With LLMs and AI searches growing, everyone is talking about tactics to optimize their websites accordingly. Where SEO experts and marketers are chasing organic traffic in the zeroclick era, this question about “how efficient backlinks still are” often rises. AI searches interpret data instead of searching them. The best next step for website owners right now is to become a part of these AI interpretations, gain credibility, and get cited by LLMs and AI searches. And to achieve this, one crucial element every SEO expert needs is high-quality backlinks. Understand how AI searches works and if blending link building in your SEO strategy actually works.
How AI Search Engines Work
AI searches are much more refined than basic Google searches. Instead of simply crawling web pages, AI models bring up summaries after visiting various articles, reports, reviews, and posts.
When a user asks a question, unlike the search engine era, AI doesn’t only pull out the answers. Instead, it learns from top searches and summarizes them into one structured answer to improve user experience. Therefore, when your content consistently ranks well on Google searches, gets linked by high authority domains, and finds a spot in semantically strong clusters, there are higher chances that it will make it into AI searches.
Why Backlinks Still Matters in AI Searches
After we know how AI searches interpret content. Understanding which content it will interpret is the next step of this journey. This is where backlinks still matter in the age of AI searches. Highly defined and naturally placed backlinks boosts credibility and navigates AI towards your content. The higher the authority and trustworthiness of the backlinks earned, the better signal received by AI and search engines towards your reliability. As many experts quote, “backlinks are the digital votes of confidence.”
With more refinements in AI searches, these digital votes are being analyzed more critically and understanding how they are getting evaluated will help you reverse engineer your backlink strategy.
How Are AI Algorithms Evaluating Backlinks Now?
If you are still creating backlinks only with a goal to boost your domain authority, you need to understand Google’s algorithm is becoming smarter in learning how your link navigates customers and what sentiment it creates. Sheer volume of backlinks alone doesn’t qualify anymore as a strong ranking factor. Google crawlers are now trained to understand the context and evaluate the credibility of such links. They are more focused on:
- Evaluating how a link contributes in improving user experience &
- Why does it exist within the context
While DA is still one of the main ranking factors, AI searches reward high contextual relevance providing an opportunity to modest DAs to rank better as well if they are meaningfully aligned with the topic.
Placement of relevant links defines the perceived value. Naturally woven links perform better than the links in the header or footer, as they feel comparatively authentic. Moreover, semantic understanding also refines your ranking chances. Google algorithm now reads the meaning and analyses the relationships between words and concepts.
Do you know that 63% of businesses state that AI overviews have actually improved their organic traffic and visibility? This is a true testament to the fact that rankings no longer depend solely on authority but trustworthiness, relevance, and intent as well.
How to Build Backlinks That Help You Rank And Get Cited By AI
After we know how backlinks can accelerate chances to make it in AI searches, the next step is learning how to build high-quality backlinks. Use these top 7 Backlinking Strategies to improve your rankings.
- Digital PR
The most effective way to earn high-quality backlinks in 2025 is digital PR. Use valuable and newsworthy content to attract attention from B2B writers, journalists, and industry experts. This tactic not only combines public relations, SEO, and content marketing to improve visibility, but also increases your chances to reach your target audience.
What kind of content to use in Digital PR?
- Data-backed reports
- Statistics publishing
- Interactive tools such as weather forecast tools
- Product launches
- Survey results
- Case studies
- Expert commentary
- Guest posts
What are the benefits of the Digital PRs?
- Boosts authority through niche relevance.
- Accelerates ranking using Topical clusters.
- Drives referral traffic with increased reliability
- Build brand awareness by getting featured in respected media outlets.
- Create Compelling Content
Another backlinking tactic involved creating content that is link-worthy. This means your content, whichever format it is in, whether blog posts, product descriptions, reviews, guides, interviews, and more, needs to become a primary source of AI answers.
The best part about AI summaries is unlike users, they don’t only focus on the first 10 listings, but consider the top 50 positions, increasing your chances to get cited.
Shifting your focus from sole reliance on keywords towards creating content that responds to user intent, builds authority, earns brand mentions, with structured & organized format. Best Content creation practices includes:
- Using natural language and conversational content.
