How to Build Links That Improve Your Visibility in AI Models?

• There is no separate “backlink for AI.” Visibility is built by links and mentions placed in credible, topically matched sources.
• Strategy starts with prompts, not with a list of portals. We check which questions the brand wants to appear for, where AI draws its information from, and what is missing compared with competitors.
• What counts is context, not the number of links. A publication should connect the brand with a specific topic and lead to content that confirms its competence.
• Delante confirmed the effectiveness of this approach for Kiwi.com. In three months the brand’s Share of Voice in AI rose from 25% to 62%, and its Brand Score from 38% to 59%. See the Kiwi.com case study.

Yes, but there is no separate “backlink for AI,” and acquiring a specific link does not guarantee a citation by a model.

In Google’s case the connection with classic SEO is direct. The core good practices of Search still apply in AI Overviews and AI Mode. A page that is to appear as a source in Google’s generative features has to be accessible and eligible to appear in search results. Links remain one of the elements supporting page discovery and authority building, but they are not a standalone factor guaranteeing presence in an AI answer.

In environments such as ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini, on the other hand, a brand can appear thanks to an external publication describing its business, product, service or competence. The source of information may be an industry article, a report, a ranking, a comparison or another valuable publication. A model can use material like that even if it does not point to the company’s domain as a source directly.

That is why a link building strategy supporting AI visibility should pursue two parallel goals:

• strengthening your own domain through valuable links leading to the relevant subpages,
• building the brand’s presence in external sources that users and AI systems can use to learn about and verify information about the company.

The first area supports classic SEO above all, along with visibility in Google’s generative features. The second extends the work into AISO, AI Search Optimization, an approach that covers brand visibility beyond Google’s generative ecosystem as well, in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Copilot.

So this is not about creating a new kind of backlink. It is about designing a network of valuable sources in which the brand is present in a way that is consistent, credible and connected with the topics it wants to be recommended for.

A link is a clickable reference leading to a specific company page, product, report or other material. It can drive referral traffic, make it easier for the user to reach the source of information, and connect the brand with a specific topic.

A brand mention, on the other hand, is a textual reference to a company, product or expert that does not have to contain a hyperlink. It helps build recognition and the association of a brand with a given category, but it does not lead the user directly to the site.

Both elements can support a strategy, but they serve different functions. A link points to specific material, while a mention builds context around the brand. The greatest potential appears when both signals occur together. It is worth aiming for a situation in which the brand appears in a credible, topically matched source, is described in the right context, is connected with a specific problem, product, service or competence, and additionally receives a link to a page that lets the reader expand on or verify the information presented.

This is why links and mentions should not be treated as competing activities. They should be elements of one coherent strategy for the brand’s presence.

Link building that takes AI visibility into account does not replace classic SEO. It extends it with an additional layer of analysis.

In classic link building the starting point is usually the link profile of the brand and its competitors. We analyze the number of referring domains, the quality of sources, anchors, link types, and the subpages the links lead to. In work aimed at AI visibility we ask additional questions: which prompts should the brand appear for? Which sources are used in the answers? Is our brand named, but not pointed to as a source?

So the most important difference is that we no longer ask only “where do competitors get their links from?” We also ask: “which questions are competitors recommended for, which sources describe them, and what is our brand missing?” It may turn out that a competitor appears in rankings not because it has more backlinks, but because external sources have access to specific information about its offer. First you have to identify the missing information, prepare content that confirms it, and only then make sure it is present in the relevant external sources.

Let’s say an accounting firm wants to increase its visibility for the question “Which accounting firm should I choose for a limited company?”. An analysis of several variants of this prompt shows that competitors are described in terms of their experience serving limited companies, their range of services, the systems they support and specific client cases. The firm in question has a good site and valuable links, but it does not publish some of the information that appears in the material AI draws on.

