The past couple of years have been a threatening time for both website owners and search engines. No longer solely about keywords, SEO is heading to an environment that’s being shaped by Large Language Models (LLMs).
AI models, of which there are around ten major players (far more competitive than search engines), are changing how content is found, understood and ranked. Within this, backlinks continue to play a core role in content discovery, even during LLM domination.
Google’s LLMs and backlinks
Google’s integration of sophisticated AI into its core search algorithms means that the rules appear to be changing. Evaluation of backlinks is unprecedentedly nuanced. It’s no longer a simple numbers game (an index of who has the most backlinks weighted by the authority of where they come from), but Google’s LLMs now meticulously scrutinize the contextual fabric surrounding each backlink. They’re not clear on their exact methodology, but it’s safe to expect that they’re assessing semantic relevance to make sure there is a topical alignment between the linking and linked content.
Anchor texts are understood for their deeper intent, not just keyword matching. Before, AI could find patterns between networks of links and their rudimentary authority, but now sentiment and context are more relevant than ever. Does the site linking to your page also have authority within this subject?
LLMs are adept at discerning genuine authority and trustworthiness of linking domains, which effectively sidelines manipulative tactics. This refined analysis is laid out in Google’s Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) strategy. Because of this, high-quality and contextually relevant backlinks are what boosts visibility in traditional search results, but also within Google’s AI-driven features like its Search Generative Experience, which weights towards authoritative sources to avoid hallucinations.
Because of this, it’s not just that the importance of linkbuilding in an SEO strategy is growing, but that it’s difficult to get right with rising standards. And, one way to improve it has been to leverage AI yourself, or via an agency, to also improve linkbuilding at scale while staying relevant and contextual.
Backlinks are credibility markers for internet-citing LLMs
Beyond Google, which is something we never thought much about before the release of GPT-3.5, there has been a flurry of LLMs that are connected to the internet. This means that where our potential users are asking questions is now less predictable, and frequently just accepting the AI answer provided.
So while the content may appear to be less important to the end user in this example, it’s not. It’s simply obfuscated. The AI model relies on this information, and weights authoritative sources higher as its own citations (which users can click through to). In the event of declining traffic leading to less content creation, this wouldn’t be a victory for AI companies but a loss, as they rely on this as fuel. Instead, a new economy would likely birth, perhaps akin to Perplexity’s Publisher’s Program and Ad Revenue Sharing Program.
In any case, backlinks continue to play a prominent role in judging the relevancy and authority of content, no matter how it’s fed or used. They’re credibility markers for AI models.
How Google’s LLM ranking feeds citing LLMs
The two functions of backlinks in the age of LLMs are not isolated. Instead, they’re married in a synergistic and symbiotic way. When Google’s LLMs elevate content within search rankings, recognizing its quality through a contextually rich backlink profile, this boost in visibility is what directly benefits its discoverability by other internet-citing LLMs. Google’s algorithm remains hegemonic. And, to top it off, the way that marketing strategists can play this game, too, is to deploy AI as a way to more efficiently perform outreach and stitch together linkbuilding strategies that center around context, relevancy and topic authority.