Understanding Link Spikes

Request A Free Website Analysis

March 4th, 2010 by Dan Taylor

When it comes to search engine optimisation, links are a significant element to any campaign. In fact, in the internet arena, links are the be all and end all. Over time the amount of links that point to a website will gradually grow, rising steadily. Over a year there tends to be a natural progression. However, if you were to experience link spikes things would look very different.

What are link spikes?

A link spike is pretty self explanatory. It shows a massive increase in the amount of backlinks to your website up over a relatively short amount of time. If it was charted on a line graph you would see a steep spike in volume.

Search engines will be drawn to your site if they see a link spike. It can actually wave a red flag as link spikes tend to be an unnatural phenomenon in the SEO world.

Unnatural link spikes can happen where a product is sought after on a seasonal basis. For example, if a website sells grass seeds there are likely to be a surge in backlinks at particular times in the year. If the link spike however does not coincide with the current trend in searches for grass seeds it will be viewed as an unnatural link spike. This can cause your website to be penalised by the search engines, which can end in a reduction in ranking or even a ban from the indexes.

At Click Consult we can guide you on all SEO issues to ensure your rankings remain high in your web marketing campaign.

Can You Ever Have Enough Links?
Can You Ever Have Enough Links? Are you of the opinion that you have plenty of links? Do you believe there is no need to worry about developing link building …strategies into your online marketing as the site has enough...
Understanding Search Engines Part 3: Links
Once you start to study SEO you will no doubt be bombarded with information regarding links and how they are the currency of the Internet. At the most basic level, the more links a web page has the better it…...
Finding Relevant Link Partners To Improve SEO
The first thing we should do is qualify what we mean by a link partner. Since the value of reciprocal links have been greatly devalued by the search engines, a link partner is essentially somebody that provides an inbound link…...
Link Text The SEO Companion
Search engines… have evolved and learn as they go along. What this means is that they do not blindly accept information presented to them from all the millions of websites that are active on the Web. Humans are forever trying...
Link Building Strategies
Search engines use a huge number of factors to determine the value of a website for a particular search term. One of the most important and most widely considered is your link profile. This is a measure of the number…...