Backlinks vs. Brand Mentions: Key Takeaways From Our Search Engine Journal Webinar

This recap distills Resolve CEO Michael Johnson’s Search Engine Journal webinar on backlinks, brand mentions, digital PR, and AI visibility. For years, off-page SEO was basically link building; today the brands that win earn both links and mentions. Each timestamp above jumps to that moment in the recording — or watch the full session below.

What Are Brand Mentions?

A brand mention happens any time your brand is referenced online — in an article, a social post, a podcast, or press coverage — whether or not that reference includes a clickable link. There are two kinds, and the distinction matters more than it used to.

• Linked mention: a brand reference that includes a backlink. When your brand name is also the anchor text, a single placement is both a mention and a link.
• Unlinked mention (implied link): a brand reference with no link attached. For years, SEOs dismissed these as worthless. That instinct is now out of date.

Modern search engines don’t only look at who links to you. They also pay attention to who talks about you, in what context, and how often — which helps them, and the LLMs built on top of them, figure out what your brand is known for and how much to trust it.

The Case for Brand Mentions

The data has caught up with the theory. In Ahrefs’ study of roughly 75,000 brands, branded web mentions correlated more strongly with AI Overview visibility (a correlation of about 0.66) than referring domains or backlink counts. Search Engine Journal’s coverage reached the same conclusion: as AI-driven results take a bigger slice of the search pie, mentions are becoming table stakes.

None of this is truly new. Google’s “Ranking search results” patent (US8682892B1) describes non-linking citations as “implied links,” and Rand Fishkin popularized that interpretation back in 2014. The AI era simply raises the stakes. The smartest reframe is to stop asking “who links to me?” and start asking “who talks about me, where, and how credibly?”

What Are Backlinks?

A backlink is a link from one website to another. It functions as a vote of confidence — a signal that another site trusts, references, or endorses your content. Not all backlinks are weighted equally, so it helps to know the three main types:

• Dofollow: the default link that passes authority (link equity) from the linking page to the destination.
• Nofollow: tagged to tell search engines not to pass SEO value — though case studies suggest nofollow links can still carry some weight, so the old “they don’t count” line no longer holds cleanly.
• Sponsored: declares a paid or advertising arrangement, giving Google clarity on the nature of the relationship.

The Case for Backlinks

Links are not going anywhere. The correlation between linking domains and rankings remains one of the strongest and most measurable signals in SEO. In Backlinko’s analysis of 11.8 million Google search results, the #1 result had, on average, about 3.8x the number of linking domains as pages ranking in positions two through ten.

Why Not Both? Reframing Off-Page SEO as Brand Building

So which matters more? Both, because they do different jobs. Backlinks move traditional rankings, while mentions build the entity that AI systems recognize and recommend. Picking one over the other just leaves wins on the table.

The deeper shift is in how you think about off-page SEO. Stop treating links and mentions as a commodity to be ordered by the dozen, and start treating off-page work as brand building. Digital PR is the discipline that marries the SEO value of backlinks with the branding power of PR — and it is the most reliable route to campaigns that survive algorithm updates and compound over time. Want campaigns engineered to earn both? See how our data-driven Digital PR services turn proprietary research into media coverage.

How to Engineer Campaigns That Earn Both Backlinks and Brand Mentions

Here is the repeatable framework. The goal is to move away from the old model — filling out an order form for “five DA 30–50 links” from whatever blogs are available — and toward linkable assets that genuinely earn authority.

Start With Linkable Content

Linkable content exists to earn links and mentions. The good stuff is original, accurate, and aimed at a clearly defined audience. It tends to be educational rather than promotional, and its whole job is to be useful to the reader instead of selling them something. There is always an exchange of value in link building: if your content offers something genuinely useful, that value carries the exchange. If it offers nothing, the only currency left is money — which traps you in low-quality, pay-to-play placements.

Find Your Spheres of Relevance

Linkable content should expand your spheres of relevance beyond your product and your buying audience. The trick is connecting a seemingly dull subject to topics people actually care about. Take a client of ours who sells contact lenses and was convinced there was nothing interesting to say about eyewear. But eyeglasses touch a surprising number of lives: seniors managing deteriorating vision, parents discovering their child needs glasses, students who can’t read the board, and fashion — which connects to dating and how we present ourselves. A practical tip: use a tool like ChatGPT to map these spheres and surface the audiences, topics, and communities adjacent to your subject.

Give Journalists What They Want

Coverage follows value, and what journalists value most is proprietary data: surveys, reports, meta-rankings, and unique insights they cannot get anywhere else. Cision’s 2025 State of the Media Report found that 55% of journalists want original research from PR sources and 57% want an exclusive — and proprietary data delivers both. Package it in journalist-friendly formats with a clear media hook, and add a multimedia layer so the story is easy to tell.

Case Studies in Action

Here is what that looks like in practice. Two surveys, built around things people genuinely care about, each earning links and brand mentions across major outlets. You can see more in our case studies.

Is It Newsworthy?

Before you invest in an asset, run a quick gut-check. Who actually cares about this information? Is it a beat journalists regularly cover? Does it affect their readers? The strongest assets pair data-driven insights and exclusive research with expert commentary and visuals, and they tie into a live conversation in the news cycle — a tactic known as newsjacking.

