably matters more, not less.
I still build backlinks, but I’m more picky about them now. One relevant link from a site people actually trust is worth more to me than a bunch of random links just to increase the count. And with AI search, being mentioned and cited by the right sources seems like it could become even more important