Does backlinking still work in 2024?

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umbreno

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I have been following my friends site in ecommerce. It’s a seven/eight figure business that was topping the serps for High difficulty keywords in 2020 and a cornerstone of his success at the time was your typical pbn style backlinking.

Now in 2024 he’s barely making the third page for many of the same keywords.

Nothing has changed regarding his strategy since 2020 with the only exception being he was using AI to generate on-page written content. He’s blaming those for his setbacks but i’m not convinced as i’ve seen other examples of backlinking amounting to nothing over the past year or so specifically.

Has the game changed?
 
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the game has changed for sure,
the thing is, trash and low quality links doesn't really make any difference nowadays,
you need to get solid links if you want to rank for any decent keywords and that's what most people avoiding "trying to save up" or make greater ROI,
most people fail because they're getting these kind of links or/and getting links from websites that have such links so link juice doesn't simply pass
 
Of course he's no longer ranking.

Those are probably poorly setup and all link from homepage.

Homepage PBN links should be used as an extra, not core. They easily stand out.

Other issue is content and historical data.

Content - they understand it much better and more juice will not help if they don't like it.

Historical data - if the website is flagged as a bad boy, it takes a lot of effort to get on the good site. This is almost certainly the case here.
 
umbreno said:
I have been following my friends site in ecommerce. It’s a seven/eight figure business that was topping the serps for High difficulty keywords in 2020 and a cornerstone of his success at the time was your typical pbn style backlinking.

Now in 2024 he’s barely making the third page for many of the same keywords.

Nothing has changed regarding his strategy since 2020 with the only exception being he was using AI to generate on-page written content. He’s blaming those for his setbacks but i’m not convinced as i’ve seen other examples of backlinking amounting to nothing over the past year or so specifically.

Has the game changed?
Click to expand...
The fact is that Google sees text generated by AI.
And we must not forget that the sites on which there are links also probably use AI.
Thus, Google, realizing that the text was not written by a person, reduces the ranking of both your site and donor sites.
Hence the result.
 
Using AI content is not recommended for every aspect, which will downtrend his rankings. Same here too just PBNs are not best idea, mix of quality and relevant links can change the game for sure.

Ask him to check what their competitor doing on the onpage and backlinks, that can be more insightful for his next steps.
 
accs_pax said:
The fact is that Google sees text generated by AI.
And we must not forget that the sites on which there are links also probably use AI.
Thus, Google, realizing that the text was not written by a person, reduces the ranking of both your site and donor sites.
Hence the result.
Click to expand...
that's actually one of the most common myths people putting blame at,
you can rank with purely generated ai content from the worst LLM/model as long as it's not spammy and meets the minimal requirements for a readable content,
that's won't pass a manual check most probably tho,

people are spamming websites with thousands of posts/pages in short periods of time and blaming ai for it,
you'll get penalized even if you use the top notch writers for this, google doesn't know the difference,
they only know that you're spamming with a brand new website or website that doesn't have enough trust/authority or used to have as many pages
 
umbreno said:
Has the game changed?
Click to expand...
The game is now changing faster than ever... Now not only he is using the AI content but thousands of other website owners are too so the competition on particular keyword is not just getting stronger but number of competitors are increasing as well. So if he is just relying on a backlink strategy that was working earlier then it's the time to evolve. Now he can not sustain his rankings with simply AI generated content and low quality links, he need more quality content on-site as well as higher value backlinks too to improve and sustain his rankings in SERPs.
 
Why is he saving money on content when he was already making good profit ? Ask him to get Ai content replaced.
 
tiiberius said:
Of course he's no longer ranking.

Those are probably poorly setup and all link from homepage.

Homepage PBN links should be used as an extra, not core. They easily stand out.

Other issue is content and historical data.

Content - they understand it much better and more juice will not help if they don't like it.

Historical data - if the website is flagged as a bad boy, it takes a lot of effort to get on the good site. This is almost certainly the case here.
Click to expand...

I warned him lol. I mean I was astonished that it was ranking so well in the first place. Now he’s spending 80k a month on google ads to try to compensate.
 
umbreno said:
I warned him lol. I mean I was astonished that it was ranking so well in the first place. Now he’s spending 80k a month on google ads to try to compensate.
Click to expand...
Ouch.

Tell him to replace the PBN links with guest posts and niche edit.

As new guest posts come alive, remove weak PBN links.

Only keep the strong ones.

And improve content a lot. Look into Topical Authority.
 
Whatever, the AI getting boom in recent days , Google loves hand written content and organic impact.

And backlinks surely helps to achieve it by various sub techniques by itself. But it should be as quality links from authorized sources.
 
Don't use AI articles directly on the main sites. It should be updated. Advise him to update the PBN by adding and updating the articles. If possible, build some quality links to power up the PBNs. Building links like guest posts, and niche PBNs to the main site for more link juice & authority will also help.
 
Remove AI content and hire several "verifiable" experts in the field to write for him.

Allocate 50% of that ad spend to pay these experts, then tap in to their networks for new link opportunities.
 
I dont suggest using AI content directly on the main sites. Focus on getting natural and quality backlinks from authority sites. Use quality content also content should be user intent. Build some niche edits and traffic guest post for money site. Diversify the backlink profile to include a variety of sources.
 
Backlinks built on real money sites with human traffic have always worked for my clients' sites.

Link inserts on ranking pages also help.

At least, that is my personal experience.
 
yes, backlinks do work if created correctly. If you are a receipe site get links from other food sites or some news site. that will carry more weight than getting link from a casino or pets site.
 
AI generated content is the key culprit here, also make a check whether the backlinks are from PBN's or not. If these are quality backlinks no one can stop you rank on the first page. I suggest to do inbound way to get backlinks, promote as much as informational articles to get the backlinks from quality niche based guest blogging websites.
 
tiiberius said:
Of course he's no longer ranking.

Those are probably poorly setup and all link from homepage.

Homepage PBN links should be used as an extra, not core. They easily stand out.

Other issue is content and historical data.

Content - they understand it much better and more juice will not help if they don't like it.

Historical data - if the website is flagged as a bad boy, it takes a lot of effort to get on the good site. This is almost certainly the case here.
Click to expand...

I’m interested in building a PBN. Could you please PM me? Thank you.
 
It is the only thing that still works. You should learn seo for this and SEO will be in good demand for next few years so you should be good to go with that knowledge.
 
To be honest, while PBNs were effective in the past, they will not be as effective in 2023 and 2024. I have conducted many tests, and this is my conclusion.
 
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