Why Link Building SEO Still Matters in 2025
“Link building doesn’t matter anymore because of AI”
This is 100% false.
It’s easy to assume that traditional SEO tactics like link building are becoming less relevant or even obsolete nowadays. After all, if AI can churn out “optimised” articles at scale, shouldn’t content alone be enough? Well, not quite. First of all, when search engine algorithms evaluate a website, it doesn’t only look at keywords or content, it also measures how trustworthy your site is based on who links to your content. Without high-quality backlinks to put the element of trust (E-E-A-T) into your website, search engines have little reason to prioritise it over your competitors who are putting in the effort to gain a good backlink from a credible source.
Next, while search engines like Google have definitely evolved alongside AI, they will never forsake link building. In fact, with free AI tools and the spam of AI-generated content flooding the web, there is even greater confidence placed on trust signals like backlinking to separate credible sites from computer-generated noise. Case in point, SEO content giant Backlinko did a study of nearly 12 million search results, revealing that pages in the #1 spot have an average of 3.8x more backlinks than positions #2 to #10.
Furthermore, AI actually lends to the argument that SEO is important.
Why Link Building (Brand Mentions) Matters to AI Search
ChatGPT and other AI tools are how people research and discover businesses. If you want your brand to be referenced by these large language learning models (LLMs), you need to build authority online, and the best way to do that is through brand mentions (link building).
Why? Because AI systems play a part in every aspect of search. From crawling and indexing pages, to mapping brands and their relationships with each other and ordering search engine rankings. And when it comes to generative AI, brand mentions are the strongest signals for recommendations. A study of 75,000 brands shows that businesses with brand mentions earn far more AI mentions (up to x10). Vice versa, if your business is not being mentioned on other people’s pages, your business will not be found in AI responses at all.
So let’s say a local stationery store hires an SEO agency like Login Marketing to run a link building campaign. Through thoughtfully planned PR link building strategies, they land an editorial feature in a popular lifestyle magazine that covers creative hobbies and office trends. This coverage earns them brand mentions and exposure to a huge audience. And let’s say we keep the link building campaign going. The local stationery store gets more backlinks and brand mentions from other high-authority sources. Over time, search engines begin to recognise the store as an authority in the stationery niche. Soon, AI‑powered summaries and generative AI search tools start featuring the store in queries like “best scrapbook supplies” or “eco-friendly office stationery”. This further boosts the store’s SEO authority and rankings, and so on.
Link building is what transforms an ordinary wall of website text into authoritative content that will get featured in search engine searches. Start with Login Marketing’s complementary SEO audit, where we will analyse your website’s current link building status and more.
