I haven't had a lot of time to write many newsletters recently because I've been preparing my site to run ads from a premium ad network. It's a *huge* step for BeProductiveEveryDay, and certainly reading "Your Site is Eligible" has taken a lot of anxiety weight off my shoulders.

Now I feel considerably calmer.

I'm still busy with final settings and updates, but I had to take a break to write a weird tangent about ADHD hyperfocuses and... backlinks.

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See, I always thought this was just a me thing, but maybe it's actually an ADHD thing that I move through life in cycles of hyperfocus.

They're usually the same handful of hyperfocuses. I just move from one to another… then eventually circle back again.

For example, when I was a teenager, I became obsessed with the intro of "One" by Metallica.

I would spend 30–40 minutes listening to those same 1 minute and 45 seconds over and over again.

That hyperfocus is actually what helped me learn to play the guitar by myself. I had spent most of my childhood taking Saturday classical guitar lessons with my grandfather, but his teaching style was too rigid for me, so I got bored and never learned much.

But learning that one song that I was *obsessed* with? Yeah, THAT worked.

To this day, it's still my comfort song to play. I don't know why, but repeating every single one of those notes, then going back to the beginning and doing it all again, is deeply relaxing.

Another one of my long-term hyperfocuses has been SEO.

Years ago, I decided I was going to learn search engine optimization as if my life depended on it (well, I was in a hurry to fix my financial situation, so it kind of did ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).

At some point, I realized I was never going to discover the secret cheat code that let some Pinterest bloggers drive a million pageviews by pinning the same 10 blog posts 15 or 20 times a day.

So I figured I'd better become really good at SEO instead.

Ironically, I wasn't completely new to it.

Before starting my first blog, besides working as a French translator, I also freelanced as a writer.

I wasn't much of a LinkedIn or Twitter networker, so I usually pitched articles directly to publications. Their editorial guidelines often included basic SEO practices: using keywords naturally, structuring content with H2s and H3s, adding semantic terms, bullet lists, and so on.

But once I started learning SEO for my own website, I realized there was a lot more to it than placing a few keywords in the right spots.

That's also when I first started hearing about backlinks.

I've been bumping into conversations about backlinks ever since I started blogging in 2016.

It's one of those SEO topics that always seems... surprisingly, a heated topic.

Some people *genuinely* believe emailing hundreds of bloggers asking, "Would you add a link to my article?" is the best way to grow a website.

Judging by my spam folder in 2026, many people still believe that...

Lately, I've also noticed the return of another strategy I hadn't seen much since 2022–2023: leaving comments on bloggers' posts mainly to sneak in a link.

My own blog has been getting quite a few of those over the past few months.

Some are painfully obvious.

Others actually look like genuine conversations. Sometimes I even catch myself thinking, "Oh, they actually read my post."

Then I remember it's 2026.

Maybe they genuinely did... but maybe AI summarized the article and even wrote the comment for them.

Hard to tell.

#tragic

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If I'm honest, I've mostly avoided talking about backlinks since around 2021, when I started writing more about website growth and monetization.

One reason is surprisingly simple:

I don't really have a backlink strategy.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Controversial, I know.

But anyway, I don't want to repeat generic SEO advice just because everyone else does.

If I haven't personally tested something and can't share what worked (or didn't work) for me, I'd rather not write about it at all.

For years, my plan was always, "I'll learn backlink strategies once I have some free time."

Then I realized something.

Unless it's 3 a.m., I'm drinking more wine than I probably should during a PMS-induced depressive episode (happens once every 4-5 months), and I'm illogically suddenly questioning half of my life decisions...

...that mythical ✨free time✨ is probably never happening.

I'm always working on something, be it my job, an art project, or my martial arts training.

And every time I thought about learning link-building, I kept running into the same problem:

Most not-passive approaches relied heavily on networking and cold emailing.

I've always been terrible at both. 💀

It's similar to Pinterest: Pinterest absolutely works, and some bloggers build incredible businesses with it.

I'm just not one of them.

My Pinterest traffic is seasonal and has never surpassed 20k outbound clicks in a month. How do some bloggers manage to get 300k, 500k, even 1M pageviews, PER MONTH, only using Pinterest? I have no idea (do share the secret with me if you know!).

I've become very used to finding different routes because I rarely feel at home with strategies that seem to work for everyone else.

So instead of trying to force myself into a backlink strategy that didn't fit me, I decided I'd make SEO work anyway.

Without one.

Maybe it's the ADHD hyperfocus that didn't let me give up SEO (?) I can't really tell, but the fixation on "making SEO work one way or another" refused to go away.

Anyway...

Of course, if you publish high-quality content long enough, you'll naturally earn some backlinks.

And I'm not against writing for reputable publications either. In fact, I think that can be valuable for EEAT.

I just haven't had the time to make it a priority.

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What fascinates me isn't that people build links; it's when backlinks become the entire SEO strategy.

I've never said backlinks don't matter, just to be clear.

I simply struggled with that particular approach, so I doubled down on other areas instead.

Just like my Pinterest account not reaching millions of pageviews doesn't mean Pinterest doesn't work.

It just means it wasn't my path.

As you'll see in the screenshots below, I rank on page one for highly competitive keywords like "make money online" and "online jobs" without an intentional link-building strategy.

Back when I still spent time on Reddit (I'm so glad I deleted my account; now I genuinely think I gained an extra hour every day to practice my Taekwondo kicks), I constantly saw people repeating the same advice:

"Content doesn't matter. You need links."

(Their words, not mine.)

Then they'd publish ten 2-paragraph blog posts and spend their days asking other bloggers for backlinks to those same ten posts.

(I think they haven't stopped, because my spam folder is filled with them...)

That simply wasn't the kind of business I wanted to build.

So I left. And chose educational content instead:

• I write posts that are 3,000 to 10,000 words long and rank for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of different keywords/queries.
• I write ebooks with 80+ pages of educational content.
• I write long newsletters.
• I obsess over site speed and UX.
• I make sure beginners can actually follow what I'm explaining.

That approach works for me. It brings me traffic, subscribers, conversions, and income.

Because here's the question I always come back to:

If someone manages to drive huge amounts of traffic to a website with thin content through aggressive link-building... what happens next?

How do they build trust?

How do they nurture that audience?

How do they create something sustainable?

Premium ad networks don't even accept websites that aren't consistently publishing substantial, updated content, so I've always wondered what exactly the long-term goal is.

--

Meanwhile, my hyper-focused brain can't help but be fascinated by how persistent this obsession with backlinks has become in parts of the blogging industry.

Sometimes it feels less like an SEO tactic and more like an ideology, "either build links or it's over."

And when I see it every day in my inbox and comment queue, it's hard not to think about it.

Anyway...

Recently, I just finished updating my guide on modern SEO for bloggers:

→ How to Get Blog Traffic in 2026 (Without Relying Only on Google)​

But no, it doesn't teach backlink outreach.

It teaches the strategies I actually use to grow organic traffic and build a business around writing blog posts and newsletters across seven different income streams.

Is it a lot of work? Absolutely.

Is it harder than sending 100 AI-generated generic backlink outreach emails every day? Well, probably.

But it's also real. It's achievable. And, most importantly, it's sustainable.

Because I've never believed there was such a thing as easy money.

So maybe my ADHD built my business as I keep refusing to go for the most conventional routes?

Who knows!

But thanks for reading my surprisingly long tangent.

Have a great weekend, and remember that unconventional paths can work, too!

Andréane @ BeProductiveEveryDay

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