By Nick Brown
We’ve hit a pivotal moment in digital marketing. I’ve spent years watching search evolve, and we’ve gone from keyword stuffing to sophisticated link building to today’s AI-driven content discovery. And if there’s one thing I’ve come to believe, it’s this: Digital visibility is no longer built just on links; it’s built on mentions
In 2025, the brands winning in search, and more importantly, in AI-generated answers, aren’t just the ones with the most backlinks. They’re the ones being mentioned in the right places, in the right context and by the right voices.
Is Link Building Irrelevant Now?
Let’s address the elephant in the digital room: Is link building dead?
Not entirely. But it’s no longer the dominant force it once was. For over a decade, backlinks were the gold standard of SEO. At my company, we spent years helping clients build authority this way. But that model was designed for search engines that prioritized PageRank and domain authority. These still exist, but they’re no longer alone in shaping the digital journey.
Today’s search experience increasingly happens inside generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and a dozen others. These tools don’t focus so much on links but rather on entities, topics and semantic relevance. When a user asks an AI model, “What’s the best CRM for a small business?” or “Which SaaS companies lead in sustainability?” the answer doesn’t come from counting links. It comes from a network of trusted mentions, repeated patterns and contextual credibility.
That means AI doesn’t recommend you based on who links to you. It recommends you based on who’s talking about you and how.
Mentions Are The New Links
This isn’t a theory, but something we’ve proven time and again with our clients. In my line of business, I’ve seen companies outrank entrenched competitors in AI-generated responses without having more links; they’ve simply earned more strategically placed mentions. These weren’t forced or transactional. They were natural, well-timed and thematically aligned with the brand’s core offerings.
So, mentions are the fingerprints of trust. AI models are trained on massive swaths of content, and when your brand consistently appears in expert roundups, podcast transcripts, Reddit threads, Quora answers, niche blogs and even comment sections, this is what builds modern authority.
Don’t forget that these mentions don’t need to be hyperlinked. AI models interpret language the way people do, so they recognize brand names, products and thought leaders in plain text. The context, tone and co-occurring language all inform how relevant you are to the user’s intent.
Shake Up Your Outreach Strategy
So, what does this mean for your marketing strategy?
Outreach in 2025 is no longer about sending cold emails asking for a backlink. The goal is to influence the conversation. You must understand the web as an ecosystem of language and ensure your brand is embedded in the content AI actually pays attention to.
Here’s what we’re doing at my business, and what I recommend to any brand leader thinking about the next phase of growth:
• Prioritize thought leadership over link placement. Be quoted, be cited and be relevant. Whether it’s through guest articles, expert commentary or podcast interviews, get your voice out there where it matters.
• Track mentions, not just links. Use tools like Brandwatch, Mention or even SEO platforms that are aware of large language models to monitor unlinked brand mentions. We map these for clients and tie them to improvements in AI answer visibility.
• Target semantically rich sources. Focus on the outlets that we see generative AI tools most often draw from (e.g., Reddit, Stack Exchange, independent blogs, niche news sites and discussion forums). These are the places where true semantic relevance is built.
• Create content with entity recognition in mind. Make it easy for AI to understand who you are and what you do. This means using schema markup and consistent brand naming, and clustering your content around defined themes.
• Embed your brand in conversations, not just campaigns. From community forums to third-party newsletters, you want your brand to show up in the natural flow of your audience’s discovery process because that’s what AI systems pick up on.
Why It’s Urgent
It’s important to stress that this shift is happening faster than most marketers realize. As AI continues to reshape how consumers find and evaluate information, traditional SEO metrics like rankings, link profiles and even traffic are becoming less predictive of actual influence.
What matters now is presence. But not just on your own site. We’re talking about the broader semantic web.
Every podcast quote, expert list and casual brand mention contributes to your visibility nowadays. And the more your brand becomes part of the collective online narrative, the more likely it is that AI will pull you into the answer set.
And here’s the hard truth: If you’re not being mentioned, you’re invisible.
Putting It Into Practice
Ultimately, the goal isn’t just to help your brand rank, but to make sure it resonates with audiences and algorithms alike. We call this a “semantic-first strategy.”
I believe the next big wins in search and digital presence won’t come from chasing links, but from shaping language, relevance and presence at scale. And that means rethinking your content, your outreach and your measurement models to align with how AI really works.
This isn’t a minor adjustment. It’s a mindset shift.
Link building isn’t dead, but its role has changed. The brands that will thrive in this era of AI are those that understand the science of mentions. They’ll be the ones that appear authentically, repeatedly and meaningfully in the conversations that matter.
So, if your marketing strategy still lives and dies by backlinks, it’s time to evolve. Because the algorithms already have. And summer 2025 could be a great time to start.
Feature image credit: Getty
By Nick Brown
Nick Brown is the Founder and CEO of accelerate agency, a SaaS SEO & content agency. Working with enterprise and scale-up brands. Read Nick Brown’s full executive profile here. Find Nick Brown on LinkedIn. Visit Nick’s website.
