What Is Link Velocity and How Does It Affect Your SEO Ranking?

Backlinks continue to take one of the top spots when it comes to Google’s ranking factors. In other words, Google looks at how many quality, relevant links point to your website from other sites and ranks your site accordingly when someone uses Google search. 

Knowing the emphasis that Google puts on backlinks, it’s somewhat shocking to learn that just over 66% of web pages on the internet have no backlinks. 

If you read this headline and thought, “ah, another factor that affects my company’s SEO ranking that I’m not familiar with,” then the folks here at Galactic Fed are here to ease your worries. 

In this article, we take a deep dive into what link velocity is and if it really matters when it comes to your SEO ranking. Before getting to grips with link velocity, take a look at our beginner’s guide to link-building if this is a relatively new area of digital marketing for your company. We also recommend starting with a backlink audit, especially if your website’s ranking has taken a hit out of nowhere. 

What is link velocity? 

Link velocity is the speed at which backlinks to your domain or website are added over a specific period of time. It’s most commonly measured in the number of new links obtained per month. This activity is referred to as link-building or backlinking, which are essentially the same thing.

It’s worth noting that a high link velocity doesn’t guarantee your business the coveted top spot on Google’s search engine results page (SERP,) though link velocity does play an essential role in helping you get there. In other words, it’s not the be-all and end-all, but link velocity should definitely not be ignored. 

We can’t stress this enough - a higher link velocity doesn’t equate to a higher ranking from Google. The focus of any company’s link-building efforts should be on building relevant, quality backlinks. 

If I build backlinks too fast, will my SEO ranking suffer? 

The short answer? No.

If you can build high-quality, relevant links quickly, then great! You shouldn’t face penalties from Google if this is the case. 

Google’s own webmaster Jone Mueller explains it’s not so much a matter of the speed at which you obtain backlinks over a specified period of time; Google cares about how unnatural or problematic the links you acquire are (and may penalize your site if they find either type of backlink.)

So how many link per month/day is safe to acquire? As many as you like - given they’re obtained organically, come from relevant domains, and have a natural mix of anchor text.

In other words, just don’t pay for the links and follow the white hat link-building practices to build links instead.

The power of reciprocal links

We can’t talk about the benefit of link-building without mentioning reciprocal links. After all, over 73% of the internet’s domains have reciprocal links, meaning that a large proportion of sites that another website links to also link to them. In addition, over 43% of the top-ranking web pages have some reciprocal links pointing to and from them.

A reciprocal link refers to any hyperlinks between two sites that point both ways. Reciprocal links are commonly put in place when two businesses agree to each host a link on each other’s website, pointing to the other business’s website.

From an SEO perspective, reciprocal links have the potential to help both sites involved in the exchange. The idea is that by linking to each other, both sites can leverage each other’s audiences, increase traffic, and improve their search engine ranking.

In moderation and when done properly, reciprocal linking can certainly be part of a healthy SEO strategy. But don’t forget to keep your audience’s needs at the heart of everything you do.

Source: ahrefs

Advanced link building strategies that guarantee impressive results 

Now you know that link velocity is the speed a which you’re able to obtain links to your website. Don’t worry too much about your company’s link velocity unless the links you are building are problematic or unnatural; for example, you paid for them or used other black hat link-building tactics that Google frowns upon (Galactic Fed only uses white hat link-building tactics.)

In general, the more backlinks a web page has, the more organic traffic it gets from Google. If you’re ready to take your link-building strategy to the next level, take a look at our six proven tips that will help you get there.

Galactic Fed has a team of experts when it comes to link-building. We recently drove a 121% increase in backlinks and boosted traffic by 583% by creating a tailored SEO strategy for San Francisco-based startup H.V.N.M:

Oh, and one last thing, we’ve compiled the top five link-building strategies every company should consider this year if they want to drive traffic to their website and grow their business, including our straightforward three-step process:

• Create high-quality, valuable content that’s sharable

• Undertake research to find resource pages for your industry 

• Contact prospects via email or fill out a submission form

If your business could use a helping hand when it comes to improving your SEO ranking through effective link-building, drop us a line! We’d love to help drive more traffic to your website and reach more customers in the process.