Backlinks Still Count in 2025 - Even If Your Content Is Great

In 2025, producing great content is table stakes. But if you’re wondering why your expertly crafted blog post isn’t ranking — even after following all on-page SEO best practices — the missing ingredient is likely this: backlinks.

We’ve seen this story play out across thousands of pages. Content quality alone is no longer a differentiator. Without strategic link acquisition, even the most helpful and technically optimized content can struggle to break into the top of the SERPs.

 

Backlinks Still Drive Rankings in 2025

The correlation between links and rankings hasn’t disappeared — it’s evolved. According to a 2025 report from Internet Marketing Ninjas, 85% of top-ranking pages in Google had over 1,000 referring domains. Ahrefs data backs this up: pages with more backlinks consistently rank for more keywords and receive more organic traffic.

Google may have de-emphasized link spam, but it hasn’t abandoned backlinks as a signal of authority and relevance. In fact, the role of quality links has grown more nuanced. In a landscape dominated by AI summaries and zero-click results, backlinks serve as proof points — both for search engines and for users navigating dense topic clusters.

Content Needs Amplification to Succeed

Many SEOs fall into the trap of “publish and pray.” They create great content — detailed, structured, written with user intent in mind — but it goes nowhere because no one sees it, cites it, or links to it.

As LockedownSEO put it bluntly in a 2024 post:

“Without a promotion strategy that includes link-building, even your best piece of content is a ghost town.”

That sentiment is echoed across SEO Reddit threads, where practitioners continually note that Google’s ranking systems, while improved in evaluating content quality, still heavily weigh authority — and that authority is established primarily through backlinks.

 

Real-World Case Studies Reinforce This

Let’s look at what works.

Backlinko’s recent AI SEO guide, published in March 2025, followed their well-known “Skyscraper” method: publish the best, most thorough guide on a trending topic — and then promote it relentlessly. The result? Over 1.5 million backlinks earned through features in HubSpot, GoDaddy, Entrepreneur, and others.

Another case study comes from Loopex Digital, which used AI to enhance both content creation and prospecting. Their campaigns led to a 50% boost in link acquisition and 40% more backlinks on average for content co-authored with AI tools.

Both examples prove a point: great content is the foundation. But outreach, promotion, and link-building determine whether it will rank — and stay ranked.

 

Not All Links Are Equal

In 2025, the SEO community has become increasingly selective about the types of backlinks they pursue. Google’s SpamBrain and AI-driven link spam detection have rendered old-school tactics — like mass directory submissions or low-quality guest posts — ineffective at best, risky at worst.

Instead, SEOs are focusing on:

• Relevance: Links from topically similar sites
   
• Authority: High DR sites that have themselves earned strong link equity
   
• Placement: In-content links are valued over footers, sidebars, or author boxes
   
• Traffic Potential: Backlinks that also generate referral clicks
   

According to a BuzzStream report from early 2025, the average cost of a quality guest post is now $609, while link insertions hover around $140. With costs rising, ROI tracking is essential. The same report noted that most SEOs spend $5k–12.5k per month and land between 1–9 links during that time.

 

Why AI Makes Link-Building More Important — Not Less

A new wrinkle in the discussion: Google's AI Overviews and tools like Perplexity AI increasingly cite sources with authority backlinks. In these systems, having backlinks from top-tier sites can influence whether your content gets surfaced in AI summaries.

Search engines aren't just crawling and indexing anymore — they're interpreting, summarizing, and curating. And links remain one of the clearest signals that a page is worth referencing.

Flow Agency’s recent analysis shows that 85% of sources cited in AI summaries were also among the top 10 backlinked domains in their category.

 

Actionable SEO Insights for 2025

Here’s what practitioners should focus on right now:

• Perform a Backlink Audit
  Eliminate toxic, low-quality links. Tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and LinkResearchTools can help. Dead links (which account for 66% of all links over time) should be cleaned up or disavowed.
   
• Double Down on Linkable Assets
  Create content that earns links: original research, industry surveys, interactive tools, and comprehensive how-tos.
   
• Invest in Outreach
  Use platforms like HARO, Terkel, or Qwoted to land quotes in high-authority publications. Don’t rely on passive discovery.
   
• Build Relationships, Not Just Links
  Podcasts, collaborations, and niche communities are often overlooked sources of strong backlinks.
   
• Monitor Link ROI
  Track not just rankings, but referral traffic and engagement from linked sources. Tools like Postaga and Respona are useful for campaign management.
   

 

Community Commentary

The SEO subreddit has been vocal:

“Everyone keeps talking about content… but the people winning are the ones also doing link-building. Not spammy outreach, but real connections.” — u/SEO_Midwest

“After the March 2024 Core Update, I saw a 40% drop in traffic for a site with great content but few links. We built 12 backlinks in Q4 — traffic is now up 30% YoY.” — u/linkmagnet

Trusted voices like Kevin Indig, Lily Ray, and Glen Allsopp (ViperChill) have also echoed this theme across X and LinkedIn — praising great content, but emphasizing the need to “seed the ground” with authority signals, particularly for new or low-DR sites.

 

Final Thoughts

Great content is a necessity. But content alone, no matter how useful or well-optimized, isn’t enough to earn visibility in today’s competitive SERPs. Backlinks continue to serve as the web’s vote of confidence — for both Google and human users.

As search evolves to incorporate more AI and semantic processing, backlinks may play a more subtle role. But make no mistake: they’re still foundational to ranking.

So if your content isn’t ranking, look at your links. Or more likely — the lack of them.

Stay tuned. As Google continues to refine its ranking signals, we’ll be watching how the link landscape adapts.