I am writing these AI experiments because it would be fun if they were actually read. I have a friend that is a super solid SEO consultant from which I learned years ago that link building is what gets you the visitors.
After optimizing my website for LLMs and generative AI, I thought it to be easy nowadays to get a few high Domain Authority (DA) links from the usual suspects from the past. Sites like: Quora & Stack Overflow with a link to my homepage.
But then a thought popped up: would this still be the most valuable use of my time to start adding links in those places this way? Or would I be better putting in a little more time so that I have real relevant posts on other sites?
I went from links as a SEO tactic to proof that my writing belongs somewhere. Codex showed me this.
The best candidate was when I built a GitHub-style activity view as a Hugo module and later turned it into an open source contribution, the most natural backlink candidate was not a random forum post. It was the project’s own README.md on GitHub.
I didn’t want my AI tools to start writing AI slop and posting it everywhere, I want to show my struggles with these tools and my own psyche to shine through.
My hypothesis: one relevant backlink from the right community will beat several easy links from big generic domains. Time will tell if this is true, so I will get back when I have some data to tell you more.
Key Insight:
I thought link building was about finding places willing to accept my URL. My AI tools pushed me to see it was more about finding places where the writing actually belonged.