How to Build a Survey That Earns Coverage

This is the make-or-break step. Before you write a single question, imagine the headline. If a result were surprising, would a journalist write about it? A few principles make the difference: focus on human stories rather than brand stories; use scaled answers (never / rarely / sometimes / all the time) so you can group responses into stronger stats; aim for 10–15 questions; and design for visuals from the start. If you want a deeper reference on writing unbiased questions, Pew Research Center’s guide to writing survey questions is the gold standard.

Proven Angles That Work

If you need a starting point, these angles earn coverage again and again: generational gaps, regional rankings (“the states with the most X”), emotional confessions, tech and AI anxiety, and financial behaviors.

No Survey? Alternatives That Still Land

Surveys are the sustainable system, and they are what we recommend if you want a process that works every time. But fun, lower-lift ideas can absolutely land. One piece mapped each US state’s mythical creature or urban legend to how often it gets Googled, ranking the “most Googled monsters in America.” It earned NBC New York coverage, pickups across local radio and TV, and even paranormal-podcast invitations for the client.

Finding and Pitching the Right Journalists

Once your asset is built, the campaign lives or dies on targeting. Identify the beats relevant to your data headline, find journalists in the cities and regions that rank high or low on your list, and — this is where most outreach fails — confirm the journalist actually covers studies, surveys, and data before you pitch. Tools like Muck Rack, Prowly, BuzzStream, and BuzzSumo make this faster.

On outreach itself, quality beats volume every time. A hundred personalized, relevant pitches will outperform two thousand generic ones — the 500-placement eyewear campaign came from roughly 200 thoughtful outreaches. And follow up once, well: Muck Rack’s State of Journalism research finds journalists prefer a single 1:1 pitch under 200 words, sent before noon, with one timely follow-up. If executing all of this in-house isn’t realistic, this is exactly the kind of work agencies hand off through white-label link building.

The Digital PR Campaign Timeline

A typical campaign runs about three months from start to finish. Month one is for building the asset — ideating, writing and fielding the survey, collecting and interpreting the data, and creating the on-site page. Weeks five and six shift to outreach to top-tier publications, pitching exclusives to maximize the odds of a pickup, before moving to secondary and niche industry outlets in weeks six and seven. Lead with the big publications, because a single placement on an outlet like the New York Post can syndicate across Yahoo News, the Toronto Sun, and a chain of regional papers.

Turning Mentions and Links Into Rankings

Here is the question we get most often: “Great, I’m earning links and mentions — but how do my money pages actually rank?” The answer is internal linking. The authority your linkable assets earn can be funneled into your target pages with internal links, which also signals to Google which pages matter most to your brand. The ideal structure has several assets — a link-generating guide, a digital PR magnet, and more — all internally linking into the core pages you want to move. Our SEO services team builds exactly this kind of connected asset system.

Does It Actually Work?

It does, and the results compound. For one client running a holistic program — digital PR alongside SEO, content, and paid media — we helped grow traffic by roughly 300,000 monthly visitors over two years and 4x’d traffic to a core product page. None of it is instant, but a strategy built on genuine value and connected internal linking moves the metrics that affect the bottom line, and it keeps working long after a quick-hit link scheme would have collapsed.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Was Covered in the Search Engine Journal Webinar?

Michael Johnson covered how to engineer digital PR campaigns that earn both backlinks and brand mentions: defining the two, the data on why mentions matter for AI search, the Resolve campaign framework, how to build a survey journalists will cover, outreach and timeline, and how internal linking turns earned media into rankings.

What Did the Webinar Say About AI Overviews?

The key point was that branded web mentions are a leading signal for AI Overview visibility. Ahrefs’ analysis of ~75,000 brands found mentions correlated with AI Overview presence more strongly than referring domains or backlink counts.

Are Backlinks Still Important in 2026?

Yes. Even as AI search evolves, backlinks remain one of the strongest ranking signals — top-ranked pages carry roughly 3.8x the linking domains of pages in positions two through ten. The shift is that backlinks now work best alongside brand mentions, not instead of them.

How Do Brand Mentions Impact AI SEO?

Brand mentions build entity authority — the web-wide signal that tells AI search tools and LLMs what your brand is known for and how much to trust it. The more consistently your brand is cited in relevant, credible places, the more likely it is to be surfaced and recommended in AI Overviews and LLM answers.

Are Brand Mentions Without a Link Worth Anything for SEO?

Yes. Google’s “Ranking search results” patent (US8682892B1) describes non-linking citations as “implied links,” and Ahrefs’ study found branded web mentions to be the strongest correlating factor for appearing in AI Overviews. A mention plus a backlink is ideal, but an unlinked mention is still a genuine win.

Which Matters More, Backlinks or Brand Mentions?

They do different jobs, so the best campaigns earn both. Backlinks remain one of the strongest ranking signals, while brand mentions drive the entity recognition that powers AI and LLM visibility.

How Many Questions Should a Digital PR Survey Have?

Around 10 to 15. Fewer than 10 rarely produces enough angles, and more than about 18 to 20 makes the survey too long and hurts completion.

How Long Does a Digital PR Campaign Take?

Roughly three months — about one month to build the asset and four to six weeks of outreach, starting with top-tier publications before moving to niche outlets.

Should I Follow Up If a Journalist Mentions My Brand but Doesn’t Link?

Yes, politely. Frame it as a better experience for their readers rather than as an SEO request. If they decline, the mention is still valuable on its own.

Are Paid Guest Posts or Paid Listicles Worth It?

Use them sparingly. Vet each opportunity by asking, “In a world without Google, would I still want this link?” Paid placements can supplement a strategy, but a profile made up entirely of them looks unnatural.