The importance of establishing authority through link building has only increased as the surface areas of search expand into LLMs.

Your content is now competing with more sources, including AI results in the SERP and AI-generated content from other publishers.

At the same time, backlinks remain important signals of authority for both Google and LLMs, which treat those placements as indicators that your brand is trustworthy and relevant.

If you’ve been in SEO as long as I have, you probably still get daily LinkedIn messages from “link building agencies” promising a set number of links. That approach misses the point.

The most effective link building strategy is creating content people genuinely want to reference and share. That’s what I call writing content with link intent.

The philosophy driving content with link intent

Link building and content creation should be part of the same process, though I’ve found that’s rare. Treating link building as a separate initiative increases the likelihood that you’ll optimize for links alone without considering down-funnel effects.

Instead, start by thinking about who in your community cares — or should care — about what you’re writing and why.

Content created from this mindset, rather than a quantity-driven “must get links” mentality, has a much better chance of passively earning links and building clout in both traditional and AI search over time.

When your content is genuinely useful and relevant, people naturally want to share and reference it without the need for spammy emails or InMails.

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Where strategic outreach fits

Strategic outreach works best after the relevance work is done. That means identifying the writers, journalists, and creators already covering your topic and showing them why your perspective adds something timely, useful, or differentiated from other sources they could reference.

In many cases, the strongest opportunities come from content tied to reference-intent topics around statistics, benchmarks, reports, or highly relevant industry developments.

If you’re working in content and link building silos, your teams are probably focused on:

• Hitting a target number of links.
• Requesting link swaps.
• Promoting content without considering whether it’s actually useful or relevant.

In my experience, that approach often ignores whether the content genuinely benefits your brand, which runs counter to what good content should accomplish.

Content that provides genuine value and enhances the user experience will naturally appeal to people seeking credible sources for their own work.

If you can produce content strong enough to contribute meaningfully to a topic’s discourse, it will attract links, and Google, ChatGPT, Claude, et al. will recognize its relevance. It’s a much deeper and more integrated approach than chasing raw link numbers.

From what we know about LLMs, they favor content that credible sources treat as the definitive reference on a topic. That means depth and concentrated authority matter more than volume.

Dig deeper: Digital PR examples: 13 powerful campaigns and strategies that work

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The business significance of effective link intent

If LLM visibility is your goal, focus your efforts on a smaller number of high-value, deeply authoritative pieces instead of casting a wide net.

I can confidently say I’ve won several clients for my agency because of the content I’ve written (thanks, Search Engine Land!). Many B2B businesses can probably say the same.

Content strong enough to generate passive links also has a strong chance of being shared and driving referral traffic, which remains undervalued in SEO. Valuable content produced with link intent naturally builds links and SEO/AEO equity over time, creating a built-in snowball effect.

Beyond reducing time spent on outreach, it can create a network of related sites and publishers that continue driving referral traffic and long-term value. Think of it as an organic version of affiliate marketing, which continues to grow as a channel.

Dig deeper: Discoverability in 2026: How digital PR and social search work together

Considerations for content that builds link intent

There are good reasons to create content on news-related topics, such as offering a perspective on a new platform release or a product in your industry.

Newsjacking remains a proven PR tactic that can help you earn citations in relevant outlets. But if your content resources are limited, it’s useful to weigh the pros and cons of news-focused versus evergreen topics. News-focused content may generate clusters of links in the short term, but those topics also lose relevance more quickly over time.

Evergreen resources can continue accumulating citations and links long after the news cycle moves on, and that durability carries weight in both SEO and AEO because LLMs aren’t primarily trained on this week’s headlines.

Specificity and timing can increase a piece’s citation potential even when the topic itself is evergreen. Advice targeted to hay fever sufferers during a particularly severe pollen season, for example, is more likely to attract attention and references than generic sleep advice published without context.

Dig deeper: How to produce content that naturally builds AEO clout

Honing in on intent-driven link building

Todoist is a good example of this approach in practice. Its unique presentation of productivity methods has generated hundreds of referring domains — a number that’s grown 50% year over year and contributed meaningfully to the brand’s growth.

I talk with many SEOs these days who place less emphasis on link building than they did years ago.

In my opinion, that has less to do with links losing importance and more to do with outdated link building tactics becoming ineffective.

A link-intent approach that combines strong content with strategic outreach is more effective, evergreen, and efficient than siloed content and link initiatives.

It also strengthens your brand’s reputation while driving incremental traffic and improving the overall user experience.