Robot at the Door 2: Backlinks for Boundless Success

Hopefully after reading the previous post in our SEO series you’ve been able to focus on creating the valuable content that will answer the questions people ask search engines. This will naturally result in the search-engine robots serving up your website, or at least a link to it in the source-list of their AI-generated responses.

Valuable content is how you get people past the robot bouncer at the door, or in other words, the search engine. This is important because, ultimately, that robot is what either serves up a link to your site, or directs people somewhere else.

Because you’re necessarily dealing with the robot in order to get the chance to get to deal with the visitors it’s in charge of directing, you need to be persuasive in the way the robot can understand. AI bots are getting better and better at evaluating the worth of written text on its own merits, but historically that’s not a capability that search engine robots had, so it’s still one they don’t wholly depend on.

What they’ve depended on instead are a set of metrics worked into Google’s PageScore, and its equivalent for other search engines. One of the most important metrics of the PageScore of your site has always been the number of sites that link to yours. These are called “backlinks”

The Enduring Importance of Backlinks

Search engine algorithms continue to change and advance, and some people argue that backlinks will continue to become less and less important to search engines. Still others argue that backlinks continue to serve an important purpose in how search engines evaluate websites. As SEO expert Neil Patel notes, backlinks "still act as a seal of approval from one site to another." This endorsement system hasn't lost its relevance, but it has become more nuanced and refined.

Avoid doing it wrong

Back in the day, after website owners heard they needed backlinks to improve their SEO, they’d sometimes do anything to get them, even if the lengths they went to get them weren’t exactly upright. It was the Wild West of SEO, with many websites boasting a stampede of backlinks they bought from backlink farms. These were sites that specialized in linking to your content, it’s true, but just on huge pages of links devoid of any actual context or visitor intent.

In the end, search engines caught on pretty quickly to the game and started discounting and even penalizing attempts to game the system like that. Today, if you were to try something like that, you’d be more likely to move your SEO score in the negative than in the positive direction. Unfortunately, this fact hasn’t meant that there aren’t SEO firms out there that still practice this kind of thing, as Search Engine Land points out. Today, partially as a backlash against nefarious practices in the past, the quality of your backlinks is far more important than the quantity you have.

The modern Reality: quality over quantity

Today's approach to backlinks reflects a more sophisticated understanding of link value. Google's Gary Illyes has explicitly stated that "Google needs very few links to rank webpages," confirming what many SEO professionals have observed in practice. Illyes didn’t say that backlinks are unnecessary, just that fewer are needed, with the implicit corrolary that they simply need to be of higher quality.

What matters now isn't accumulating hundreds of low-quality links, but earning a select few high-quality endorsements from authoritative, relevant sources. A single backlink from a well-respected industry publication can carry more weight than dozens of links from questionable directories or link farms. This evolution has actually democratized SEO to some extent, allowing smaller websites with exceptional content to compete against larger sites with vast but mediocre link profiles. If you sling your stones right, it can be a case of David and Goliath

The Added Bonus: Direct Traffic Benefits

Beyond their SEO value, quality backlinks serve another crucial function: they drive direct traffic to your website. When someone follows a link to your site from a relevant, high-traffic website, they're often already interested in your topic or solution. This referral traffic tends to be highly engaged, with visitors more likely to spend time on your site, explore multiple pages, and convert into customers or subscribers. In fact, the researchers at the Wharton School of Business found that customers that come from such referrals generate at least 16% more value than customers from other sources.

This dual benefit—improved search rankings and increased referral traffic—makes backlink building a particularly valuable investment. Unlike some SEO tactics that only aim to influence algorithmic rankings, backlinks create multiple pathways for audience growth and engagement.

How to Encourage Quality Backlinks

Building a set of high-quality backlinks requires a thoughtful, relationship-focused approach. Focusing on high quality backlinks over time yourself will yield better results than trying to farm them out to an SEO agency that may still depend on questionable tactics despite those tactics not having worked well for years.

Produce Link-Worthy Content

The foundation of any successful backlink strategy is creating content that others naturally want to reference and share. This means developing resources that provide genuine value: comprehensive guides, original research, helpful tools, or unique insights that don't exist elsewhere. When your content becomes the go-to resource in your field, backlinks often follow naturally as other content creators reference your work.

Focus on creating "linkable assets" and these pieces of content will be so useful or interesting that they become natural reference points in your industry. You’re an expert in your field, and putting that expertise out there in the form of reports, guides, and even opinion pieces can be helpful to others in your industry. Then, as they naturally refer to your resources on their site, they get a solid source of credible information, and you get a solid backlink.

Promote Your Content Strategically

Creating excellent content is only half the battle; you also need to ensure the right people discover it. Find relevant communities, discussion boards, and social platforms where your target audience gathers, and use your content in some of your interactions. The key is approaching these communities with interest and a helpful mindset rather than a purely promotional one.

When engaging in these spaces, don’t only respond in threads having to do with the content you want to share, but instead focus on being genuinely useful. Answer questions, provide insights, and share resources (including your own when relevant) that truly help others. This approach builds credibility and encourages natural linking over time.

Build Authentic Relationships

Perhaps the most sustainable approach to earning backlinks is developing genuine relationships within your industry. Reach out to people you reference in your content, engage thoughtfully with their work, and start meaningful conversations. When relationships are built on mutual respect and shared interests, referrals and links often follow naturally.

When you build a relationship with someone who has already helped you (even if they've only helped with understanding, refinement of your thought process, and so forth) they’re more likely to let you help them refine their thought processes, too. Then they’re more likely to help you even more by publicly declaring how you’ve helped them, by posting a backlink to your content.

This relationship-building approach takes time but creates lasting value. Industry connections can lead not only to backlinks but also to collaboration opportunities, guest posting invitations, and other forms of mutual support that benefit all parties involved.

Conclusion

Backlinks remain a vital component of SEO success, but the approach to earning them has evolved significantly. Rather than pursuing quantity through questionable tactics, modern SEO professionals and wise website owners focus on earning quality endorsements through exceptional content, strategic promotion, and authentic relationship building.

The websites that thrive in today's search landscape are those that understand backlinks as part of a broader ecosystem of trust, authority, and value creation. By focusing on creating genuinely useful content and building real relationships within your industry, you'll find that quality backlinks—and the traffic and rankings they bring—follow naturally.