Businesses are losing visibility in AI-powered search results because they rely on outdated backlink strategies that no longer generate citations or improve rankings.
Leading AI search optimization experts have identified the most effective link-building tactics for earning mentions, references, and authority in LLM-driven search experiences.
This comprehensive AISO Blog roundup guide breaks down proven techniques for building high-impact backlinks designed specifically for AI search visibility.
It helps businesses secure their place in AI-generated answers and maintain a competitive edge in the evolving search landscape.
Expert SEO Round-Up Post: Link Building for AI Answer Search Engines at AISO Blog
Learn how to build backlinks for AI search visibility with over 10 strategies from marketing experts at the AISO blog.
Expert Quote 1: Stephen Barringer
Digital Brand Manager, InventHelp
When it comes to outreach, relevance and quality are key priorities for me in 2026. I’m looking for opportunities to get links from trusted, relevant sources, specifically journalists, associations and trade groups, universities, respected industry sites and, increasingly, sources that feature in Google or AI-generated answers.
Equally, having quality assets that we can offer these sources, be it our expertise and insight, a helpful study or original data, is absolutely critical in order to land links.
Measuring the success of links in 2026 goes beyond domain authority and search rankings for me. I want to see a positive impact on our brand entity, wider citations/mentions of InventHelp (in Google AI Overviews and across answers in ChatGPT and other LLMs) as well as the ever important inbound enquiries and revenue.
Expert Quote 2: Miloš Lepotić
Growth & SEO Lead, Good Seed Marketing Co.
You have to do a plethora of things. From digital PR, over cold outreach, all the way to mutually beneficial link exchanges. You have to utilize as many resources as you can but also tailor the strategy based on what you’re trying to achieve. To answer your question about the brand being cited, honestly, it’s about the overarching presence and sending as many signals to the bot as possible. In practice, that usually means getting news placements, building your brand, and securing listicle placements on websites that LLMs source.
Expert Quote 3: Gatis Viskers
Founder, Ambition Digital
Consistent foundational links are now more important than ever. Directory and listing sites are often ranked alongside brand terms and are therefore being cited in AI search. You need to make sure that you have enough coverage on these platforms with accurate company information to build a consistent brand entity that LLMs can confidently cite. These type of links are also the easiest to build and should serve as the basis of your early link building campaigns.
Expert Quote 4: Bram Vermolen
SEO Expert/Strategist at Space’M Online
When it comes to link building I’m pretty simple. I identify relevant places that my customers would be looking for product information/comparisons/resources etc., assess if it’s relevant, think about whether we have any relevant information we could help them with, and get in touch.
For example, in one of our projects with an electronics retailer, we identified 340 broken links on our competitors’ websites. We then identified content we had that would be relevant and got in touch with them to see if they’d consider using one of our articles as a suitable alternative. We managed to get listed on 47 industry resource pages using this tactic.
More presence = more opportunity. Recently, Ahrefs carried out some interesting research into AI Overviews in Google, looking at data from 75,000 brands. One of the key takeaways was that web mentions (0.664) had a higher correlation with visibility in Google’s AI Overview than backlinks (0.218). While that doesn’t negate the importance of building links, it does serve as a reminder that a strong online presence can help your visibility in search.
Expert Quote 5: Yan Dobromyslov
AEO, AI SEO & GEO Consultant, Search Angle
AI search visibility means ranking for the keywords. First of all, you have to be in the reference set of the AI. So when you’re building links for your article, and you want to come up in AI, first you need to research your topic for the kinds of keywords your article needs to rank. What kind of reference set are you looking to compete with?
Then you need to get links from pages around that topic that rank and have traffic. A link from a high-authority domain itself doesn’t matter if the page is a ghost.
Expert Quote 6: Lilach Bullock
AI Implementation Consultant and Fractional CMO, Lilach Bullock
My honest view is that backlinks still move Google rankings, but they barely touch AI citations, which is a different game. I ran a study on 300 of my own highest-impression queries and found an AI Overview on 93 percent, yet my own blog appeared in only about 1 percent of those overviews. After that I added direct-answer summaries and FAQ schema to the top of my key pages. I still build links through expert-quote platforms.
Expert Quote 7: Suresh Chaudhary
AI Marketing & SEO Consultant, Sureshh.com
Traditional SEO link-building alone is no longer enough for visibility in Google and other AI-powered search infrastructure.
I recommend using a more holistic approach to link building. Include the following 5 types of links into your backlink strategy:
- Blogger outreach
- Niche edits
- Relevant directories and launch sites
- Listicles
- In-depth reviews
These links will provide contextual relevance, authority, structured brand information, AI citations, and credibility.
