Backlinks still have a role, but they’re not the big lever they used to be. A few years back, links alone could move a page up. You didn’t need great content—just enough links. That doesn’t work anymore.
Now, links only help if the page they point to actually holds up. If someone clicks your page and feels it’s confusing, shallow, or not what they expected, they leave. When that happens again and again, links don’t protect the page. They lose their effect.
A lot of people get this wrong by chasing backlinks first. They spend time emailing, buying, or trading links without asking a basic question: is this page even worth linking to? In most cases, it isn’t. That’s why link building feels useless to many people now.
When backlinks do work, they feel natural. Someone links because your content helped them, explained something clearly, or saved them time. Those links still matter.
So backlinks aren’t overrated. The obsession with them is. They support good content. They don’t rescue bad content. If the page isn’t solid on its own, links won’t change much.