- Answering user intent and questions in a short, concise, and straightforward manner.
- Adding summary, index, or key takeaways section to your blogs to make them more skimmable.
- Addressing frequently asked questions.
- Following EEAT guidelines to make your content insightful and trustworthy.
- Developing pillar pages and supporting pieces for in-depth coverage.
- Image Link Building
Infographics are an effective visual asset for earning backlinks. Even when search engines or AI models find it hard to read the content in the image, they push it using the alt text mentioned in the visuals. Also, due to an increase in visual searches, adding high-resolution and small-sized images for faster loading enables AI searches to recommend your products. Club these images with rich and clear titles, alt text, and product descriptions. Moreover, eye-catching infographics are usually linked further.
Which Images to Create for Getting Links?
- Data visualizations
- Stock style photographs
- Typographics
- Illustrations
- Turn Mentions Into Backlinks
Set up Google Alerts to find out who mentioned you and request a link back. These are easy to earn as the author already knows the value of your product and will likely add links. Once you get a list of prospects, refine it for SEO purposes. Check out domain authority, domain traffic, and sub categorize based on types of niches. Craft personalized outreach program without being pushy.
- Get Listed in Resource Page
Resource page link building is the easiest and most efficient backlinking technique. Every industry has its own page of resources. All you have to do is reach out to the owner, share your website and business, and ask for a listing.
How to find resource pages?
Type:
- Keyword inurl:resources
- Keyword “best resources”
- Keyword” useful resources”
- Keyword intitle:links
- Keyword “helpful links”
You can also use reverse engineering and find out to which link your competitors are tagged in. Tools like SemRush are perfect for this tactic.
- Reclaim Lost & Broken Links
Lost and broken links need to be replaced. This occurs when the author removes your links, the link page no longer exists, or maybe redirected to 301 error. To find these links, use tools like Ahrefs. Pursue with approaching links that disappeared. Refresh your content on time, replace links with, and use Page Inspect like features to spot changes and figure out how your new link adds value.
Moreover, there can also be a different situation where no index is tagged. This tactic is mostly used to avoid sharing link juices and is negative for backlinking. It could be intentional or accidental. In case it is intentional there is no use trying claiming that. The question that might rise here is how to figure out if it is intentional or not. Find out if their homepage is also noindexed or look out for SEO done in that page. As no website owner will intentionally waste their SEO efforts. If it seems accidental, reach out.
- Get Featured on Podcasts
Find industry top podcasts and try to be a part of them. Your target audience nowadays prefers listening rather than reading. Therefore, to be cited in voice searches by AI increases your chances to generate higher brand awareness. As soon as you find a number of podcasts you want to be a part of, look out if they invite guests or will they just mention your website/business in their podcasts. Listen to a few podcasts to understand the tone, style, and types of guests that could be featured.
- Craft a personalized pitch
- Draft precisely with clear and engaging lines
- Try delivering similar type of value as their podcast does
- Include interesting CTA
- Best prepared for follow up questions
- Offer to promote their podcast on your channels
Challenges in Link Building due to AI Search
AI search has changed SEO dynamics drastically. So is for backlinking. A few challenges that backlinking faces are:
- High Link-Building Cost: Reports claim that $8,406 is the average minimum monthly budget an organisation needs to compete in highly competitive niches for backlinking.
- Black Hat Tactics: Artificially boosting website’s search engine ranking by keyword stuffing, cloaking, hidden links, private blog networks, and content spinning attracts penalties and might end up delisting the content.
- Others: Other challenges could be limited time & resources, non-relevant link placement, and not crafting content for humans.
Conclusion: Does Link Building Still Matter in the Age of AI Search?
The answer is yes. High-quality backlinking still matters in the AI searches era. The only difference is that only the strong and relatable content is appreciated in this changing landscape. Opt for authentic link building. Do not choose shortcuts, link farms, and go for niche relevance as AI has made Google crawler even more intelligent and notice sentiments precisely. Moreover, earning these rich backlinks results in a compounding cycle with continuous SEO boost. So, are you ready to build meaningful backlinks that AI recognizes and rewards? Check out how Inspiringlads is helping SaaS brands earn links in Microsoft, Oracle, Forbes, and more.
