• Search Engine Land, Tuesday, July 7, 2009 4:30 PM

Why should marketers care about "link spikes," times when backlinks go either up or down "sharply"? While link spikes from news, social media or public relation campaigns occur naturally, "they can, in some cases, serve as a red flag to a major search engine," seeming to hint of linkbait,"which can be a bad thing," Julie Joyce writes.

Link spikes "that correspond with nothing of note... basically look a bit dodgy," she adds. She writes that regular spikes that form trends are okay. For example, if your company does a lot of media relations in the beginning of the month you might see a consistent link spike around that time.

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