How's your link building changed since the start of the decade?

[Stan Ventures]

Been thinking about how much the link game has shifted since 2020 and wanted to hear it from people actually in the trenches.

Feels like the stuff that worked at the start of the decade, bulk guest posts, chasing DR, grabbing whatever "relevant" link you could, either stopped working or actively started hurting sites somewhere along the way. The HCU rounds seemed to speed that up.

So I'm curious what the people here have actually changed.

 

[topcaz]

the engines learnt to recognise the scam links much much better, as a result only quality guest posts seem to work at the moment

 

[FreeSpins]

High-quality backlinks matter... Quality over quantity.

 

[FreeSpins]

Social media mass posts/links—no go (spam)
Forum posts with links—no go (spam)
aged domains backlinks—no go (spam)

 

[Ansa]

Most SEOs are looking at the wrong thing when they say link building “doesn’t work anymore.”

What actually stopped working was manufacturing links and pretending metrics equal authority.

DR, bulk guest posts and generic “relevance” were never a sustainable strategy. Today, the real question is whether the placement belongs in that site’s ecosystem and adds genuine topical authority.

A single strong editorial placement can be worth more than 50 manufactured links.

The game didn’t die. The shortcuts did.

So I’m curious, what’s the one signal you trust most today before deciding a backlink is actually worth acquiring?