That time a SEO guy at a meetup told me link velocity doesn't matter

I was at a backlink meetup in Austin last spring and this one dude kept insisting link velocity is a myth. He said Google doesn't care if you get 50 links in a day or a year. I pushed back and showed him data from a client site where we got 30 links in one week and saw a 20% traffic jump. He just shrugged and said it was coincidence. Has anyone else run into people who totally dismiss link velocity?

2 comments

2 Comments

milesj7028d ago

Wait, has anyone actually done a controlled test on link velocity with a brand new domain? I'm talking zero authority, no cached trust, just straight up 50 links in a week vs 50 links spread over 3 months. I've seen it work both ways on established sites but never on fresh ones. There's a difference between "Google doesn't care" and "Google doesn't care enough to penalize you immediately" - the guy at the meetup might have been right for his specific niche but wrong in general. My guess is it matters more for competitive keywords where algo changes hit faster.

abby_wilson5127d ago

My buddy Mike tried this on a brand new site for his dog grooming biz in Phoenix. He hit 45 links in two weeks and the site got hit with a manual penalty within a month.