"Get 50 backlinks" is not a strategy. It never really was, and Google's own people have said so directly. That doesn't mean links stopped mattering. It means the checklist version of link building was always the wrong model.
What Google's Own People Have Actually Said
At PubCon Pro in September 2023, Google Search Analyst Gary Illyes was asked directly whether links were still a top-three ranking factor. His answer: "I think they are important, but I think people overestimate the importance of links. I don't agree it's in the top three," adding that they haven't been for some time. He went further, describing a real case where a website ranked consistently at number one with no backlinks at all, discovered purely through its sitemap, on the strength of its content alone.
Google also quietly changed its own documentation to match. In March 2024, its spam policy language shifted from describing links as "an important factor" in determining relevancy to simply "a factor," a small edit that many in the SEO industry read as intentional.
The Data Still Shows a Correlation, Which Isn't the Same as Proof
This is where it gets easy to misread the evidence. Backlinko's analysis of 11.8 million Google search results found that the number-one result has, on average, 3.8 times more backlinks than pages ranked two through ten. That's a real, well-documented pattern. But a correlation like that describes what top-ranking pages tend to have in common, not proof that acquiring more links is what pushes a page to the top. Pages that already earn strong rankings through genuinely good content and relevance also tend to attract more natural links over time. The causation likely runs in both directions at once, which is exactly why treating link count as the lever to pull is the wrong takeaway from a real, correctly-cited statistic.
What "Treating Backlinks Like a Checklist" Actually Looks Like
It's chasing a specific number, "get to 50 backlinks this quarter", as if hitting the number were the goal rather than a byproduct of something working. It's submitting to directories and low-relevance guest post networks because they're easy to check off, regardless of whether anyone in the target audience would ever see or trust that source. It's treating link building as a task assigned to someone separate from the people creating the actual content, so the links being chased have nothing to do with what the business is actually good at or known for. None of that reflects how links behave when they're doing real work: they follow relevance and trust, and both of those come from the content itself.
What Actually Works Instead
Being worth linking to in the first place. Original data, a genuinely useful tool, a well-argued point of view, or a resource that other sites in the same space would reference because it saves them the work of explaining something themselves. A resource like our own Website Health Scorecard exists for that same reason: something concrete enough that other people want to point to it. Relevance matters more than raw volume, a single link from a source your actual audience already trusts is worth more than a large batch of links from sites with no real connection to what the business does. That's the direction Google's own statements point, and it's a more durable strategy than any checklist ever was.
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Did Google actually say backlinks don't matter anymore?
No, and that's not what was said. Google's own Gary Illyes said at PubCon Pro in September 2023 that links are not a top-three ranking factor and haven't been for some time, while also saying people overestimate how important they are. That is a statement about relative weight, not a statement that links don't matter at all.
Did Google change its documentation about links?
Yes. In March 2024, Google edited its spam policy documentation, changing the phrase describing links as "an important factor" in determining relevancy to simply "a factor." The same update added new language specifically addressing content created to manipulate linking and ranking signals.
Do top-ranking pages still tend to have more backlinks?
Yes, based on Backlinko's analysis of 11.8 million Google search results, the number-one result has on average 3.8 times more backlinks than pages ranked two through ten. That is a correlation shown in the data, not proof that acquiring more links causes a page to rank higher.
What does "treating backlinks like a checklist" actually mean?
It means chasing a specific link count or a directory-submission quota as if hitting a number were the goal, rather than earning links that are relevant, from sites your actual audience trusts, and that exist because the content is genuinely useful. A checklist mindset treats link building as a task separate from the content itself, which is usually the mistake.
What should a business actually do about link building now?
Focus on being genuinely link-worthy, original data, a useful tool, a well-argued point of view, and on relevance over raw volume. Gary Illyes has described a page that ranked first with no backlinks at all, discovered purely through its sitemap, on the strength of its content. That is the exception, not the rule, but it illustrates where the actual weight has shifted.