Link velocity has been a hot topic in the SEO world for a while now. Although its impact on rankings remains controversial. People are debating and speculating about its impact, with some arguing that sudden spikes in link velocity can be considered unnatural and lead to penalties from search engines.
However, Google’s take on link velocity in SEO is simple. According to John Mueller, a Search Advocate at Google, “It’s not the sheer number of links you acquire in a short time that’s problematic, but the quality and source of those links.”
As long as the links are high-quality and acquired through legitimate means, rapid growth should not be a cause for concern, and there’s nothing Google can penalize you for.
So, before we go more deep into what is a fact and what is a myth, let’s have a brief overview of What is link velocity all about?
And then discuss in detail: Why is there so much confusion about it and how can it impact your SEO strategy?
What is Link Velocity?
Link velocity is nothing but the speed at which a website acquires backlinks over a stipulated period of time.
It’s basically a measure of how quickly a site’s backlink profile is growing. Search engines often consider link velocity as a ranking factor.
How does a high-link velocity scenario affect your website?
A steady, organic growth of your site’s backlink profile means your site is credible and trustworthy. Conversely, if your website encounters a rapid, sudden spike in the number of backlinks in a single month, it could be a sign of aggressive link-building practices.
Take the example of Expedia Inc. to better understand how high link velocity (obtained by unethical means of link building to manipulate Google and rank high on the SERPs) impacts a site’s ranking.
Once a digital travel giant, Expedia found itself in the crosshairs of Google’s algorithmic scrutiny. They tried to improve their search rankings by acquiring keyword-rich backlinks—such as those containing the phrase ‘cheap flights’—from external sites.
This aggressive link-building tactic backfired in unimaginable ways. Google detected the unnatural influx of low-quality backlinks, which led to a manual penalty.
The penalty resulted in a significant 25% drop in search engine rankings for travel-related searches. The impact was immediate and severe, with website traffic plummeting by 20%. As a result, Expedia’s stock price fell by 4.5%.
Expedia lost 25% of its search visibility after Google’s punishment | Source: Searchmetrics
Now, you know how harmful a sudden spike in the number of backlinks can be. Let’s see the other way around: what happens if link velocity is low for your website.
How does a low-link velocity scenario affect your website?
When a website’s rate of new backlinks slows down, the low link velocity signals to search engines that the site may be losing its influence or relevance.
Over time, this stagnation makes it harder for the site to appear higher on the SERPs, especially for competitive keywords. Search engines often see this drop in link velocity as a sign that the content is not as authoritative as before—resulting in lower visibility, decreased organic traffic, and a gradual decline in the site’s overall position.
To counter this, it’s essential to proactively encourage high-quality backlinks, refresh and improve your content, and maintain an ongoing effort to engage your audience and industry partners.
We will discuss how to keep a healthy link velocity later in this article.
How to Calculate Link Velocity
Understanding the link velocity for your website is simple. All you need to do is keep a track of the number of backlinks your website acquires over time.
Here’s a general formula for calculating link velocity:
Link velocity = New backlinks in a Specific Period/ Time Period
Time Period can be anything from a week to a month or even a quarter. A weekly or bi-weekly measurement helps monitor sudden spikes or negative link growth of your backlink profile. You can also check monthly or quarterly data to see the overall trends.
Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush can help you track your backlinks and calculate link velocity. Here are the steps to assess a site’s backlink growth rate using Ahrefs:
Step 1: Log in to your Ahrefs Account
Step 2: Enter the URL of the target website into the search bar.
Step 3: Navigate to the Backlinks report and click on it (you will find it in the left-hand sidebar)
Step 4: The Backlinks report provides a detailed overview of the site’s backlink profile, including referring domains, total backlinks, domain rating, and URL rating.
Step 5: Use the Backlink Checker tool to analyze specific backlinks more thoroughly. Check the anchor text, follow/no follow status, and other information.
Step 6: Use the date filters to narrow down the backlink data to a specific period. This gives you an overview of new backlinks acquired during that time.
Step 7: Calculate link velocity by counting the number of backlinks that appeared within your specific time frame.
Determine the time period.
Divide the number of new backlinks by the time period.
For instance, if you gained 20 new backlinks in a month, your monthly link velocity would be:
Link Velocity = 20 (new backlinks) / 1 (month) = 20
There we go.
Now that we have learned to calculate link velocity let’s take a look at why it matters for SEO.
Why Link Velocity Matters for SEO?
Healthy link velocity reflects your organic link growth and natural link-building efforts. A steady increase in backlinks indicates that your website is consistently producing valuable content that other websites are naturally linking to.
The result? Search engines like Google consider your website as a trustworthy source, which helps your site rank high on the SERPs.
Sometimes a sudden spike in backlinks can indicate a viral piece of content or a significant news event that everyone is interested in. This seems natural and, in no way, manipulative to Google, positively impacting the website’s search engine rankings.