It’s important that your branded information is consistent across all links. Results can take anywhere from one to six weeks depends on the niche.
Expert Quote 8: Scott Stouffer
Co-Founder + CTO, Market Brew
I would challenge the premise that any backlink strategy can ensure an AI citation. A link can help a source get discovered and establish context, but retrieval and citation selection are separate decisions.
My search engineering perspective is to build something worth citing before building links to it: original data, a reproducible experiment, or a technical explanation that answers a specific question better than the existing sources. Then seek coverage from publications that actually serve that audience. The strongest placement connects a clear claim to supporting evidence and identifies who produced it. A high-authority link with little topical context is a weaker target than a relevant editorial reference a reader can verify.
I would also check the destination itself. Can the system crawl and index it? Is the useful evidence visible in the page, with clear headings, attribution, dates, and methodology? Don’t make a journalist or a retrieval system hunt through a sales pitch to find the answer.
Finally, measure links, mentions, retrieval, and citations separately across a repeatable set of relevant questions. A new citation after a placement is an observation, not proof that the backlink caused it. The goal is to make your expertise easier to discover and substantiate, not to accumulate links and assume AI visibility will follow.
Expert Quote 9: Stevy Liakopoulou
SEO Consultant, Stevy Liakopoulou
In 2026, I believe link building is shifting from “more backlinks” to “more authoritative brand signals.”
My strategy focuses on five areas:
- Earn authoritative, relevant links: Prioritize industry publications, trusted media, expert websites, and topically relevant domains over large volumes of low-quality links.
- Create citation-worthy content: Original research, proprietary data, statistics, expert insights, and useful resources give journalists and AI systems a genuine reason to reference your brand.
- Build authority beyond your website: Don’t focus exclusively on your domain. Build a consistent brand presence across LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, podcasts, industry communities, and other relevant social platforms. The goal is to create consistent signals about your brand, expertise, and topics across the wider web.
- Use digital PR strategically: A handful of independent, relevant mentions can be more valuable than hundreds of artificial placements. Digital PR helps establish third-party credibility around your brand and expertise.
- Optimize for AI citation: Make your content easy to understand and extract: clear answers, original facts, strong authorship, structured information, and evidence. Then measure not only rankings and backlinks, but also brand mentions and citations in AI search results.
The key principle: Don’t build links just to pass authority. Build a digital footprint that makes your brand authoritative enough to be referenced.
The strongest 2026 strategy combines SEO + digital PR + original research + social presence + entity building.
Expert Quote 10: Matias Rodsevich
Founder & CEO, PRLab
I would build a statistics resource around the questions people in your industry are already trying to support with data. That gives the page a very clear job. A writer comes in, finds the number they need and has a reason to reference the page. The statistics can come from trusted third parties as long as the sourcing is clear. For me, that is much stronger than publishing another broad article and hoping someone decides to link to it.
Expert Quote 11: Robin Laires
Founder, Nest Content
What’s seemed to work for us is starting from the AI answers and working backwards. We ask the engines the questions buyers ask, note which pages they cite, and those tend to be the mentions worth chasing: directories, local listings, roundups, whoever the AI already trusts in that category.
For a London aesthetics clinic, we corrected their details on the sources the AI was reading and built local citations alongside some new treatment pages. ChatGPT went on to name them for microtox in London.
In my experience, a mention on a page the AI already reads tends to do more than a link on one it doesn’t.
Expert Quote 12: Rick Elmore
CEO, Simply Noted
Rick Elmore, CEO, Simply Noted. For AI search visibility, I think of backlinks as proof that real people vouch for you. AI answer engines tend to cite brands that show up repeatedly in credible, relevant places, so we focus on a small number of genuine mentions rather than volume.
What we do: contribute first-hand expert commentary to publications that cover our topics (business growth, AI in operations, direct mail), publish original takes on our own site, and keep our brand details consistent everywhere so models can connect the mentions. We also track which prompts mention us, not only rankings.
My advice is to skip link schemes. Pick questions where you have actual lived experience, answer them with specifics, and let the citations accumulate. A handful of relevant mentions beats dozens of random directory links, and it holds up as search keeps changing.
For this expert roundup on AISO Blog (aiso.blog), we are seeking insights from AI SEO professionals, growth marketers, and digital PR agencies. The rules of link building have fundamentally shifted. We want to know how you secure backlinks that boost Google rankings and ensure your brand is cited by AI answer engines. Contact and submit your quote.
About Suresh
