Guest posting might matter more now, not less (AI Overviews)

Everyone in here keeps saying link building is dying because of AI Overviews and zero-click search. I think it might be the opposite, for a specific reason - hear me out.

If AI Overviews/ChatGPT/Perplexity pull their answers from sites that already rank top 10, then getting a client's content or contextual link onto a page likely to rank and get cited isn't just "SEO juice" anymore; it's a shot at getting the brand baked into an AI-generated answer. One guest post on the right site can now do double duty: rankings + AI citation exposure.

Some things I'm curious about:

• Is anyone actually seeing their placements/guest posts show up as sources in AI Overviews, or is this still mostly theory?
• Has anyone changed their site selection criteria because of this (going more for topical authority sites vs just DA/traffic)?
• Is anyone tracking this properly, or is most of the industry still just reporting rankings + backlinks like it's 2022?

Feels like a lot of people are still pricing and pitching link building the old way while the actual value proposition quietly changed underneath everyone.

Genuinely curious - is this real, or is it overthinking a trend?

Link buiding and zero click search have nothing in common. To get to AIO you still need a linkbuilding. Google has changed a lot, but linkbuilding will stay as one of the top factors in your positions. There is no chance they might cancel it because there will be almost nothing left: reviews can be bought, and all other factors are relatively small.

iAuthority said:

Everyone in here keeps saying link building is dying because of AI Overviews and zero-click search. I think it might be the opposite, for a specific reason - hear me out.

If AI Overviews/ChatGPT/Perplexity pull their answers from sites that already rank top 10, then getting a client's content or contextual link onto a page likely to rank and get cited isn't just "SEO juice" anymore; it's a shot at getting the brand baked into an AI-generated answer. One guest post on the right site can now do double duty: rankings + AI citation exposure.

Some things I'm curious about:

• Is anyone actually seeing their placements/guest posts show up as sources in AI Overviews, or is this still mostly theory?
• Has anyone changed their site selection criteria because of this (going more for topical authority sites vs just DA/traffic)?
• Is anyone tracking this properly, or is most of the industry still just reporting rankings + backlinks like it's 2022?

Feels like a lot of people are still pricing and pitching link building the old way while the actual value proposition quietly changed underneath everyone.

Genuinely curious - is this real, or is it overthinking a trend?

Click to expand...

i believe that the importance of the audience of the website cannot be understated here. even if the guest post does not go viral through ai responses, it will still reach the correct audience if it is placed on an appropriate website.i like the citation approach. however i would need more consistent results to pay for it. has anyone began trackking ai referrals?

I’ve seen a few placements show up as sources in AI answers, but it’s still hit or miss, strong topical sites seem more likely to get pulled in than just high DA ones.

Citations come from the page, not the site, so the DA of the host barely matters here. A guest post only gets cited if that exact URL gets crawled often and is retrievable for the query, and plenty of guest post sites bury new posts and rarely get them recrawled. The idea that it all comes from the top 10 is also shaky. AI answers branch into related sub queries and cite pages that do not rank for the main keyword at all.

So topical fit of the page and a clear brand mention next to the claim count more than the link itself, unlinked mentions can get picked up the same way. On tracking, one manual check proves nothing because answers change between runs, you need the same prompts repeated over time. Too early to build a strategy on it.

I believe it is one of the practices you may follow but can't solely depend on it for AI citations. HIgh quality, search intend based content will always be the leader for better ranking. Major concern that requires attention is whether content answers real people query or not.

iAuthority said:

Everyone in here keeps saying link building is dying because of AI Overviews and zero-click search. I think it might be the opposite, for a specific reason - hear me out.

If AI Overviews/ChatGPT/Perplexity pull their answers from sites that already rank top 10, then getting a client's content or contextual link onto a page likely to rank and get cited isn't just "SEO juice" anymore; it's a shot at getting the brand baked into an AI-generated answer. One guest post on the right site can now do double duty: rankings + AI citation exposure.

Some things I'm curious about:

• Is anyone actually seeing their placements/guest posts show up as sources in AI Overviews, or is this still mostly theory?
• Has anyone changed their site selection criteria because of this (going more for topical authority sites vs just DA/traffic)?
• Is anyone tracking this properly, or is most of the industry still just reporting rankings + backlinks like it's 2022?

Feels like a lot of people are still pricing and pitching link building the old way while the actual value proposition quietly changed underneath everyone.

Genuinely curious - is this real, or is it overthinking a trend?

Click to expand...

tbh guest posting is still justified, but I would not spend additional money on something like AI citations. more important is the relevancy of the pages/site crawled. the DA tells you basically nothing.

Backlinks are getting quite annoying to track and figure out on others people website. The spamming of backlink profiles on almost any .com site is getting to a point where you wonder if a group of people are intentionally creating a absurd amount of noise to make it harder.

Spamming a backlink profile will never get you business leads and just piss people off.