The problem arises when there’s unnatural growth in the number of links a website acquires over a short time, signalling Google that there’s something unnatural or spammy about it.
While link building remains an essential ranking factor in SEO, it is the quality and relevance of backlinks that actually determine their impact.
Search engines pay much more attention to the backlinks from authoritative sources that are contextually relevant rather than focusing on how fast the links can be obtained.
Google’s potential scrutiny of unnatural link building growth patterns:
Google is wary of websites that rapidly acquire a large number of low-quality or spammy inbound links (which many black-hat SEO people practice) in an attempt to manipulate search rankings, leading to the demotion or penalty of the site in question.
As John Muller has stated, the quality and relevance of backlinks are more important than the quantity. He stressed that building high-quality, relevant backlinks from authoritative sites is far more beneficial for SEO than simply acquiring a large number of links.
Why There is a Belief That Link Velocity is a Ranking Factor
In light of a Google patent (Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data) filed back in 2003, some in the SEO community speculated that link velocity could impact (either positively or negatively) rankings. The patent discusses how a search engine might treat a webpage based on the growth of its link profile.
Here’s a part of the patent:
“While a spiky rate of growth in the number of backlinks may be a factor used by search engine 125 to score documents, it may also signal an attempt to spam search engine 125. Accordingly, in this situation, search engine 125 may actually lower the score of a document(s) to reduce the effect of spamming.”
Supporting arguments regarding link velocity:
The introduction of the patent led to a period when rapid link acquisition was seen as a strategy to boost rankings. Because of this false belief, everyone ended up building a bunch of links to quickly get a website to rank.
It was quickly established as the norm, as in those days, link building was more about quantity than quality.
This focus on quantity over quality proved to be short-lived. Google algorithm updates, such as Penguin, emphasized the importance of high-quality, natural backlinks.
Opposing argument:
Gaining links too fast can cause a website to get penalized or demoted in search results. Some believed that Google would interpret a sudden spike in links as a sign that the site was being manipulative.
Some SEO professionals have interpreted that the patent is about penalizing sites with a rapid increase in links.
So, what’s our take on this?
The patent does not say that getting a lot of links quickly is bad. Instead, it’s about avoiding sudden, unnatural spikes in link growth.
For example, if a website suddenly gets thousands of low-quality backlinks from spammy backlinks, that’s a red flag.
You should follow a more natural approach here, i.e., build high-quality backlinks over a decent period of time. This slow and steady growth is less likely to trigger SEO penalties for links.
The truth is, there’s no concrete data about the fact that Google uses link velocity to rank websites. In fact, as Gary Illyes says, it’s a made-up term, and Google does not recognize that it even exists.
Whether your content attracts links fast or slow, in SEO, the quality of individual links and how they’ve been acquired matter—that’s all!
What is a Good Link Velocity?
There is no universally defined “good” or optimal link velocity. It depends on factors such as industry niche, competition level, and the type of content being published.
For instance, a small local business might consider acquiring ten backlinks per month healthy, while a large e-commerce store might aim for 50 or more.
Anything extreme (too rapid or too slow) might put your website at serious risk.
What happens when you build links too fast?
If there’s a sudden spike in the number of inbound links, your site may end up being manipulative. The dangers are many:
Danger 1: If yours is a new website you are trying to build trust with. So, you decide to build more links too fast and aggressively add more content, and a significant amount of time goes by, but you are stuck in the sandbox.
Danger 2: If you decide to buy a thousand links in a month, your site does not reach the top of the SERPs.
Danger 3: Last but not least, you can get penalized in an attempt to force unnatural growth.
Link velocity works on the “Law of diminishing returns” principle. Now, if your website barely acquires links, it can mean that your website is nowhere near the top coveted position in the SERP.
A healthy link velocity for your business means maintaining steady, organic growth that aligns with industry standards and your website’s unique goals. The goal should be to find that sweet spot where you acquire high-quality backlinks at a natural pace without triggering any red flags from search engines.
5 Ways to Keep a Healthy Link Velocity for Your Website
While it may be natural not to know whether you are building links too fast to a new site or too slow to an existing site, several ways can help maintain a healthy link velocity.
These are some actionable steps showing how to keep a healthy backlink profile, outrank your competitors and rank higher than them on SERPs:
1. Keep you Content Fresh and Updated:
Google wants you to acquire links naturally rather than build them aggressively. Apart from producing valuable content consistently, updating your content can also help you acquire natural backlinks from authoritative sites. It’s one surefire way to ensure that you get to enjoy the rewards from Google.
For example, evaluate the topics you have covered till date. Are there contents that are timeless classics? Does the existing content still provide value, or is it still relevant?
