Kalin says: “We know that there are many SEO challenges that are set in stone: make a good website, get every good link that you can get easily and, of course, build as much great content as you can.

But, after you have covered the basics – when you wonder whether to invest in more content, more links, or which links – it really becomes harder and harder to get the best return on investment. Right now, even the Google engineers don't know exactly what is most important for good rankings.”

Is that because AI is basically controlling the algorithm?

“Yes.”

How do you prioritise what to focus on if you're not sure what has the impact?

“We use economic reasoning. What links are probably good, but we can get them the cheapest and easiest way? We do the same with content, using AI content.

Content just produced by AI is ranking and bringing in decent volumes of traffic, but it's never a guarantee. Sometimes it will rank, sometimes it won't. The only sensible approach is to have more websites and not to rely on a single website too much, in terms of SEO. Sometimes it will take off, sometimes it won't. We use aged domains, but it's never a guarantee.”

If you're an established brand with an established website, a .com with over 10 years of history and decent authority, would you still advise having multiple domains as well?

“A site like that can be more aggressive in their link building. The rules that apply to those big websites are more lax than what applies to a new website or a smaller website.

If you're already a brand and you have all the brand signals – a lot of brand search, a lot of good user experience on the website that Google can track, etc. – then you will be able to do more aggressive link building and use more anchors in your link building. It becomes all about creating the best landing pages and being more aggressive on specific terms that are available for the brand.

Google understands the brand so, if there are hundreds of links appearing to that website, it’s not likely to be an issue. I have never seen someone get penalised for a lot of links. I've seen people penalised for bad links, but a lot of links at once can always happen naturally. I don't think that is a real issue.”

Is the frequency and consistency of link building important?

“Yes, but when you start building a lot of links and you know that frequency is important, you force yourself to do more and more links, which is one of the most important things. Otherwise, you get lazy.”

Are there any particular kinds of links that you're finding particularly useful at the moment?

“One of the links that we like is homepage links.

It's very easy to get links for traffic and blog posts. You can buy a guest post almost everywhere. You can even buy a whole parasite on a big authoritative website, but something that is harder to do is to gain power, not trust.

When I started in SEO more than 15 years ago, it was all about power. Trust was not such a big factor. We were doing a lot of PDFs and a lot of homepage links. Then there was a period where 301 redirects with a lot of power were a very good strategy.

Now, we rely a lot more on trust these days because trust is what gets a new website out of the sandbox. Trust is also what really makes a big authoritative website rank for everything. But power is still important because power is what makes you rank for any specific keyword. Trust alone will not help you in a very competitive niche.

By trust, I mean that you are linked by very highly authoritative websites directly. By power, I mean that you have juice: you have homepage links, you have a redirect, and you have whatever brings juice.

With trust, if you have a powerful website, it can only spread its power so much. It can have a thousand links from the homepage which transmits a lot of power but, if you make those a hundred, then not a lot of power would be transmitted. If you have a hundred links, each of them will still transmit the trust.

Trust is really easy to get nowadays because you can just buy a guest post that gets a zillion clicks from the home page and it will still transmit traffic but not power. Especially in the more ambitious niches like gambling, CBD, and others, power is becoming more important because the hardest thing to get nowadays is power, not trust.”

Do you also look at links that are likely to drive traffic or is it all about links that drive that search engine recognition and authority building?

“If none of the links to your website drive any traffic, it may be a red flag. In general, traffic, link juice, and page rank are different parts of the algorithm, so Google doesn't directly link it to traffic. You can definitely run pretty well with websites that don't have a lot of traffic.

It doesn't mean that they would not have trust. You can find a lot of old university websites or very niche projects about something that only 10 people in the world actually understand properly. They will not have any traffic, but they will be cited in Google Scholar from university conferences and they will have a lot of trust.”

Where does original, high-quality content come in?

“For Google, authority mostly comes from high-trust links. If you have links from top universities, from the government, or from the media, Google trusts you. Google cannot really understand, from the content, whether you're an expert or not. That is a very high-level task, even for AI. It's still mostly the link.

You definitely need differentiation. You want to have a different product, service, proposition, or idea. Otherwise, the internet is flooded with content. Even if you rank, you will not get returning users, and you will not get all the other benefits.

