SEO is NOT dead.

Do not index

When was the last time you actually clicked a link on Google?

For a lot of people, the honest answer is months.

Tech savvy users use Claude or ChatGPT to get answers, while others just read the Google AI summary and move on.

Which means the old SEO playbook: get backlinks, rank higher, win clicks, only covers half the game now.

There's a second one running alongside it. Almost nobody's doing it yet.

Let me break it down for you 👇🏼

What's actually happening

AI doesn't read hyperlink graphs. It reads text.

When your brand gets mentioned consistently across the web, even without a link, the model learns you're a credible entity worth referencing.

Simple pattern recognition.

An Ahrefs study across 75,000 brands found that brand mentions correlate 3x more strongly with AI visibility than backlinks. (Study done with Google AI, but numbers are similiar for other AI tools).

This doesn't mean backlinks stopped mattering.

It means there's a second layer on top of them that most people aren't optimizing for.

How this affects you

Here's what the ‘SEO is easy’ founders say:

“You get featured in a "best AI tools" listicle. That’s a win. Easy”

But if that listicle lives on your own domain, AI heavily discounts it. It can tell the difference between a third party recommending you and you recommending yourself.

And even if it is on another domain, it’s still only half the task done.

Two things matter now, and they're not the same thing:

1 - Backlinks: help your domain authority and traditional search ranking

2 - Unlinked mentions on third-party sites: help your AI citation odds

A backlink from a blog post doesn't move the second one. An unlinked mention on someone else's site does.

You need both. They're won differently.

What can you do about this?

For backlinks:

Keep building them. This is exactly what Outrank.so automates through the backlink exchange network. Real links from authentic sites in adjacent niches.

The key word is adjacent.

A backlink from a site that has nothing to do with your space is worth almost nothing. Google and AI both know that. The goal is links that would make sense to a human reader, not links that exist just to exist.

For mentions:

This is the manual work nobody wants to do (and not everybody wins!)

1 - Find listicles in your category that already exist

2 - Reach out to the people who run those sites

3 - Get your brand added, not linked, just mentioned by name

Example:

"what is the best AI video generator" with Revid.ai named first, published on someone else's blog, not Revid's own.

A tool can help you find these opportunities.

The outreach and relationship building for placement is still a human job (yet 👀).

Distributing content across many third-party publications increases AI citation odds far more than only publishing on your own site or on parallel listicle sites.

How to track your progress:

Search ChatGPT or Claude for a question your product answers.

See how many prompts it takes to reach your brand today VS 90 days later when you add mentions.

“SEO is dead” fear mongering people are just trying to sell you their own shiny solution.

SEO didn't die.

It split into two disciplines that used to be one thing.

Rank with links. Get cited with mentions.

Most people are still only playing one of these games.

Reach out to only 1 site this weekend. That’s the goal. Start there.

Reply and tell me:

What kind of SEO help you wish existed but doesn’t?

If it’s good and enough people want it, we will build it inside Outrank.so

Life of an indie maker #08 -

The latest episode of my weekly animated series is now out! Check it out:

Tweet of the week

You’re already working hard. Might as well work big.

Until next week,

Keep building

Tibo 💻

P.S. want 5 more working SEO tips? check out one of my older articles here.