Signs it is time to revisit backlinks

Every audit we run turns up some version of this. A few signals that backlinks is due some attention.

Technical fixes remove obstacles; content earns the position. Both are needed and they are not interchangeable. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

The signals

• Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
• The answer depends on who you ask
• A handful of relevant links beats hundreds of irrelevant ones
• Bought links are a risk that eventually gets priced in

How to approach it

Being genuinely useful is still the most durable link strategy. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. Anything you cannot measure here, you are deciding by taste, which is fine as long as everyone knows it.

In practice

Search work compounds slowly, which is why it gets abandoned about two months before it would have paid off. Three things worth confirming about backlinks before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Being genuinely useful is still the most durable link strategy — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Pick the one that would hurt most if it failed, and start there.