“We need more backlinks.”
If that phrase keeps surfacing in your SEO conversations, it’s time to stop.
Not because link building doesn’t work, but because most teams use it as a crutch for unclear thinking.
Somewhere in a dashboard, someone saw:
“Competitor has 3,000 referring domains. We have 1,200.”
Suddenly, links become a quarterly OKR. Budgets get allocated. Outreach starts. And nobody stops to ask the obvious:
You don’t fix weak content or broken strategy with backlinks.
You just waste budget faster.
Want to expand into a new market? Rank for high-intent keywords? Compete with top editorial sites?
Cool.
But before you build a single link, ask:
If not, you’re buying bricks for a house you haven’t designed.
Links amplify.
They don’t rescue.
They don’t validate bad decisions.
They don’t move the needle on fluff.
Your CMO doesn’t care how many links you acquired.
They care what moved:
That’s the shift. From chasing inputs to proving impact.
A real strategy says:
Here’s the market we’re after.
Here’s how we’re positioning.
Here’s the content we’ve built to win.
Now, do links help us accelerate this?
If yes, great.
Use them as a tactical lever.
Not a default setting.
I work with growth and marketing teams to turn SEO into a business driver, not a busywork factory.
That means building a real strategy, aligning it to your goals, and deciding if link building actually moves the needle.
If you’re stuck in the “we need more links” loop, it’s probably a sign something upstream is broken.