Episode
SEO Myths That Won't Die: Backlinks, GEO, Gemini & What Ranks in 2026
- Podcast
- The Edward Show
- Published
- Jun 17, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 4534
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Summary
E1079: David Quaid returns to the podcast to talk through SEO myths that refuse to die, and why a lot of the current advice around SEO, GEO, AI search, backlinks, content, and LLMs is either incomplete or flat-out misleading. We start with the SEO vs. GEO debate and why treating them like two separate worlds can lead to bad strategy. David argues that if your site cannot rank, cannot get crawled properly, and cannot build authority in search, you should not assume AI systems are going to magically find and trust you. From there, we get into the myths people keep repeating about content, backlinks, EEAT, Gemini, toxic links, parasite SEO, expired domains, HTML sitemaps, and what helps a site rank in 2026. Topics we cover: - Why "just build a good brand and AI will find you" is not a real SEO strategy - Why GEO does not let you bypass Google, backlinks, rankings, or authority - The problem with treating SEO and GEO as separate disciplines - Why "good content" alone is usually not enough to rank - Why overproducing content and landing pages can waste time and money - How Microsoft Clarity can show what users actually do on a landing page - Why people often misunderstand thin content, duplicate content, and information gain - The problem with surface-level EEAT advice like author bios, outbound links, and forced credibility signals - What David thinks people get wrong about the Google API leak - Why Google may have author-related and site-related variables without those variables meaning what SEOs assume they mean - Why backlinks still matter in 2026 - Why you do not need backlinks to every page - Why constantly buying more links may not help if you are losing or devaluing links at the same time - How to think about link quality beyond domain-level relevance - Why relation…