What Is Link Velocity and Does it Matter for SEO?

Link Velocity is Controversial

Link Velocity as a concept is a controversial one. Backlinks of course play a crucial role in SEO, but the connection between link velocity and rankings is not as direct as it may appear. In this article, we’ll explain link velocity as a concept and why it’s not that useful to look at on its own. We’ll also discuss whether a high link velocity is good or bad for SEO, and explain how this might affect your Link building & SEO strategy.

What is link velocity?

The concept of link velocity refers to the rate at which new incoming links are acquired by a website within a specific time period. As good SEOs know, search engines consider the quality and quantity of incoming links to be one of the most important ranking factors as this demonstrates your site to be an authoritative and trusted voice in your space. This likely means you rank higher for keywords and pages receiving lots of links.

If a page has a high link velocity, this means that it has received lots of links within a given period.

Link Velocity = Number of Links / Given Time Period

Negative link velocity would mean that you’re losing backlinks faster than you’re gaining them. You might think immediately that this is likely to hurt the authority of your website, and possibly decrease your rankings.

However. Unlike your website’s page speed where faster is definitely better, it’s not as simple as high link velocity = good, low or negative link velocity = bad.

High Link Velocity, Is it a good thing?

Having a high link velocity may appear at first to be positive, but as with many things in life and SEO, it depends on the context.

If you build lots of high-quality links very quickly, this is a great sign to Google that your page is trustworthy and authoritative (it’s also probably going to be pretty expensive or resource intensive).

However, Link velocity on the surface tends to only focus on the speed and quantity of backlinks gained – i.e. lots of links, and very fast – making it a bit of a questionable concept. But, if you think about it in context, it’s just another tool in the SEO box.

The key here is to have lots of high-quality backlinks – it’s the quality and composition of the links that are really important. Gaining lots of high-quality backlinks in a given period will more than likely improve your rankings and bring in more traffic to your pages.

High Link Velocity, Is it a bad thing? (building backlinks too fast)

If you build lots of low-quality, spammy links very quickly, especially with no high-quality backlinks at all to lend authority, this is a sign to Google that your page might be spammy too. Search engines are constantly evolving to identify and penalise websites that manipulate search rankings, so this can lead to a decrease in rankings and maybe even a penalty.

If you’re buying into a dodgy backlink scheme, you might get literally thousands of rubbish backlinks overnight. This looks unnatural, but it’s not exactly the link velocity that will cause you to be penalised by Google. It’s simply the fact that you just associated your site with loads and loads of spammy sites, with nothing of quality, authority or substance to vouch for you. Some of these spammy links might already be flagged by Google, which could be very dangerous for your site.

But getting a big spike in backlinks is not always a bad thing.

Imagine a situation where a very small site creates a really high-quality piece of content that gets picked up by social and local media, which then goes completely viral and results in a massive influx of backlinks to their site. Some of these are going to be rubbish, but some will be reputable, real, trustworthy sites too. This is not going to land them a penalty because they ‘got too many backlinks too fast’. Thus, link velocity isn’t such a problem here.

However, it’s also not likely to cause them to improve their SEO rankings in the long term.

Long-term Link Velocity

Unless you are making incredible content, have great a great link outreach programme (for example if you’re working with a link-building agency), or have mountains of cash at your disposal, its hard to keep up high-speed, high-quality link-building forever.

Likewise, getting lots of backlinks all at once for a page and then never getting one ever again might cause your rankings to dip after a short time as your competitors catch up.

Sites that rank highly for lots of different keywords often have a consistent, long-term link-building strategy in place that fits their budget and resources. Successful websites with high link velocity serve as prime examples of the benefits of natural backlink growth. These websites not only focus on building high-quality backlinks but also prioritise creating valuable and engaging content for their target audience. By consistently producing quality content and acquiring natural backlinks, these websites are able to establish their authority and attract more organic traffic.

Sometimes you only have to outrun the other guy

For some keywords it may be necessary to build lots of high-quality links very quickly to rank top – if you can’t do this then maybe it’s time to revisit your keyword strategy to find more reasonable but still highly profitable keywords.

If you were out hiking in the woods with your friends and you bumped into a not-so-friendly grizzly bear, you might remember that to get away alive, you don’t have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun your friends.

Luckily you don’t always need to have the highest link velocity in your industry, it can depend on your competitors in the SERPs for a given keyword. This may be much more attainable, so it might be worth reassessing your keyword strategy to find keywords where the link-building efforts required to rank top are lower – you can use an SEO platform like Semrush to do this research.

What Does Google Say About Link Velocity?

Google itself says that link velocity doesn’t matter. It’s not about the speed of acquiring links. It doesn’t matter how many links you get in a given time. What’s important is that these links are natural and authoritative, and that they are not spammy or problematic.

So there you have it. Link velocity is a metric, but it’s not a particularly useful metric on its own. It needs to be considered in conjunction with the quality and composition of the backlinks being gained.

Conclusion

Although Link Velocity can be a somewhat useful metric, it’s clear that it’s only useful within the context of the quality, quantity and composition of backlinks being acquired. The whole backlink profile is the important thing to be focused on, in a holistic way.

Getting too focused on how quickly you’re building backlinks without regard for quality might lead you to make decisions that hurt your rankings or worse – get you a penalty from search engines.

SEO professionals and website owners should focus on building high-quality backlinks steadily over time, rather than attempting to acquire a large number of links in a short period. This isn’t because of link velocity contributing to rankings, but rather because this is the most strategic approach that is likely to be backed by high-quality content and relationships, while also avoiding short-sighted and spammy link-building approaches.

If you require support with your SEO strategy and how to build links organically and as per Google’s guidelines, our UK Digital Marketing Agency Atomic can assist.