What exactly does “link velocity” actually mean?

Date: 28/04/2025

When some business owners try to improve their company’s organic search engine optimisation, they may often think that SEO is just about links and writing content marketing, right?

Well, no, is the short answer to that question.

Because the SEO consultants who know their stuff, well, they know that you have to learn how to improve over 200 SEO ranking factors. Yet, this needs to be done correctly; for example, you could be building links too fast.

For example, you could have a well-designed website that Googlebot has indexed. The website might be ranked, say, page 3 in the SERP.

So, then you have a bash at improving your SEO. Then, what happens is, you build too many backlinks all at once. This causes a surge in new backlinks to your website being indexed by Google.

And because all links have been built in such a short period, this could look like spam.

What is link velocity?

So, in a nutshell, all link velocity is the speed at which your business obtains new backlinks. These are backlinks from an external website. Ideally, you will want to build the backlinks slowly, over a long time frame. Google then uses E-E-A-T, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.

Now, the outstanding SEO businesses out there will know that backlinks, good quality links, still have a crucial role in search engine optimisation. They are still essential; therefore, to improve the authority of a website, you need to build quality links.

Buying links

So, buying links is a massive no-no.

It can damage your business’s search engine optimisation if you buy links. What’s far better is to build links slowly and steadily.

This is because countless businesses have used spam links to try to improve their company’s SEO.

This approach does not work. Any links being built the wrong way can lead to a link penalty.

Therefore, Google’s algorithm wants to see quality links, yet you should keep link velocity in mind, so you shouldn’t build too many links quickly. Build them slowly, set a target of perhaps only building a few quality links a month.

However, we know what happens: a business often can’t improve its organic SEO slowly; usually, it has to try and get on page one of Google as fast as possible. However, it is where the business will cut corners, and ultimately, what will happen is that the company could receive a link penalty.

So if you are in a rush to improve sales and your SEO in the interim period, consider using Google AdWords to bridge the gap. What we mean by that is that some businesses need sales straightaway. Therefore, do think about using a Google AdWords account as you could use this to increase sales as you work on improving your organic search engine optimisation.

Do use various SEO tools

You could use several SEO tools; for example, many marketing agencies use Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz Pro. All are good; you can use them to help you find link-building opportunities. However, again, do take your time and build the links slowly.

So, what does your marketing agency describe as good link velocity?

So, it depends very much on your business sector because it could take just 10 quality backlinks to catapult some businesses in low-competition business sectors.

Therefore, your business might be in a small town, village or city where it doesn’t face much competition.

However, we have worked for e-commerce businesses, and when we look at some of the business’s main competitors, they have backlink profiles with far more than 30k links. So, as you can imagine, an appointed SEO agency will have to build more links.

However, regardless of your business’s competition, you must think about link velocity. You can’t build many links simultaneously; you must pace and make the links slowly.

Even if your main competitors have thousands of quality backlinks, you might think we need to build many links quickly. However, it will likely trigger a Google algorithmic penalty, such as a Penguin penalty. Therefore, Google could think that you have bought the backlinks, thus placing a penalty on the website.

Don’t get caught on a hamster wheel.

So we have seen countless marketing companies and businesses set themselves link-building goals.
Now, if this is done in a white hat way, well, that’s fine.

But far too many businesses say we need to build 10 links a month, and then it becomes more about quantity than quality.

At that point, you’re working to damage the business’s SEO rather than help it.

The point we are trying to make here is simple: you want to build quality links slowly. Therefore, you don’t want to focus on quantity over quality, as this will not work.

If you focus on quantity, you could incur a link penalty, and an over-optimisation issue may occur, which means you build the links too fast.

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