DEEP DIVE

Death to the Linkerati

I was diving deep into Glen Allsopp’s "The State of SEO in 2025" report this week, and his notes on link building stuck out to me. 

The incentive to build content sites has almost entirely dried up. The September 2023 Helpful Content Update crushed thousands of "content first" sites, which were great link opportunities. 

What’s more, Google's AI Overviews are killing clicks, and the upcoming AI Mode is going to crush clicks even more. These changes have effectively destroyed the ad revenue model that kept content sites alive.

Bloggers are either getting out of the game entirely or shifting to social media where they can actually make money. And there’s no incentive for new bloggers to enter the space.

Meaning . . . fewer sites to get backlinks from.

Why this matters more than you think

Yes, fewer sites are being built, and thus there's less opportunity for backlinks. But your backlink profile is most likely being affected right now. 

Two main scenarios are happening. 

Content sites are letting their domains expire. Google killed their site, so no need to hang onto it.

When Google tanked their site, their metrics went to shit. Lets say you built a link on a site back in 2023 that was DR 40 and had 30,000 traffic. Now the site sits at 500 traffic. 

I would not consider this a good link anymore. 

What’s more, when Google tanks a site's traffic, Google bot stops visiting the URLs. The crawl rate significantly decreases. 

And if Google bot isn’t crawling the site, they aren’t crawling their external links, and they aren’t seeing the link pointing to you.

This effectively makes your existing backlinks on these sites obsolete.

The broken solution everyone's still using

Despite this massive shift, most agencies and SEOs are doubling down on the same old approach: blasting out 10,000+ emails per month.

They're essentially playing a numbers game in a market where the numbers keep getting worse. It's like trying to catch fish in a pond that's been drained—you can cast your line as many times as you want, but there just aren't as many fish as there used to be.

What the future looks like for link building

As Ross Hudgens said on X, you need to shift your strategy if you want to win. 

✋Stop focusing on blogger outreach and quantity. 

👉Start focusing on quality with the below four strategies. 

1. Build relationships with journalists

If you have a new site or want to focus on active link building (reaching out to people), then I suggest you dedicate 80% of your efforts to journalist outreach. There are two main strategies for this: 

• answer journalists' questions

• implement digital PR

Answering journalists' questions was popularized by the company Help a Reporter Out (HARO). And while it’s dead, it seems to be coming back. 

In addition, there've been several other companies (like Featured.com and Help a B2B Writer), which effectively do the same thing: journalists ask a question, you provide an answer in exchange for a mention.

Digital PR has been the name of the game for the larger part of three to four years now because . . . it works. I won’t go in-depth on the topic in this email but if you’d like to learn more, check out this article. 

2. Build relationships with non-content sites

This is where most people are missing the boat. E-commerce stores, SaaS companies, service businesses, and other “real” online businesses aren’t getting tanked. These are who you want to build relationships with.

That said, you need to give before you ask when approaching these sites. Build a real relationship instead of sending a crappy “Dear sir” email. 

I wrote an entire breakdown of this approach in my newsletter Give Before You Ask. The TL;DR is simple: Give these brands genuine value first. Mention them in your newsletters, share their content on social media, write case studies about their success.

Once you've built a real relationship, asking for a link becomes natural instead of transactional.

3. Create linkable assets that actually work

Most people think linkable assets involve creating a random infographic and hoping for the best. That's not how this works.

The assets that get linked to actually solve real problems for specific audiences:

• calculators that help people make decisions

• original data studies that reveal industry insights

• templates and tools that save time

• research that exposes industry myths

I've broken down exactly how to create these assets in two detailed guides: Passive Link Building and Passive Link Building Part Two.

The beautiful thing about linkable assets is they work while you sleep. Create them once and they can generate links for years.

4. Acquire expired domains and businesses

This is the strategy most people overlook because Google has said multiple times they punish sites for expired domain abuse. But guess what? It still works, and you can do it if you’re strategic about your domain buying approach.

I'm talking about strategic acquisitions where you evaluate domain age, authority, spam scores, and relevance to your niche.

I wrote a complete guide on how to evaluate expired domains using tools like Domcop, including all the metrics you should analyze before making a purchase.

And you don’t have to just buy expired domains. You can buy active businesses solely for their backlink profiles.

Epic Gardening bought All About Gardening, and while yes, they were able to take all the revenue and profits when they bought the business, they also took all 2,100 referring domains. This, in turn, doubled Epic Gardening's blog traffic in just a few weeks.

If you don’t have the funds to buy a profitable business in your niche, try to find a failing business and buy the site solely for its backlink profile. Then roll it into your brand.

Your next steps

Reading articles and theory is cool, but you know what will actually move the needle for your business?

Action. Don't just read this.

Implement it or send it to a team member.

Here's what to do next:

1. Sign up for Featured and start responding to relevant queries in your industry (aim for 3–5 quality responses per week).

2. Identify 20 non-content sites in your industry that you could potentially build relationships with.

3. Audit your existing content to see what could become a linkable asset (calculators, templates, data studies).

4. Research expired domains in your niche using the criteria I outlined in my expired domains guide.

5. Stop any "spray and pray" outreach campaigns you're currently running and pivot to a relationship-first approach.

You need to realize that quality over quantity is the new name of the game. Stop using outdated tactics that “scale” and start doing work that doesn’t scale.

Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.