Does high link velocity affect your rankings negatively?
So what is link velocity? It is basically just a fast increase in the number of links that you are getting.
Can this a bad thing?
Well, short answer, if they are legitimate links from something like you going viral or a big PR thing that occurred, and you are getting these links organically, then it will usually never be a bad thing. So you should never push down the number of natural links because you are scared of high link velocity and how it might hurt your rankings.
However, if you are the type of company that is going after these links on purpose through things such as guest posting or other activities, then it may be something to look out for.
Table of Contents
Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data
Link velocity was essentially created by the SEO community based on a Google patent that was called “Information retrieval based on historical data”.
The patent says “While a spiky rate of growth in the number of backlinks may be a factor used by search engine to score documents, it may also signal an attempt to spam search engine. Accordingly, in this situation, search engine may actually lower the score of a document(s) to reduce the effect of spamming.”
It goes on to say that “Consider the example of a document with an inception date of yesterday that is referenced by 10 back links. This document may be scored higher by search engine 125 than a document with an inception date of 10 years ago that is referenced by 100 back links because the rate of link growth for the former is relatively higher than the latter.”
This patent has a lot to do with how recent a link is. Like the patent says, if you have a new article that has 10 links, it is more likely to be the right answer compared to the 10-year-old article with 100’s of links because a lot can change in ten years. This means that Google is using the time to calculate how important certain article is. It is not just about how recent the links were made, but how recent the information was created as well.
Update Your Information
If Google and other search engines are a big player in your marketing strategy, then updating your information will be very important and beneficial to you ranking. Google will take the timing of your post into account when comparing it to the other information that is out there and rank it according to which information is most relevant.
Take a look at what your top-ranking content is and make sure that it is up to date and still relevant. This could be something that you could do once a year, or every other year depending on the industry, and would be a good habit to start getting into to make sure you don’t become irrelevant.
Habits That Can be Done Consistently
Don’t create a pattern that you can’t keep up with. You should be shooting for a rhythm or pattern that you can be consistent with or else you will just be shooting yourself in the foot.
Say you go out and get 100 backlinks tomorrow or within the next week, and then for the next 6 months don’t come up with any, you are going to run into a few problems. This is because Google is going to score your site based on this and if it sees that big jump in interest in your website, the standards are set way too high for you to keep up with. Once it sees that you are not getting this same level of interest in your site, it is not going to look good for Google’s algorithm and lower your search engine ranking.
Like I just explained, It’s better to come up with habits that you can deliver on month after month then it is to just get a large bulk all at once and then have a dry spell for the rest of the year. Consistency is going to be key, so when you get your habits going, don’t stop. Keep going on them and set up a rhythm that you can maintain.
Summary
In summary, don’t be scared of the organic links and traffic that is coming to your site. These are not going to hurt you.
When you are doing reach out for your link building with guest posting, be sure that you are also creating highly valuable content that will get it’s own links naturally because of the value it holds.
Stay consistent, create content that creates natural links, and don’t stop.
Follow these rules and you will answer the question of “Does High Link Velocity Effect Rankings Negatively?”
