Backlinks still move the needle — but AI-powered summaries and LLM outputs are shifting which off-page signals matter most. A Semrush analysis and related research find brand mentions correlate more strongly with AI Overview visibility (0.664) than followed backlinks (0.218). For marketers, that changes where to spend time and budget: not by abandoning links, but by rebalancing link building, linkable assets and digital PR so they reinforce one another.
Three distinct paths to links and citations
Treat off-page work as three complementary disciplines, each solving a different problem.
Link building is the explicit ask — guest posts, broken-link reclamation and targeted outreach that requests a followed link. Its main advantage is control: you can direct equity to a landing page or bottom-of-funnel content and, where editorial policy allows, influence anchor text and placement. The downside is scale and compliance risk. Google’s anti-link-spam guidance and signals from a 2024 search document leak indicate the algorithm discounts poor-quality backlinks, so prioritize fewer, higher-quality placements.
Linkable assets are content or tools that attract links organically: free calculators, top lists, templates and stat roundups. They’re low-cost and repeatable, and when they gain traction they can earn hundreds or thousands of links without constant outreach. Their limitation: they usually point to themselves rather than to commercial pages, so use internal linking to transfer value where it matters.
Digital PR is story-driven outreach — pitching journalists with original data, expert commentary or newsworthy angles. PR can produce syndicated coverage and widespread brand mentions, but results are less predictable than link building. Successful digital PR amplifies assets and creates the kind of topical citations that AI overviews favor.
How to combine the three into a unified funnel
Don’t treat these tactics as alternatives. Use them together to build topical authority and increase both search and AI visibility.
- Use controlled link building to jump-start promising linkable assets. A few guest posts or reclaimed links to a stat-rich page can help it rank and earn organic backlinks over time.
- Design linkable assets to reference commercial pages and enable internal linking. That channels earned link equity to landing pages that convert.
- Turn proprietary data or high-potential assets into PR stories. If coverage yields mentions without links, follow up with link reclamation outreach asking for citations where appropriate.
For example: promote a statistics page via targeted guest posts to seed link equity, then use PR to pitch that data as part of a broader story. The page can continue attracting organic links while internal links transfer authority to a paid-product landing page — producing both direct and assisted outcomes.
Practical constraints and where to allocate budget
Three constraints recur: low outreach reply rates, limited control over how third parties link to you, and link decay. Each tactic helps mitigate some of these issues: linkable assets reduce dependence on constant outreach; digital PR can generate high-volume, syndicated attention; and targeted link building gives control over which commercial pages get backlinks.
Cost varies. Repurposing first- or third-party data with public sources (for example, Google Trends) can produce a useful PR angle at modest expense. Larger primary studies or surveys raise costs but can increase media pickup. A blended methodology — combining existing internal data with third-party and open data — often delivers the strongest trade-off between credibility and budget.
What to measure
Counting followed domains is no longer enough. Build four reporting views that map to business outcomes:
- Referral traffic and revenue attributable to acquired links.
- Correlations between acquired links and page performance: rankings, organic traffic, AI visibility and conversions.
- AI visibility and citation trends — track when assets appear as sources in AI overviews or LLM outputs.
- Brand visibility and topical citations, segmented by topic and market.
These views reveal what delivers measurable business impact versus vanity metrics. If assets attract links but not topical citations, invest in PR angles that make them newsworthy. If coverage yields mentions without links, prioritize link reclamation to recover link equity where it matters.
Operational checklist: what teams should do next
- Audit your existing assets and tag which ones can serve as PR hooks, which can be optimized to earn organic links, and which need internal links to commercial pages.
- Prioritize link-building efforts for BOFU pages where you need direct conversion signals, and apply strict quality controls to avoid spammy practices.
- Allocate budget for repeatable PR refreshes rather than one-off news pushes, and plan follow-up outreach for link reclamation after coverage.
- Instrument AI-visibility tracking alongside traditional SEO metrics so reporting captures citations and LLM sourcing over time.
As AI search grows, the practical trade-off is clear: favor quality over quantity, invest in assets that can be promoted into stories, and maintain a disciplined link-acquisition process targeted at commercial outcomes. That combination preserves the value of followed links while aligning your program with the citation-driven logic behind many AI overviews.
What to watch next: track AI overview citations, test PR-led refreshes of high-performing assets, and measure how those citations affect conversions. Those signal-driven experiments will determine whether your link strategy needs further rebalancing.