If the answer to all these questions is a “no”, then I think it’s time to consider giving those blogs a fresh outlook by updating them with new insights that actually help people find answers they are looking for today.
Let’s say you have a blog post on “The Basics of Machine Learning.” Your blog should talk about trendy subtopics related to machine learning such as: explain how machine learning powers popular applications like recommendation systems on Netflix or spam filters in emails. You could also provide a step-by-step tutorial on building a simple machine-learning model to predict stock prices using Python.
2. Dedicate Time & Resources to Perform Broken Link Building:
Broken link building is a white hat SEO tactic with serious potential to attract high-quality traffic to your site. The process is simple:
- Find pages in your niche with broken backlinks (links that lead to inaccessible or removed pages).
- Reach out to the website owners, point out the broken links, and propose your relevant content as a replacement.
Although the whole process can be a bit time-consuming, the rewards are worth the effort. Here’s why it works:
- Mutual Benefit: By identifying broken links and offering a replacement, you improve the website owner’s user experience. In return, you earn a valuable backlink that boosts your authority and visibility.
- Scalability and Efficiency: Tools like Ahrefs’ Broken Link Checker, SEMrush’s Backlink Gap tool, or LinkMiner make finding and replacing broken links easier, allowing you to scale your efforts and secure more backlinks.
- Long-Term Relationship Building: Helping others in your niche fosters goodwill and opens doors for collaborations in the future.
Pro Tip: While creating broken link building campaigns, personalize your outreach emails for each website owner. A thoughtful, creative approach increases your chances of getting a mention and you also build a connection that pays off in the long run.
Check out more about broken link building.
3. Understand Your Current Link Velocity:
Assessing your website’s existing backlink profile is the most important to do. This analysis will help ensure that your link-building goals align with your current SEO strategy with metrics like:
- How many backlinks you have acquired in the last 1 month or 3 months – your link velocity
- What type of websites are linking to your content – traffic, domain authority, relevancy,etc.
- Toxicity of the incoming links.
To execute this practically I would recommend you to consider using Ahrefs. If you are already using any exisiting link building and monitoring tool then you can go ahead with that as well.
Here’s how to measure how many backlinks your website acquires over a period of time:
Step 1: Go to Site Explorer
Step 2: Enter the URL of Your Website
Step 3: Analyze the Backlink Profile
Once you have entered your URL, Ahrefs will provide you with a comprehensive dashboard mentioning key metrics like the number of backlinks, referring domains, URL rating, and domain rating, along with a graphical representation of your backlink growth over time.
Step 4: Track the Pace of Your Link Acquisition
Keep a close eye on the changes in your backlink profile over time. Analyze data from different periods to identify trends and patterns. Monitor new backlinks and the lost ones, too.
4. Always Choose Quality Over Quantity:
Gone are the days when having a high number of backlinks guaranteed better rankings. Today, it’s not about quantity anymore—quality matters more than ever. No matter the niche the focus of your website should be on earning backlinks only from authoritative and relevant sites.
Over the years Google’s algorithms have become smarter to the point that now they can easily detect black-hat SEO tactics like buying links or participating in link farms.
We have seen many instances where shortcuts like these have harmed the website’s rankings instead of helping.
On one hand, earning high-quality backlinks shows Google that your content adds real value and deserves to rank higher.
But on the other hand, creating quality content alone isn’t enough. You need to actively promote it.
For instance, you can run targeted outreach campaigns using tools like BuzzStream to connect with influencers or journalists in your industry. If your pitch stands out, it could lead to a backlink. Alternatively, you can also take a helping hand from a link building agency that will take care of the end to end process for you.
5. Keep a Close Eye on Your Competition:
When it comes to building backlinks, a rapid and unnatural growth should never be the goal. Instead your focus should be on maintaining a steady, sustainable pace by analyzing what top-ranking competitors in your niche are doing.
For example, if the best-performing pages are acquiring around ten high-quality backlinks per month, it makes sense to aim for a similar rate rather than overdoing it.
To start implementing this strategy, first you need to identify where your competitors are getting their backlinks from.
Tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush can help you with this. In the analysis look for guest posting opportunities, resource pages, or broken link opportunities on authoritative sites.
Moreover, networking with peers within your niche is another great way to uncover link-building opportunities—collaborating with bloggers or website owners in your industry often leads to natural and valuable backlinks. Always remember it takes time to build meaningful connections that drive value in the longer run.
Wrap Up
The morale is today when it comes to building links or maintaining an optimal link velocity, it’s not just about how fast you build them—it’s about staying consistent and always prioritizing quality over quantity.
Today the points we discussed about the dynamics of link velocity will allow you to create a solid link building strategy, avoid the common mistakes, and build a link profile that strengthens your site’s authority over time.
Start by monitoring your backlink profile using tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush. These will help you track your progress, spot areas for improvement, and ensure you’re adopting healthy link-building practices.
