Why Your Backlinks Are Not Working in 2025: Hidden Issues and How to Fix Them
- lanaserticvisionfa
- 5 hours ago
- 4 min read
Author: Lana Sertić
1. Introduction
A backlink is a link created when one website links to another. It’s important because it helps people discover your website, which in the long term improves your ranking on search engines such as Google.
In simpler words, imagine you run an online bookstore, and a popular blog about reading links to one of your pages, that link becomes a backlink to your site. As you get more readers, you will also show search engines that your website is valuable and trustworthy. Also, they boost the discoverability of the pages on your site, making it easier to find by search engines.
Despite having backlinks, many sites in 2025 see no ranking benefit. It may be because Google keeps changing its algorithms.
2. The 2025 Landscape: What Changed?
Google’s algorithm has evolved with AI, not just in the quantity of links, but it can analyze the context, intent, and quality of the links. No industry has been so transformed by AI as the shadowy world of search engine optimisation.
With algorithm evolution came massive growth in AI-generated content that brought so many low-quality backlinks from spam sites. As it may be, Google nowadays rewards backlinks that come from:
real, human-authored content
niche-relevant sources
pages with user engagement and authority
Furthermore, if links in your possession do not fulfill these three conditions, they’re likely being ignored, and it could potentially harm your site.
3. Common Backlink Issues in 2025
5 reasons your backlinks aren’t helping your rankings:
Low-quality or AI-generated backlinks: Content farm links and AI-written spam will be discounted if Google systems recognize them. Shallow and low-effort content doesn’t pass value anymore.
Links from Penalized or Deindexed Domains: If your backlinks come from sites hit by manual actions or they are removed from search engines' results pages, they offer zero SEO benefit, which can also drag your site down too.
Over-Optimized Anchor Text: Balanced, natural anchors are now essential, witch means that if you use the exact keyword as your anchor over and over, it will trigger red flags.
Irrelevant or Off-Topic Links: Putting a backlink that doesn’t belong there, Google will see as unnatural and ignore it. For example, getting a backlink from a cooking blog when you run a tech website.
No Link Diversity: Your profile will not look natural if all your links come from guest posts, directories, or blog comments, and that’s why you need a mix of all of them, such as mentions, citations, earned media, contextual links…
4. Tools for Auditing Backlink Quality
Tools to use:
Ahrefs- here you can check domain authority, backlink profile, and toxic links
SEMrush- good for analyzing toxic score, link types, and anchor text spread
Google Search Console- offers monitoring manual action, and link report
You want to look for and remove high “toxic” score links, links from non-indexed domains, overuse of exact match anchors, and patterns that suggest unnatural link building if you want to improve your backlink game.
5. Fixing the Problem: Backlink Strategies That Actually Work Now
Disavow Smartly: Use disavow files only when links are clearly harmful and when you can’t remove them manually. You want to be precise and not come across aggressive.
Focus on Niche-Relevant, High-Authority Backlinks: Focus on publishing original research, contributing expert quotes, and pitching industry-specific publications
Prioritize Natural Link Building: Tactics that would work are digital PR in the sense of press mentions and newsworthy campaigns, linkable assets that are stats, reports, visuals, and lastly, collaborations with thought leaders
Embrace E-E-A-T: This means building trust by showing Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness on your site and across your content
6. Case Study or Real-World Example
According to the study made by Ahrefs, a Saas company had 2.000 backlinks but saw no ranking growth. When they audit their profile, they disavow 150+ toxic links. They also focused on PR-based backlinks from tech blogs and software review sites. In just three months, their organic traffic grew by a staggering 35% and 18 target keywords moved to page one. The pages tested are still down from where they started. It could be because of algorithm changes or links not being recrawled yet. They are still hopeful to get to a place where they were, but only with better links and reach.
7. Future-Proofing Your Link Strategy
For future references, you should focus on brand mentions, co-citations, and content relevance. Also, build relationships and not just links, and include video, podcasts, and infographics as linkable assets.
8. Conclusion
In conclusion, backlinks still play a role in search rankings. Furthermore, their effectiveness depends on authenticity, trust, and relevance. Google has gotten better at identifying context, intent, and the true value of each backlink, especially with the influence of AI on SEO. AI did increase the number of low-quality backlinks, but also made human-authored, niche-relevant sources even more significant. Lastly, build relationships, not just links, and focus on brand mentions and content relevance if you want your backlinks to work. If you put in the effort, it will pay off and be recognized.