The process may look as follows:

1. We expand the service page with the scope of work for limited companies, the cooperation model, integrations and answers to the most common questions.
2. We prepare a case study showing a specific client problem, the scope of work and the result.
3. We analyze existing rankings and guides and check what information their authors need.
4. We secure expert commentary on a relevant industry portal and point the link to the page that best matches the topic.
5. We monitor the same cluster of prompts, checking whether the brand’s presence and the way it is presented are changing.

This example shows why link building for AI does not start with choosing a domain. First you have to establish which question you want to be visible for and what your brand is missing, and only then decide what material to prepare and where to promote it.

There is no universal list of the best places to earn links and mentions. Sources should be matched to the category, to specific prompts and to the stage of the user’s decision.

So this is not about getting a link from as many domains as possible. Every publication is worth assessing in terms of its function within the whole strategy: it may strengthen the brand on a specific topic, supply information AI uses, or lead the user to material confirming the company’s competence.

A high DR or DA is not enough to consider a domain a valuable source. Before choosing a source, check:

• Topical fit: does the site regularly cover topics connected with the brand’s business?
• Real visibility: is the material visible for meaningful questions?
• Audience: does the portal function mainly as a place to sell links?
• Editorial quality: does the material have authors, dates, sources and a logical structure?
• Recurrence in results: does the domain appear across many variants of meaningful prompts?
• Link context: will the reference sit in a passage that is logically connected with the landing page?
• Durability and currency: will the material remain available and be kept up to date?

A domain with a lower DR that is strongly connected with the industry and appears regularly for important questions may be a better choice than a large general portal with high parameters.

In practice, then, it is worth moving away from the question “which portal has the highest DR?” and replacing it with: “does this source matter for the topics and prompts we want to increase the brand’s visibility for?”

A publication should answer a specific user need, and the link should lead to material that expands on that information or lets the reader verify it. Not every link should lead to the homepage: depending on the context, the landing page may be a service page, a report with its methodology, a guide, a case study, a calculator, documentation or an expert profile.

Anchors deserve the same approach: they should follow from the context of the publication, for example “report on brand visibility in AI”, “the study’s methodology”, “SEO cost calculator” or simply the company name. It is not worth repeating the same exact match sales phrase across many publications, because that can lead to an unnatural link profile.

Securing a publication is not the end of the process. You cannot reliably assess results on the number of new backlinks alone, nor attribute an entire change in AI answers to a single link. Measurement should take into account things like: valuable linking domains, organic visibility and referral traffic, branded search, the brand’s presence for a fixed set of prompts, the number and quality of citations of your own domain, and traffic from AI tools.

What matters most is comparable measurement over time. That is why, before the work begins, you should prepare a benchmark: record the link profile, the visibility of landing pages, the presence of the brand and its competitors, and the sources being cited. A test like this will not prove that a single link caused a citation. It will, however, let you assess whether the strategy as a whole is increasing the brand’s presence in meaningful sources and in AI answers.

The Kiwi.com project is a good example. The benchmark covered 10 queries of business significance, and measurement ran in parallel across several models. Alongside automated monitoring, each query was checked manually in different time windows and the results were cross referenced against tool data. The trend was analyzed across Share of Voice, Brand Score, citation click through and organic rankings.

Before you secure a link, check whether it meets the conditions below:

Link building that supports AI visibility is not about maximizing the number of backlinks. Its goal is building a network of credible, topically coherent references to the brand and its content. An effective strategy starts with users’ questions rather than with a list of portals, and covers source analysis, the choice of the right publications, earning links and mentions, and measuring results regularly.

The point is creating a topical ecosystem of sources that helps search engines and AI systems find, understand and verify the brand.

This approach is the basis of Delante’s AI Authority Link Building, a service combining brand visibility building in AI with support for classic SEO. The method is developed at Delante by Kasia Śliwa, Senior Off-site SEO Specialist and creator of the AI Authority Link Building service. Her team was responsible for the strategy and the test for Kiwi.com, combining analysis of the sources models cite, contextual publications, multimodel monitoring and measurement of the impact on classic organic results.