Do Links Help Query Augmentation Rankings? (James Dooley Interviews Luis Salazar Jurado)

James Dooley: Hi, today I am joined with Luis Salazar Jurado and today’s topic is whether backlinks help you rank for more query augmentation terms, or what some people now call query fan out terms. Do backlinks help you rank for more of those terms? Luis Salazar Jurado: First of all, thank you for having me, James. Related to your question, in the past backlinks were very important because of PageRank and link equity. Nowadays, backlinks are still important, but for a different reason. They help create connections between all the information on the internet about a brand or an identity, and those connections feed large language models. Luis Salazar Jurado: LLMs can then understand much better what your brand is about, what products or services you offer, where your customers are, and where you are located. In my opinion, backlinks are still important, but they must be strategically designed to connect data and create a map that helps Google and AI systems understand your brand, your target market, and your offer. James Dooley: For sure. Personally, when I used to do guest posts, I focused on domain metrics, trust scores, toxicity, and link equity rather than the content itself. I was not thinking about feeding LLMs or helping Google understand who I am and what I do. Now I see how important third party content is. When you work on digital PR, guest posts, or press releases, are you now giving content briefs or writing content that focuses on micro semantics and covering all the attributes of a brand? Luis Salazar Jurado: Absolutely. I usually start with two questions. First, is this going to be good for the business. If it is good for the business, it will also be good for SEO. Second, is the source where you want to publish helpful for your audience. Are your customers actually present on that website, newspaper, or social network. Luis Salazar Jurado: If both answers are yes, then it is worth the investment. That backlink comes from a place where the audience is relevant. Users interact with the content, signals are created between the third party source and your brand, and you serve the user first. That creates brand awareness, brand mentions, brand recognition, and strong semantic connections. James Dooley: So to simplify the original question, backlinks do help you rank for more query augmentation terms, but not in the old school PageRank way. It is now about branded signals, trust, and repeating semantically who you are, what you do, and which entities you connect to. Quality matters more than ever. James Dooley: You build topical authority on your website using a semantic content network. Have you started expanding that same topical map to third party sources so brands cover attributes externally as well? Luis Salazar Jurado: Yes. I will give you an example. I worked with an insurance company. We identified where their potential customers were. In this case, men over 35 who like cars. We selected three strong Spanish language media outlets where that audience already existed. Luis Salazar Jurado: We created content and ads for those platforms. The content encouraged users to search for the brand combined with insurance related terms. That triggered brand searches, transferred authority through backlinks, and strengthened query augmentation signals. James Dooley: That is a great example. You are doing far more than just passing link equity. You are expanding the semantic content network externally. For anyone wanting to improve their backlink strategy and rank for more queries, where can they follow you? Luis Salazar Jurado: They can reach me at seotecnico.com, search for my name on Google, connect with me on LinkedIn, or subscribe to my Daily Semantic SEO newsletter. James Dooley: Brilliant. The key takeaway is that backlinks have changed. It is no longer just about PageRank. Collaboration and semantic expansion on third party sources is what helps brands rank for more query augmentation terms. Thanks again for joining me. Luis Salazar Jurado: Thank you for having me.