How link building strategy should change when AI answers replace clicks
There's a scenario I keep thinking about that hasn't been widely discussed yet. If AI search continues growing and a significant chunk of informational queries never generate clicks to any website, the traditional value proposition of SEO changes. Right now you build links to rank pages that get traffic that converts. But if ranking the page just means getting cited in an AI answer rather than actually receiving the visit, the ROI calculation on link building shifts significantly. I'm not saying links stop mattering — they clearly still influence what AI tools trust and cite — but the downstream monetisation path is different. How are people thinking about this when planning link building investments for 2026 and beyond? Is anyone explicitly building for citation rather than for click-through?
Was skeptical about AI visibility being a real SEO concern worth optimizing for but the data changed my mind. Several of my client sites have started receiving meaningful traffic from AI-powered search tools and the pattern of which sites get cited is clearly related to their link profiles. Started digging into the specifics at Cheap SEO backlinks and the breakdown made sense of what I was seeing in the data. Building authority the right way has always mattered but the AI layer adds some nuance to how you think about which sources and anchor patterns actually help.