Date Published: 17-Oct-2013 | By: Nancy R Jones
Search engines consider links from other websites as votes – representing the importance and popularity of the pages on web.
Till recently, gaining links from other websites assured rankings. But, with the recent developments in Google’s algorithm, specifically Penguin 2.0, there is a lot of confusion in this area. Some say backlinks are no longer effective but SEO Experts are firm that quality links are still one of the key ranking factors. But the only thing is you should gain the links in a systematic way. Link quality, relevancy, variety and velocity are key aspects of a good backlink profile. We already published an article, Key Elements of Good Backlink Profile to Your Website covering all these aspects. We will discuss on link velocity in detail in this article.
Link velocity should be consistent
Link velocity is the measurement at which the website gains backlinks in a given specific time period. Number of backlinks that a website get should be a decent in number (there is no ideal number of links for a website and the number depends on the age of the website.) and more importantly, they should be consistent.
For example, if the number of links earned by the website is around 60 (we took this number just to explain the example, it’s not an ideal number) in a month then it should be 60 or more than 60 next month (again, it should not be significantly more than 60). And most importantly, the number should be realistic. It is very unlikely that a 2-year old website has very few links and a 2-day old website has thousands of links. Avoid spamming and other black hat techniques where you use automated methods or software for gaining links.
One thing you need to remember here is a website with high quality content and decent navigation gains backlinks continuously. Matt Cutts (Head of Google’s Webspam team) in his recent interview (on 10 July 2013) said, “Don’t just try to get the link first, have compelling content and people will link to it themselves. Links are still the best way to rank content”.
Search engines will not spare automated methods
Gaining thousands of links overnight is unrealistic and search engines will not spare such unnatural spike using automated methods and Google might take manual action against such websites.
Less number of links will affect site negatively
It is also important to see that the number of links that got added in a specified time is not very less. It might give a negative impression about the domain. Very less number of links to a website will represent poor performance or lack of interest of the owner in the website. Also, no genuine backlinks to a website represents no useful information on the website.
Google algorithm considers link velocity of a website as one of the main criteria in rewarding the websites. Websites with consistent link velocity will not only get rewarded by search engines but also build authority overtime.
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