How did a competitor gain so many backlinks so quickly?

General Forum
1

I was analyzing a high-ranking competitor’s data on SEMRush and noticed their referring domains and backlinks spiked, but at different times. I’m linking an image of the data in the comments since the automod removed my first post.

At first, I assumed they paid for these links. However, when I looked at the referring domains and backlink quality, many were clearly low-quality links.

Here’s my question: Will a sudden influx of low-quality backlinks actually hurt a site, as some guidance suggests? The site is performing incredibly well, ranking for multiple keywords in a competitive industry, despite the apparent link quality issues.

2

From what I’ve seen, a sudden spike in backlinks doesn’t necessarily harm a site. There’s an interesting article about this topic here: Google's documentation leak: 12 big takeaways for link builders and digital PRs.

3

Probably not. The backlinks might not be the reason for their success. Google filters out a lot of low-quality links automatically, as these could be from bots or even negative SEO attempts.