A long time ago, when I started in SEO, Google was highly rewarding original content. Now, they have taken a new turn on this, and they reward things like direct links because that's how they filter official content, AI content, and outright spam.

Right now, they are checking if you are doing what the other contenders are doing. I don't really like this approach, but maybe they have no choice. Regarding the content, I don't think Google rewards originality, but people will reward it eventually. Even if they don't link to it, there will still be some value to it. People will spend more time on the site, which is a signal that Google now looks at. There will be a benefit if you have high-quality content.”

Do you still need a strategy or are you operating on a day-to-day basis, and doing what you can in terms of building links and generating content using AI?

“The strategy is very important. If you start now, you need to consider your niche. If you are an affiliate or you want to start an e-commerce, you need to choose between thousands of niches.

This is a really strategic choice because the niches are not the same. Some niches are much easier to rank and make money in than others. Competition is not the same regarding the value of the niche. This is where a lot of the strategy comes into play.

Once you start doing it, a lot of it's about grinding and scaling for me. All of the blocks of SEO – the content, the links, etc. – have become something you need to buy eventually. You either buy them with your money, your time, or your creativity, which is not limitless. You invest some of your resources and you get content, links, and whatever else you need back. There's not as much space for original creation in SEO. I think that scaling has won the game.”

Is this sustainable or is this way of doing things likely to change over the next year or two?

“I don't see very big changes coming in the future. Google is very heavily reliant on links. Links you can buy, but everything else you can manipulate almost for free – including the user experience.

There are now people who are manipulating the user experience successfully. They are doing this with just a zombified phone. There’s no way that Google can catch these old Google account users that are logged in, even if it's just a bot. It can be faked for free.

The link, at least, you have to buy. That prevents just any spammer from attacking any server. The financial requirement is stabilising the server. Google is publicly against paid links, but privately OK with them, because it's what makes the server more stable.

Every user in Google Chrome has their every action monitored by Google and this data is sent to Google. You can take a user logged into an old Google account and send data to Google. If Google makes user experience the main metric, instead of links, it will be easier to build technologies that fake the user experience because it is something that you do on your own servers and not something related to the internet.

It's harder to buy something that's on the internet because of the supply, the demand, and economic factors. Google basically cannot make a lot of changes. They cannot start disregarding links. Links will always be hugely important. Also, one of their main pillars – the topical authority linked with the content – will have to decrease in value because, with AI content, everyone can have a lot of articles. Everyone can have topical authority.”

If someone is looking to start a career in SEO, what would you advise for them to have a long career?

“There are two paths: A white hat path and a grey hat path. The white hat path is to make some plans, take initiative, maybe something that's local and start ranking low and mid-competition keywords and learn on the way. This is something that is definitely worth trying if you're a junior SEO.

Or there's a grey hat path, where you try to earn money from your own website as an affiliate and then you start building websites. That's something that you need some starting capital for, unlike the first option. If you don't have any starting capital, you have to sell links on the way.

We're talking about domain usage, and maybe with some link selling alongside the ranking, so you can always have money in the bank to keep the machine rolling until you start earning money from affiliates or display ads.”

If someone runs an agency that has a few bigger clients, do you think link building is the thing that they should focus on?

“From an agency standpoint, yes. Agencies should proportionally spend more on link building because this is what brings results in competitive initiatives. As an agency, when you scale up your link building, you'll be able to take on bigger and bigger clients in more competitive initiatives, and you can grow as an agency.”

What's something that SEOs shouldn't be doing in 2024?

“Most SEOs overthink the links that they buy or source. A link helps if it's a good link – even if it's not relevant, even if the website doesn't have traffic, and even if it doesn't have high metrics. Every link helps, if it's a natural link.

If you have too many links that are not very relevant, Google will start to question your relevancy, but every single link will still help if most of your links are good, relevant, and natural.

Natural is the keyword. If your link is either completely natural or Google views it as natural, it's a win for you. When you source or buy, or whatever you do to acquire links, don't be so picky. People have become way too picky. They're starting to ask for traffic from small websites that are really not supposed to have that much traffic. They're starting to be too picky and it just means that you pay more money for links that are not actually that much more valuable.”

Kalin Karakehayov is Founder of SEO.Domains, and you can find him over at SEO.Domains.