Link Velocity
The rate at which you acquire new backlinks — how many arrive per week or month, and how that pace changes over time.
Analogy Mental model
Follower growth. Organic growth is gradual and lumpy in a believable way; a sudden vertical spike usually means the numbers were bought.
In practice What you actually do
Baseline your normal monthly acquisition, then flag any week that triples it. Sudden bursts on a young domain are the classic spam signature, so if a campaign is about to publish several placements at once, space them out and make sure each destination is genuinely relevant.
Where people get burned Pitfalls
Genuine virality exists, and a major outlet covering you will produce a spike that is entirely fine. What turns a spike into a problem is a burst sourced from low-quality sites with repetitive patterns.
This entry was written in English from the Chinese original, not machine-translated. Read the Chinese version →